Yacht. Plane. Girl. Forbidden love at your expense

There aren’t many places on Earth that would fit better for a love story than this one.

This is Central Park in New York, possibly the most romantic place in the world.

Even if you haven’t been there yourself, you’ve definitely seen it in a ton of movies and TV shows.

It's a perfect place to start our story

Central Park also suits us because our story is not just about a man’s love for a woman.

It’s also about their love for big money.

And we aren’t just walking around, we’re looking for very important clues.

You see, our story is forbidden in Russia, but our lovers decided to open their hearts

not to the citizens of Moscow in Gorky Park, but here in New York, in Central Park.

This will be our most important proof that we’re going to look for right now.

[0:57] He’s a bandit! He’s been in charge for 20 years – it’s horrible!

I wish you all to stay strong. And be careful.

Thank you so much. Good luck to you.

Keep it up! I can’t believe I got to meet you…

Well, now you’re gonna be in our next video.

Jesus, just take a nut and go to the squirrel.

Here’s a nut, I’m gonna offer it to that squirrel. She just ran away from me.

Come here, squirrel. Here, squirrel, squirrel… How do you call a squirrel?

There you go, take the tasty nut.

What do you think, what information is the most prohibited in Russia?

You’re probably thinking abut some of our investigations, extremist publications

or maybe information about mass protests. But no.

Thousands of blocked webpages. dozens of absolutely illegal court rulings.

Yandex deletes this information, they’re practically cleansing the internet from it.

All of Roskomnadzor makes sure that you never learn about the love affair

between TV journalist Nailya Asker-zade and the main state banker,

Vladimir Putin’s “wallet” Andrey Kostin.

So, this is just an interview for the newspaper

I just have a couple of questions

He was… polite. Intense. Smart. Really intimidating.

Sanctions can’t make Russia change its politics

[2:35] What happens

[2:39-2:40] When big money

[2:42-2:43] Meets big love?

So, if you write somewhere on the Russian internet:

“Nailya Asker-zade is the lover of banker Andrey Kostin”,

this will be blocked immediately upon the pretext that this information is absolutely false.

Funnily enough, there is a writing somewhere that says the exact same,

made my Kostin and Nailya Asker-zade themselves.

And if we find this writing, we’ll prove that there is indeed something between them.

Oh, look, here it is. Come closer and see for yourselves.

“Andrey Kostin, don’t forget we are of the same blood. I love you. Nailya 2015”

[proceeds to translate the writing into Russian]

A skeptical viewer may ask a logical question: what if we made this plaque ourselves?

Al we’d need is a screwdriver and 4 screws. It seems really easy.

Well, it’s not. You can see similar plaques here, here, here and almost on every bench.

It’s not just a plaque, it’s a very expensive gift that people make to each other.

It’s a tradition of Central Park to dedicate benches to your loved ones.

We’re in the most expensive area, putting such a plaque here will cost you at least $10,000.

Luckily, there are countries with transparent financial records.

This money needs to be paid directly to the Central Park administration.

So, when we get a report from there, we’ll be able to find out the identity of this Nailya

who paid at least $10,000 in order to write to one Andrey Kostin that they are “of the same blood”.

I don’t know where we are, but on one of the floors of this building

is the administration office of Central Park. We’ll go there now

and see if they can give us the public information on who paid for this plaque.

They really should: this is a public company, and they’re not supposed to hide such information.

I’m at the administration office of Central Park.

They’re gonna tell us now how the whole plaque system works.

See, there’s a model bench here. They’re gonna tell us now how much all this costs

and who pays for such things. We can get info on any specific bench or plaque.

And we got it. Look, this is the 2015 report.

It has many pages, but what we’re looking for is right here.

It’s the list of everyone who donated money to Central park in 2015.

Since paying for the installation of a plaque is also a kind of donation,

all donators are listed right here.

Without much effort, we find a familiar name among those who donated $10 to 25 thousand.

But this time, it’s not just “Nailya”, there’s a surname as well.

