Prime Minister Mishustin’s Secret Billions

What a tall fence. What's behind it?

The Russian Federation — that's literally what it says,

written in the certificate of ownership:

property rights.

The Russian Federation. So why, then,

would they fence off this Russian Federation from

that Russian Federation?

The reason is that in that other Russian

Federation lives Russia's new prime minister,

Mikhail Mishustin. He has many such

"Russian Federations," because

right now the entire state is hiding

Mishustin and his property: everywhere his

surname used to appear, it now says

"Russian Federation."

In just the first 10 days of

Mishustin's premiership, journalists dug up

a lot about his property, but

there are no documents in his name anywhere — everywhere

there is only

"Russian Federation." But you can't hide from the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK),

we've been compiling

a dossier on Mishustin since 2015. Why?

Because we always knew he was a thief and

corrupt official. We have all the documents, with

all the names and all the

evidence, and now we will tell

you who has already become the second most powerful person in

Russia.

It is very important for all of us to understand who Mikhail Mishustin is,

because, you see,

Medvedev was a thief, but his government

also failed.

There was a lot of talk, but then 2020 arrived,

and the famous 2020 program

turned out to have failed on every

important indicator. People's incomes

have been falling for six years in a row. Medvedev's government

made us poorer because they

stole.

They built palaces. And what kind of prime minister

will Mishustin be? That's easy to figure out: after all, 22

years ago he entered public service, and however

he learned to work back then is how he will govern now. So

let's take a look at what decades of

"serving the people" have brought our hero.

Quite a few articles have already been written about this place,

but you are seeing it for the first time, and

most importantly, this is not just Mishustin's estate.

It is a place with a rather complicated ownership

structure. All the documents are now

classified, but as I already said, the old

documents have been sitting around for a long time, and we have

the opportunity to unravel the whole tangle. Before

us are 2.6 hectares of land (26,000 square meters) in the elite residential community

Cotton Way on Rublyovka (an upscale area west of Moscow). Here, behind

an enormous fence and even taller

pine trees, the Mishustin family's mega-dacha is hidden from view.

We can see a garage of almost 300

square meters, a tennis court, a small

football field, and a main house of 861

square meters.

There are also two more houses of 450 and 250 square meters, and here is

another small house of 150 square meters, and

yet another house of 741

square meters — nearly 3,000 square meters of

various buildings in total. And here, by the way,

very nearby, is the dacha of the new

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry

Chernyshenko: a 6,000-square-meter plot

and a 1,200-square-meter house. You could practically hold

government meetings here now.

Now let's look in detail

at who exactly is hiding there behind the trees.

The main thing to understand is that this entire

estate is not a single piece of property but

a complex patchwork. Mishustin cannot simply

go ahead and declare a huge

manor in his own name, so it has been split into pieces

and distributed among those

who formally hold his property. And that is

great, because we have the registry extracts,

and we can identify all

the members of this mafia family. So,

first of all, we have none other than

Mikhail Mishustin himself. He stated that he acquired

a piece of land here in 2000, and that is now

his official answer to the question,

where did you get the money for all this?

The newspaper *Kommersant* even published

what was essentially a Mishustin press release disguised

as a journalistic article. But

that, in fact, accounts for no more

than one-fifth of what we see here, and it was

bought in 2000. But even then

Mishustin was already in public service.

In 2005, he transferred this plot and the huge 900-square-meter house on it

into the names of his

children, Aleksandr and Alexei.

The future students of an elite Swiss

school — at the time of the transfer,

Aleksandr was four years old and Alexei was five.

Now that you've met the children, let's move on.

Next, our protagonists are Mishustin's

father and mother, in whose names this

part of the dacha is registered — nearly 8,000 square meters.

