An oligarch buys off an official. Here’s how.

How our oligarchs bribe our officials

Do you think this is always

such a secretive process that nothing

can be seen or understood? Not at all.

Now we’re going to tell you and show you. We have

oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov,

ranked 13th on the Forbes list, with $10 billion,

and we have an official,

Alexander Khloponin, deputy

chairman of the Government of the Russian

Federation.

He oversees subsoil use issues, and before that

he was the president’s plenipotentiary envoy to

the North Caucasus, and even earlier he was

governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai. In other words,

he has been a high-ranking official for the past 18

years. And Khloponin needs money—

money that has been legalized.

Not just, you know, a suitcase full of cash,

but something that can be shown in

a financial disclosure and then officially

used.

People like to say that Khloponin

is so wealthy because once upon a time

he used to be a businessman. But the longer

Khloponin remains in public service, the harder it is

to explain these fabulous incomes, because

officials are prohibited from engaging in business.

And old savings—

well, they run out. And that’s where

the scheme begins, right in the middle of what you like to do.

the middle.

Look, Khloponin owned

a villa in Italy. It appears in his disclosure

right here—you can see it: more than 800

square meters of house space, and 80 sotkas of land

of land (about 0.8 hectares, or 8,000 square meters).

That sounds fairly promising. We found this

villa ages ago, and it turned out

that it is located in the resort town of Forte dei Marmi,

well known in certain circles.

It’s a resort in Tuscany. I call it famous

because it has long since earned

a reputation as a favorite destination of the Russian

elite—like Courchevel in France,

only in Italy and by the sea. In short,

we were quite curious to take a look at this property,

and a year ago such an

opportunity conveniently came up. We were

filming other interesting

sites in Italy, and we also dropped by Khloponin’s place

while we were there. I’ll be honest:

when I watched the aerial footage of this

Italian villa, I felt a certain

disappointment, I guess.

Because there wasn’t even an 800-square-meter house,

and those huge 80 sotkas

of grounds somehow weren’t

all that impressive either. We were expecting some kind of castle

amid sweeping Tuscan scenery, but it turned out to be

a cramped little village packed with

houses. Most outrageously, it wasn’t even

on the coast—the sea is more than a kilometer away.

Now, don’t get me wrong, all of this

is very expensive and quite nice, but it’s not the kind of

bureaucratic, United Russia-style scale

that we’ve grown used to seeing. I

thought this video

wouldn’t get many views, so in the end we decided

there wasn’t much point in showing

something like this, and we put the footage away

to gather dust with other as-yet unpublished

materials in the archive.

Now imagine our surprise

when this year

Khloponin filed a disclosure showing that

he had sold the Italian villa,

and his annual income had increased by almost

3 billion rubles. As soon as

this disclosure appeared, naturally the first

thing we did was check

what exactly had happened. We ordered all

the documents—cadastral extracts, plans,

transaction information—and it turned out that

official Khloponin sold his Italian villa

to oligarch Prokhorov. By the way,

the BBC had already written about this

in an investigation—good for them.

But the most important thing here is not who bought

this villa from the deputy prime minister

of our government, but for how much.

No one knew that, but we found out, and we

managed, entirely officially, to obtain a copy of

the sale and purchase agreement between the

Khloponin family and Prokhorov’s offshore company. And in it is

the key detail:

the price—€35.5 million.

That was more than 2 billion rubles at the

time of the deal. So it turns out that this

very house that we filmed a year

ago,

dismissed as uninteresting and

unimpressive, turned out to be literally one

of the most expensive properties we had

ever filmed. And an entirely obvious conclusion

forms in our minds:

oligarch Prokhorov bought the official’s villa

for such colossal money because

this was not a real estate purchase

but a legalized and disguised

transfer of money to the deputy prime minister of our

government.

What this means for powerful industrial interests—write in

and we’ll analyze and discuss that in the future. But now let’s

take a look ourselves at what exactly

2 billion rubles were paid for.

Khloponin’s former Italian villa, now

belonging to Mikhail Prokhorov.

We fly over the densely built-up Italian

town of Forte dei Marmi.

Right in front of us is an unremarkable house

with a pool—there are plenty like it around here.

The house has an area of 429 square meters.