So, now we know for sure that it’s not some other Nailya, but Nailya Asker-zade

who is “of the same blood” with Andrey Kostin. Splendid.

But why exactly are we picking on the sate banker Kostin and his lover Asker-zade?

Is it illegal for bankers to love in our country?

Well, it is legal to love. And we’re not the least bit interested in the personal lie of these two.

However, there is a difference between a loving state banker

and a loving state banker who steals dozens of millions to shower his lover with this money.

This is a completely different story. A story about corruption.

At this point, we need to make one simple thing.

Asker-zade is just a journalist at a state-owned TV channel,

she can’t possibly have an overly extravagant lifestyle.

It’s unlikely that she owns really expensive apartments, private jets or yachts.

But we still need to check, don’t we?

We start by simply reading those articles in the press that VTB, Roskomnadzor and Kostin

(who’s actually a high councilor of “United Russia”) hate so much.

Those thousands of blockings are based on several court rulings on claims by VTB.

In addition, according to Roskomsvoboda, internet censors would often demand

the removal of similar materials without a court ruling. This is completely illegal,

but I guess Kostin provided some additional motivation for the officials

to make them act with extreme fervor.

Well done. Great skills.

So, what do we find in these seditious articles? All of them tell more or less the same:

Firstly, journalist Asker-zade is the lover of state banker Kostin.

Secondly, Kostin steals colossal amounts of money from VTB

and uses it to buy his lover luxury property.

It’s hard to rest around such people.

In particular, they mention a 229 sq m apartment in “Novaya Ostozhenka” residential complex.

It was gifted to Nailya in 2011, its current price is $3.4 million.

Since 2014, she also owns the adjacent 155 sq m apartment.

Such apartments are being sold for $1.9 million.

There are no gays in Chechnya.

Same-sex families have become normal in the West,

and now they’re trying to impose these so-called “values” on us as well.

Even though I’m showing you the land registry excerpts for two apartments right now,

Asker-zade claims that this is fake news.

She states firmly that she only owns one apartment in Moscow. Well, okay.

Two apartments (or a single merged one) worth $5.3 million is already quite a lot.

Nailya Asker-zade is rich. But can we call her VERY rich?

What’s the dividing line between simply rich and very rich people in Russia?

That’s right: a huge mansion on Rublyovka.

And she does have one. In the elite villa community Zhukovka-3.

We see it now, it’s almost 1000 sq m large.

The land plot isn’t small either – 5000 sq m, or half a hectare.

Nailya became the proud owner of this dacha on Rublyovka in 2015.

So, she expanded to the Moscow region AFTER getting the two apartments.

You must be tired of all those Rublyovka mansions already.

You’ve definitely seen larger houses.

But let’s not forget that we’re talking about a journalist at a state-owned TV channel.

And such a dacha costs around $3.9 million.

“Main characters” with Nailya Asker-zade. Soon on Russia-1.

Russian Aid Fund starts gathering funds to cure the 5-month-old Sasha Tikhonov.

His family doesn’t have such money. The total cost of treatment is 870,000 rubles ($13,500).

Here’s another thing about the dachas. Just so you understand the amounts of money

that a simple evening news host operates.

In 2018, she bought another land plot on Rublyovka with an area of 4 hectares.

A year later, after the mass media learned about this purchase, she sold it.

4 hectares of land in this area are worth almost $45 million.

Hown many TV hosts that you know can afford this? Well, she can.

Tikhon’s family is unable to raise the funds needed for the expensive operation by themselves.

But any one of us can grant this child a chance to be cured.

100 rubles will be deducted from your account. It’s a small amount, but for Tikhon,

this will be a serious investment into his future life.

Here’s an important question.

How do we now that these apartments are connected to VTB and its head Kostin?

Maybe they’re presents from a rich uncle?

The Death Star has repeatedly tried to threaten the Republic with sanctions

and make strikes across the entire investment galaxy.

But no. VTB is right there in the documents.

The first apartment was gifted by the bank’s top manager Kirill Zimarin.