It was acquired in 2012. In the year of the

purchase, Mishustin's mother was 70 years old and

his father was 73. According to media reports,

his father worked at Aeroflot all his life, while

his mother was a nurse, so it is obvious

that the plot was paid for by the public official

Mishustin himself. And this plot is the most

interesting of all: it is connected to two more important

figures in our investigation. It now

belongs to Mishustin's sister, Natalia

Stenina, and she assembled it from ten

plots, most of which she received

in 2009. Out of 12,000 square meters,

9,000 — that is, 70 percent — were gifted

to her by a certain Aleksandr Udodov. Along with

the plots, the houses were gifted as well:

741 square meters and 147 square meters. But we need to dwell on Udodov in detail,

because he is

one of the two

people through whom Mishustin's storerooms

are filled — his little treasure chests of gold. Now you can

just hit pause now and

Google this Udodov and see for yourself that

he is just some kind of half-gangster who

got rich in the early 2000s

through fraudulent VAT refund schemes

at exactly the time when Mishustin was working as

deputy minister. The newspaper *Kommersant*—the very same one

that is now singing the praises of the conservative

investor Mishustin—in 2011

called Udodov one of the organizers

of the theft of 2 billion rubles (about $27 million at current rates) from

the tax service, citing the investigation

They wrote about searches of his home

about how he was hiding from investigators, and

so on and so forth. The question is: does it seem

suspicious to you that a man

who steals through fraudulent tax

schemes is friends with the head of the tax service?

It does, of course it does.

And it seems that way to us too. But Udodov and Mishustin

are not just friends—it is practically a love affair.

So strong, in fact, that Udodov, as you can see,

gives real estate worth several

million dollars to our official's own sister.

Here are Mishustin and Udodov playing

hockey together. And here, a year later, Udodov

and Mishustin are again playing hockey together,

but this time in Switzerland. And here he is in 2010

at the International Computer Festival

in Sochi, Mikhail Mishustin's favorite pet project.

He is an honored guest there. And here he is there again in

2014.

And this is only a small part of their ties—only

what can be visualized,

what can be shown to you in photographs. During that brief

period when Mishustin worked in business,

Udodov was already right there—he appointed him

managing director, and in the end

Mishustin and Udodov became so close

both in practice and legally, so deeply intertwined,

that their assets would have to be separated from one another

with a surgical scalpel to avoid

mixing up what belongs to the prime minister and his

family, and what belongs to a businessman who can hardly be called

anything other than a criminal.

That dacha alone is now worth 1.5

billion rubles (about $16 million at current rates), and please

let us not even speculate about whether

the official's elderly parents

or his sister could have bought these

hectares of land on their own. Of course, all of this was done

with Mishustin's own corrupt money.

And now I want to draw your attention once again: all

our state and special services are busy

hiding this property from Russian citizens,

classifying it and changing surnames

to 'Russian Federation' so that you

would know nothing. But you know,

I really would rather not talk about this

topic, but we are ready to leave Rublyovka (an elite residential area outside Moscow),

if only to find more real estate belonging to

Mikhail Mishustin's family worth another 1.5

billion rubles (about $16 million at current rates). But before that, it is very

important for us to talk in more detail about the prime minister's

own sister.

Natalya Stenina, and judging by

the register of legal entities, she does not seem

to do much of anything. Her job is to be the sister

of a man who has a lot of money but

cannot register anything in his own name

because he cannot explain where that

money came from. For example, it is she—not

Mishustin—who is the official founder of the hockey

club 'Sportima,' for which the official plays

and, incidentally, so does his buddy

Udodov. Her name is also on the founding documents

of the organization that restored a church

on Rublyovka. Interestingly, when it came time to award

the Patriarch's church-builder order,

it was not Mishustin's sister who received it, but

Mishustin himself.

So the Patriarch understands who the real

owner of that money is. Incidentally, in these two

foundations, and in another one as well—the Foundation for Mercy,

Education, and Sport—

Natalya Senina is once again together with

Alexander Udodov. That last foundation

is especially remarkable: the whole crowd is gathered there—

Udodov and his wife, and the owner of

Transmashholding, Bokarev, and Vitaly

Kachur. That last one, in particular,

is the perfect person to be

connected to the country's top tax official.

He is a convicted criminal and smuggler who

served five years for a bribe

that he gave to deputy Voronenkov,

and he became notorious for various tax

schemes.

So, Mishustin's sister works

as her brother's nominee, and those services

are obviously paid very well.

Natalya Stenina spends a great deal of time

in Switzerland,

where she visits her daughter and

Mishustin's children, who studied at one of

the most expensive

schools in the world near Lausanne. Tuition there

costs more than $100,000 a year

per student. Incidentally, it is separately quite

funny that as soon as Mishustin became

prime minister, propagandist

Margarita Simonyan simply began proudly

writing on Twitter that Mishustin's children

study in Russia, even though the Swiss schools

were plainly listed on the children's own Facebook pages.