It has only three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and

a living room, plus an attic space—sort of like

a loft. Previously, all of this belonged

to Khloponin. We fly a bit to the left and see a guest

house with an area of 209 square meters. There

two bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms and

a small guest kitchen, and to the right

a garage attached to the servants' house; there

there is just one bedroom and one bathroom

the whole house is about 140 square meters

let's go higher and stop right here

you can clearly see how far the former house

of Khloponin is from the sea; the exact

distance is 1,300 meters. The thirty-first

line from the sea, we counted it

even the slickest real estate agents couldn't

say that it's five minutes from the sea or

that it's a coastal villa; you have to walk

about 20 minutes on foot in an urban area

and now let's take a look at the entire plot from above

the total area, compared with the other houses

doesn't stand out much: 8,220

square meters, less than a hectare

now we need to do a simple

thing: figure out the price

estimate how much this actually

kind of property is really worth

to support our allegations of a

bribe—or disprove them. Fortunately,

for Prokhorov, we know for a fact that

businessman and investor Prokhorov shelled out

to Deputy Prime Minister Khloponin for this

property more than 2 billion

rubles—35.5

million euros to spare

that's a lot of money, so let's simply

look at what 35.5

million euros can buy in this

area of Forte dei Marmi

the short answer: nothing. Despite all the

prestige of the resort, the inflated prices,

the status and everything else, there simply

is no property for sale there at that

price. But look, here's a similar house

also two kilometers from the sea. The plot

is smaller, of course, but the house itself is exactly

twice as big

price: 4.9 million euros. Here's

another house in the same area: 600 square

meters, 30 sotkas of land (3,000 square meters), but unlike

Khloponin's, it's just a few meters from

the sea. 10 million—three times cheaper. Maybe

it's the expensive land? Apparently not

look, a well-kept plot is for sale

larger in size, in the same place

price tag: 2.3 million euros. So

all comparable neighboring houses cost

three times less than what Prokhorov paid

Khloponin

OK, let's move on. Suppose that in

this particular spot, nothing is

for sale. Then let's look farther out

less than a 30-minute drive away, in the same

province, there's a castle—literally an ancient

restored castle

with 1,000 square meters and 5 hectares

of land

it costs almost half as much as

Khloponin's house. A

magnificent mansion like this can be bought for 30

million euros in Italy's capital, Rome, but

even that is still less, with 5

million euros to spare

don't want to compare it with Italian

real estate? Then let's look at

a much more expensive and exclusive place, on

the French Riviera. There, for 35

million euros, you can buy

a villa like this—again, larger, with

a pool, a servants' house, garages, and, as you can

see, that view. By adding 3 million

euros—or bargaining a bit—Prokhorov could

have bought a 1,500-square-meter

palace near Cannes

12 bedrooms, 6 living rooms, a guest house, a garage

for 8 cars, a pool, a spa complex

a tennis court—all included in the price

and now look again at what Prokhorov

bought for the same money

from Khloponin. The simple method of comparing it with

the market price of similar or even more

luxury real estate allows us

to say with confidence: it is impossible that

the market price of Deputy Prime Minister

Khloponin's house was 35 million euros. And let me immediately

answer those who might object now: what if

this house was sold with a painting by

Rembrandt inside

or with 100 underground floors? No

nothing like that. We obtained the contract

again from an official source, and it

contains a detailed description of what

was being sold. There are no golden walls, there is no

missile silo, there is no Batman garage

or Iron Man workshop

it's an ordinary house. It should be sold at

market value, and we are making

assumptions in Prokhorov's favor—absurd ones

but still, let's assume that

these 80 sotkas (8,000 square meters) 1.5 kilometers

from the sea and

a small three-bedroom house are

the most expensive property in Forte dei Marmi

and let's then estimate its value at

10 million euros. But Prokhorov

paid 35—three and a half times

more. Why? Because Prokhorov

was not buying himself some mediocre

villa that he definitely did not need, but for one of

the top officials in the Russian government

of Russia. And this is the right moment to remember that

Khloponin oversees subsoil use, while

Prokhorov's interests are tied precisely to that

sector. And at least 25 million euros

is a bribe

packaged in this simple way

great situation, right? We live in a

country rich in resources but with an impoverished

population, and the rich resources of that

population are divided up among some

crooks

somewhere in the Italian region of Tuscany, passing

villas and money to each other, and then they

They’ll come here to us and say, “Tighten your belts,”

guys, difficult years lie ahead,

life will be hard, but we have to endure it.

So that the country can move forward, it must

work with a fair social system...

And now these doors are closed. Do you

think President Putin knows how

members of his government are enriching themselves?

Well, if we found out about it, then he, with

all his special services, certainly must

know. But at the very least, they should have been

concerned by the fact of unexplained and

enormous sums in Khloponin’s financial disclosures.

But if they didn’t know, they do now,

along with several million people

who watched this video by *Scheme*.

And all of us would very, very much like answers

to some simple questions.

How could something like this

have happened at all? Does Putin consider this

corruption? Will there be an investigation? And isn’t

the suspicious lack

of attention from the authorities

proof that Putin and his

family are given this kind of

bribe too—only not 30 million, but

billions?

I have no doubt that Vladimir Putin will once again

pretend that he doesn’t know,

knows nothing, hasn’t heard our questions.

I don’t know, maybe that’s aiming high, but we have a good

opportunity: Putin’s inauguration is on May 7, and on May 5

there will be rallies across the country by those who

did not vote for Putin and would like

to get explanations and answers from him

on a wide range of issues, from the internet to

political prisoners, from the collapse of the economy to

the failure of industry. So,

come out to the rally on May 5 and ask

questions about Prokhorov and Khloponin too.

You are a full citizen; you have

the right to demand an answer. Personally, I do not want

to live another six years under a government that

considers deals like these normal.

That’s why I will take to the streets, and you

join us. Subscribe to our

channel.

This is where the truth is told.