The second one used to be owned by VTB directly.

And the offshore company that Asker-zade purchased the dacha on Rublyovka from

is registered at the same address and has the same nominees

as Andrey Kostin’s personal apartment in Moscow.

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting VTB.

Running a bank is different from running a bakery.

It’s a capital-intensive high-tech business, so large investments are required

Before we move on, I need to remind you what sort of a bank VTB is.

Because otherwise, you may think: “Well, so what if some bank got plundered?

I won’t feel sorry for those bankers”.

You shouldn’t feel sorry for the bankers, but it’s you who got robbed.

The easiest way to explain this is as follows. Every one of us, from babies to elders,

has given ~$110 to support the infinitely loss-making VTB.

The MoF, Rosimushchestvo, State Deposit Insurance Agency —

Through various means, the government has given VTB over $15.6 billion over the last 10 years.

VTB is a black hole that is supported with your money.

Putin: Are you already coming to get the money already?

Putin: Scary people, these bankers…

Now tell me, why are Kostin and Nailya Asker-zade so desperate to hide their relationsip?

To be honest, I couldn’t understand it either until this investigation.

I mean. it’s so obvious, everyone knows about it.

There are tons of photos of them together, even with their kids.

Dozens of reports are written about the banker and the journalist going somewhere together.

After the ceremony finished, head of VTB Andrey Kostin met the best interviewer with a bouquet.

Everything, from land registry excerpts to the bench in Central Park,

indicates that Kostin is in a relationship.

So why not legalize it and open up?

I’m Larisa Guzeeva, this is “Let’s Get Married”, hello.

Andrey, 63. Surrounded his young wife with a bunch of housemaids and sponsored all her whims.

Warns that he may shock his partner with expensive presents

After all, Kostin is a rich man with an estimated annual income of several million dollars.

He should be able to afford buying real estate for his girlfriend, right?

But the answer is that even the real estate barely fits into Kostin’s official budget.

And there’s much more than the real estate. Kostin and Asker-zade have a lot to hide.

[14:47] The plane

We just parodied the intro to Nailya Asker-zade’s show on Russia-1.

I’m explaining this because I’m sure you’ve never seen this show.

Let’s be honest: Nailya may have some other talents, but she’s a terrible host.

Even the channel admits it. Her show airs at the worst possible time: on Sundays at 12:30 am.

The episodes barely get any views on Youtube, because… it’s just really bad.

We’ll get to know our country’s head intelligence officer Sergey Naryshkin

What does the French press write about? What’s the weather like in Yasenevo today?

The sky above Yasenevo is blue and cloudless.

Judging by your Instagram profile, you always put on something red on weekends,

like trousers or shorts. Today, you’re wearing a bright scarf.

Is this a way to contrast the dull weekdays?

Are you on a diet?

Yes, I’m getting fit

What’s your goal?

Let’s see how you did.

Nailya interviews high-rank officials and Putin’s corrupt friends.

You could actually ask them some interesting questions, and every interview could be a hit,

but the entire point of the show is to kiss up to various crooks.

You should probably be the first one to get a medal.

It’s just propaganda that isn’t any different from other shows on Russia-1.

Nevertheless, Nailya got a TEFI award for it last year. She was really happy, let’s take a look.

I don’t even know where to start.

Our show is three years old, and when we were launching it, we had no idea

it would be so difficult. Eva was right, the most difficult part is actually catching the heros.

Asker-zade complains right away that her guests are incredibly hard to catch.

She chases them all around the world.

Here’s the episode with Ramzan Kadyrov filmed in Chechnya.

The one with Rotenberg was obviously filmed near the Crimean bridge.

And here’s an interview with Sechin, who never gives interviews. This was in Vladivostok.

But how does Nailya Asker-zade do it? What sort of journalist luck is this?

The answer is simple: Nailya has a private jet. A nice one, worth $60 million.

So, we have Chechnya, the Crimean bridge and Vladivostok.

The closest airports are Grozny, Anapa and Vladivostok.