So perhaps now Mishustin has

brought the children back to Russia,

but most of their education took place

far away from the government in which

their father worked. All of this is a sign of

the 'quality improvements' in school

education. Natalya enjoys spending

her time in Italy, driving expensive

cars with privileged license plates, and

Natalya owns property worth 1.6

billion rubles (about $17 million at current rates). Another 730 million rubles

is the portion of the Rublyovka dacha that we have already

shown you,

but that is not where the prime minister lives; the dacha belongs to

She has her own property above the elite

residential community, Agalarov Estate.

It has everything: a golf club,

a helipad,

a pond with boats, a restaurant & spa, bowling—

all the amenities for millionaire residents and

for the new prime minister’s sister. In

2014, she bought this plot

measuring 2,500 square meters

and a house on it measuring 925 square meters.

Property like this in that community costs

around 400 million rubles (about $4.4 million at current exchange rates). On the children’s social media,

you can easily find photos

from this community. And by the way, if you

look through the photos, take a look at

Mikhail’s profile. This is what it looks like now, but

a week ago, his place of

work was listed here.

AFI Development—Alexander’s company

Udod’s—and he helped out here too. Besides this

wonderful house, Natalia Stenina also

has an apartment in the super-elite

residential complex Knightsbridge Private Park. A few

days ago, the Russian service of

the BBC reported this.

But they could confirm this information

only informally because, once again,

it was classified. But we have that property extract too,

and we can now document with 100 percent certainty

that yes, it really is

the property of the prime minister’s own sister.

Prime Minister Mishustin. So here’s the question: okay,

the prime minister—

they classified information about his property

for state reasons, fine.

But why hide his sister’s assets?

Because the state itself is thereby

acknowledging

the truth. Obviously, this apartment was

bought by Mishustin and bought with

corruption money. That’s why they’re hiding it from

you.

And one more little bonus: another

plot of land on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway

and once again gifted to the prime minister’s sister

by the conveniently helpful businessmen.

Twenty-five sotkas (0.25 hectares / 2,500 square meters) cost 30 million

rubles (about $330,000)—a small present by the standards

of the other gifts to the Mishustin family. It’s

basically just a souvenir. And of course,

the plot is classified too—but not from you,

our dear viewers. After all, you don’t send

your donations to FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) for nothing.

I wrote everything down in advance. You can

calculate that we have already found assets

worth 1 billion 360

million rubles (about $15 million).

I announced 1.6 billion,

but I didn’t miscalculate—it’s just that now we need

to move from the elite districts of the Moscow suburbs

to the very center of

Moscow. Only the word “restaurant” remains here now,

nothing else, because right now

it’s under renovation. But generally speaking,

for 13 years this was home to one

of the most luxurious

and famous venues in Moscow: the restaurant

Nedalny Vostok. It was closed in order

to make it even more luxurious. Supposedly,

even Barse Macho came here.

It was always believed that Nedalny Vostok

belonged to the famous restaurateur

Arkady Novikov.

Incidentally, a former member of the

United Russia party.

I remember that in the 1990s there were only three decent

restaurants, and only a handful of people could afford to go there.

Today Moscow is one of the world’s

capitals, and soon, I think, it will become number

one. So, for everything to keep going

well, on December 2 I will vote for

Putin, for his party. But in fact,

Novikov only ever owned 50 percent

of this restaurant, while the other 50

percent was evenly distributed

among our old acquaintances—the businessmen close to Mishustin,

the Udods, and Mishustin’s

sister Natalia Stenina. The media wrote about

this fact, and it isn’t hard to find,

but it really jumps out at you

if you look at the registry. Here,

see for yourselves: this legal entity, Nikolya,

uses the Nedalny

Vostok trademark and belongs directly to our three

main characters. But the most interesting thing here is

another legal entity, Garantia. It is located

in the same building and belongs to the same

people in the exact same shares. And

Garantia owns this entire building on

Tverskoy Boulevard—2,200 square meters, and that is

very, very expensive: 1 billion rubles (about $11 million). So

formally speaking, in the family

of the prime minister, there turns out to be at least another

250 million rubles (about $2.75 million). An unexpected

and profitable friendship: restaurateur Novikov

does business together

with the family of the country’s top tax official and receives

the honorary post of member of the Public Council

under Russia’s Federal Tax Service. But the friendship

between Mishustin and Novikov does not end

here on Tverskoy Boulevard. We’re now

walking through Khamovniki to find

almost another 400 million rubles here

belonging to the family of our

prime minister. This is the beautiful area of

Frunzenskaya Embankment.