The first two aren’t very popular destinations for private jet, which makes our job much easier.

We figured out the dates when the episodes were filmed and found out

that only one aircraft has been in all three airports at these dates —

Bombardier Global 6000, registration number T7-KLT.

And then, we studied all flights made by this plane over the last year.

Riga, Tallinn, Ekaterinburg, Paris, Irkutsk, St. Petersburg, Brussels, Vladivostok, Rome,

Nice, St. Petersburg, Tanzania, St. Pete again, Paris again, London, Sochi, Kazan.

Our Nailya has been everywhere.

Russian Aid Fund is urgently raising money to cure the 2-year-old Sasha.

The boy has a rare type of sarcoma.

Over 2 million rubles ($30,000) are required to conduct a therapy.

Sasha’s parents are unable to raise this much money on such a short notice.

Let’s take a closer look at the plane. We learned from open sources

that its registration number was recently changed from M-TSLT to T7-KLT.

This happened because the plane’s place of registration and owner changed.

Right now, it’s San Marino and an unknown offshore company in Belize,

one of the world’s least transparent jurisdictions.

And before that, just a year ago, the plane was registered in the Isle of Man.

It’s previous owner is VL9762 Ltd. It’s also an offshore company, but we found it easily.

It’s owned by VTB.

Let me repeat that in simple words. In March 2017, VTB bought a plane

and registered it to its leasing subsidiary.

9 months later, the plane was sold to an unknown offshore company

that has NOTHING to do with VTB.

And it started being used by the lover of VTB’s head Kostin.

How much can this cost? There are two options here.

If Kostin bought the plane personally from VTB (which is a case of corruption),

he must have paid $60 million.

And the hourly operating costs of such a luxury plane are around $8,600.

He can’t possibly have that much money.

The second option is that Kostin rents the plane for Nailya.

But this doesn’t make things much better.

We took one calendar month that we had the fullest data for

and calculated that the plane flew for over 50 hours.

That would cost Kostin over $450,000. For just one month.

In Moscow, funds are being raised to cure the 4-year-old Roma Khairullin.

The boy has a rare innate brain tumor.

4 million rubles ($60,000) are needed for the operation. This is an impracticable amount for the family.

To sum up, our banker’s official income wouldn’t be enough

to buy or rent such a private jet, or even cover its operating costs.

Ha-ha-ha. Alright.

Personally, I’m sure that Kostin doesn’t rent anything.

He outright stole this plane from VTB’s balance

And then it’s gone. Snatched

and sold it to his own offshore company for peanuts.

And now his love won’t have to suffer in the business class

when flying to all those interviews. How convenient.

As you see, we have all the attributes of a luxurious life.

Elite apartments, a large dacha, a private jet. What else can there be?

If our heroes were some Arab sheikhs, and not a TV host and an official,

we could finish off with a yacht. Wait a minute…

[21:40] The yacht

While making a chronicle of Nailya’s movements across the world, we noticed something.

She often has vacations at sea. Really often.

There aren’t many details on the photos, just water and stylish outfits.

She’s also smart enough to post them several days or weeks later, and not from the spot.

But it’s easy to notice that she really wants everyone to see that she’s on a yacht.

She needs to make her friends broil with envy, after all.

Hello, Galochka, you’re gonna die now! I’ve got wonderful news!

And every time, on different dates and in different parts of the world,

the tiny details of the yacht that get in the shot are the same.

So, she has her own private yacht.

However, our heroine takes phots in such a way

that it would be impossible to visually identify the yacht.

But we came up with another method.

Every plane, private or nor, sends a radio signal with its coordinates.

Ships (including yachts) do the same.

You can easily find their coordinates at any point of time.

Besides, we have Nailya’s Instagram, with hundreds of pictures and stories from her vacations.

So, we have three arrays of public data from open sources:

Instagram, the history of her plane’s flights and the data from all the yachts in the world.

Theoretically, we can overlay them and find out which yachts put out to sea

in any city where Nailya came by plane. It sounds easy, but in reality, 5234 vessels

were at sea around Nice while Nailya and her jet were there from 30.07. to 04.08.

Nailya’s yacht was definitely among them, but 5000 vessels is just too much to dig through.

But why don’t we look at the other cities where the plane went?

We found out which of these 5000 yachts put out to sea in Olbia from 14.08 to 17.08,

and the number shrank to 256. We added Genoa from 30.08 to 31.08, and only 34 were left.

Finally, we added Cyprus, where the plane was from 30.06 till 5.07.

And the number of yachts that have been in these four places in the specified dates is…

Exactly one. Introducing “Sea & US”, the 62-meter super-yacht

owned by the host of Russia-1 TV channel, Nailya Asker-zade.

Russian Aid Fund is raising money to cure the 5-year-old Dima Khvorov.

Dima needs to be observed in a special clinic for a year.

The price of the complex treatment is 1 million rubles ($15,500).

His new family doesn’t have such money.

At the moment when we solved this riddle, the yacht was on maintenance in Barcelona.

And this means…

[21:49-21:51] Barcelona, Spain

We’re in Barcelona. In front of us is the 62-meter yacht “Sea & Us”.

Here it is. It’s still beautiful despite being covered in scaffolds.

They won’t be an obstacle, don’t worry.

We arm ourselves with several photos of Nailya on the yacht and start the search.

Oh, there’s a helipad right on the yacht, nice.

We start with this photo. I think you’ll agree it was taken here.

We can see the same railing and a metal rod.

This photo here will be useful over here.

Nailya’s sitting on a low railing, and there’s some sort of a round hatch next to her.

That’s the place. Let’s keep looking.

We fly over the helipad and find nothing so far,

except for some women doing yoga at the top deck.

We don’t know who they are, but we’re sorry we disturbed them.

I’d really like to find the staircase from this photo. It’s spiral, with glass on both sides

Let’s start searching.

That’s not it, that’s not it either, there’s an entrance here, but that’s definitely not our staircase…

Where is it? Ah, here it is, look! We found it! There’s no doubt, this is the yacht.

All that’s left to say is that it costs $62 million, or 4 billion rubles.

Russian Aid Fund is urgently raising money to cure the 4-year-old Lera Zabrodskaya.

The girl has a tough relapse of blood cancer.

The medicine required to precisely destroy the cancer cells costs over 3.5 million rubles ($55,000).

The family can’t raise the required amount on their own.

In conclusion, I’d like to say this.

We get it, lovers and second families are their personal matters, they can do whatever they want.

Although I can’t help but notice that it’s quite strange that Putin’s elite keeps talking

about morality and spiritual bonds while having such a unorthodox lifestyle.

Violating the chastity destroys the integrity of a man’s identity.

It’s their consumption level that shocks me.

Their insatiability. The attempt to have a truly royal lifestyle.

A state banker in a country where people can spend months without getting free medicine

buys his lover a jet and a yacht.

And she uses this jet to visit all of Putin’s friends and take adulatory interviews.

When you grow up, do you want to be big and smart like daddy or big and smart like mommy?

Like mommy

Why not like daddy?

Alexey Kudrin, head of the Auditing Chamber

We wonder if he’ll find any signs of corruption at VTB?

And everyone knows about this. It’s an absolute triumph of double morals.

It pains me to tell this, but I have to do it.

Nowadays, Russian society obviously lacks spiritual bonds.

Putin’s regime is shameless and degradant.

Every one of us must contribute to the fight against it, even in the smallest bit.

I have no doubt that they will start banning and blocking this investigation tomorrow.

We won’t delete it, but the amount of people who see it will depend on you.

You know what, show it to your moms and grannies.

I’m sure they’ll have something to say about it

and will think twice before voting for Putin or “United Russia” at the next elections.

Subscribe to our channel, we tell the truth here.

Oh, and let’s not forget our new tradition.

This time, the “foreign agent” label goes to those whose yacht is docked in Barcelona.