There’s the Moskva River, there’s Luzhniki Stadium,

and apartments here are insanely expensive. One

square meter in this building

costs 1 million rubles (about $11,000).

You can go online and check for yourself.

And the entire fifth floor of this building belongs to—

who do you think? That’s right, it has already been classified by the Russian

Federation, but we

got the property extracts earlier and know perfectly well

that it was bought for Alexei Mishustin

and Sasha Mishustin, the Russian-Swiss

children of our prime minister. And the scheme...

The purchase is simply astonishing and looks

like a classic case of corruption: two apartments,

each 180 square meters (about 1,940 sq ft), worth 180 million

rubles (about $2.9 million at the time).

Both belonged to Alexander Udodov through

his company.

And Mishustin wants these

apartments for his children. But you can’t

just do it so openly that the children of the tax

minister receive apartments from a tax

fraudster. So on May 4, 2018, they were

bought by restaurateur Novikov, and four

months later he sells one apartment to

Alexei Mishustin. Then he waits, because if

the second apartment were given

to the underage Alexander Mishustin,

a student in Switzerland, then it would have to be

listed in his father the minister’s asset declaration.

So Novikov waits another five

months and sells the apartment to Alexander

Mishustin as soon as he turns

18, and then his father can say: yes, I know nothing

about any apartment; my children are adults,

they probably earned the money themselves.

Calling.

Crocodile, this is personal.

Restaurant Dorogu.

Arkady Anatolyevich, good afternoon, this is

Alexei calling. If you have

a couple of minutes to talk with me—

Arkady Anatolyevich, I’m calling now because

I think you can probably guess

why I’m calling. I’m calling because in

2018–2019, two apartments were transferred to the sons of Prime Minister

Mishustin, and I wanted to speak with you

about that, and first of all

to clarify—though of course your position is understandable. Still,

you did give apartments to an official’s

children. That’s important information.

[music]

Look, that’s exactly why I’m calling you.

Arkady, I don’t want to make any accusations

against you. No? All right, then tell me:

at what price did you sell those apartments?

We don’t know at what price, but Novikov

transferred the apartments to Mishustin’s children.

We assume it was below market value; that is

effectively a bribe. But even if it was at

market price, neither Alexei nor

Alexander Mishustin, nor their father,

had anything close to the legal income needed to buy

apartments like that.

Mishustin, more than anyone, knows that from

the point of view of any tax official, what

happened is called a criminal

sham transaction. As I said, this is

classic corruption: a minister’s children are growing up,

so let’s buy them luxury apartments.

The minister will be pleased, which means we’ll be

pleased too.

I...

[music]

Lyuba.

And now Mishustin is prime minister, and

the apartments have been completely classified. Apartments?

What apartments?

What Novikov? What Udodov? What

corruption?

We know nothing of the sort. Right now

I don’t understand what you’re talking about, you see.

Because it’s nonsense. Well, there’s your answer to

the question of what can be expected from the new

prime minister, and what he does

best of all. Besides what I’ve

told you in this video, there is also Mishustin’s wife,

who over recent years has received

800 million rubles in official income (about $13 million at the time),

and nobody knows anything about any

business of hers. Where do these millions come from? Well,

here it’s already obvious where the children’s apartments came from.

Mishustin has spent 20 years in public

service and is a billionaire, and it’s simply astonishing

how the state itself—and Putin, of course,

because this could not happen without his knowledge—

hide his billions from us. In other words, the state’s

task is not to uncover the source

of Mishustin’s wealth, but to hide that

wealth from us, because they understand

that those sources are corrupt, and they are perfectly

fine with that. Just think about it: what

right do they have to erase from the

state property registry (Rosreestr)

data not only about themselves and their

children, but also about their parents? You

would never be allowed to do that. And yet

it is happening.

Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin’s first name and patronymic), it turns out that

Mishustin is a thief, and the newspapers are reporting it correctly.

What are we going to do? Well, help us out here—

hide everything so the newspapers don’t write about it.

All of this is what, in the terminology of

propagandists, is called an absolutely

brilliant government. Your contribution to

our investigation will be helping to

spread it. People in our country should

know what

the government of Putin’s so-called “breakthrough” really is.

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