Text version
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Now we need to—everything's been filmed, thanks, and...
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Monday... gardens of... suffer through... Gorbenko.
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Hi everyone, this is Georgy Alburov.
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And today we're going to talk about Gorbenko.
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Yesterday we missed a great investigation
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about how the deputy mayor in charge of banning rallies
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and promoting Sobyanin's greatness
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made a pathetic attempt to hide his wealth from us.
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He simply took his own name and property records and...
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rewrote them in the name of a fictional character,
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Ivan Ivanovich Fyodorov.
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Gorbenko's disgusting behavior shows that he is not
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just corrupt, but also a petty, incompetent
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crook who thinks you and I are
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idiots. Anyway, this is the fifth episode
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of the series *The Moscow Corrupt Official*, and
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in an unexpected twist, its hero is once again
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Gorbenko.
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[music]
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Because it's impossible to fit everything about him into one episode.
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Let's quickly recap what we already know.
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We have a corrupt official, Alexander Nikolayevich
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Gorbenko. He earns 7 million rubles a year
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a year, while his country house is worth 500 million rubles—
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the equivalent of 70 years of his salary.
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Gorbenko has worked in
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Sobyanin's government from day one and heads
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the Department of Regional Security and
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Information Policy. And that information
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policy can be judged
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by visiting the City Hall website. There's a list of
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48 top officials there—
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deputy mayors, department heads, and so on.
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Photos, résumés, everything is there. But Gorbenko
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is the only one of the 48 whose
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biography section is blank.
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His biography was simply deleted entirely. But
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that's not a problem, because we still have
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our own investigation into
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Gorbenko, which we did back in 2013,
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and luckily it includes a screenshot of the City Hall website
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from before Gorbenko's biography was deleted.
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There was nothing especially interesting there—just a standard
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career history.
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He was always a salaried employee, never a businessman.
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He had some awards, but never any business of his own.
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There was also family information: married, with a son and
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a daughter. And those are the people we'll be talking about today.
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More precisely, we'll still be talking about
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the elder Gorbenko—it's just that his children will help us
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do it.
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Because thanks to them, we uncovered another 500
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million rubles in unexplained wealth, on top of
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the 500 million we found yesterday.
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Let's start with the son, Nikolai Alexandrovich
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Gorbenko.
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Born in 1985. He's very easy to find,
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because he owns an apartment together with
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Irina Gorbenko, his mother, and Ivan
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Ivanovich
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Fyodorov—who, let me remind you, is the alter ego
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created by official Gorbenko for the purpose of
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hiding his property. Nikolai Gorbenko,
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judging by the corporate registry, is engaged in
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more or less nothing. He has a sole proprietorship
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specializing in breeding horses,
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donkeys, mules, and hinnies—but let's not even get into that right now.
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And he has just one
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company.
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It's worth pausing on that company for a moment.
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The story is genuinely very revealing. This
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company belonged to Nikolai Gorbenko, and in 2015
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he opened a restaurant on Bolshaya Polyanka Street.
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Nikolai named it after himself—
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Nicolas Gorbenko Jr. He really, really
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tried hard with this restaurant.
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They even had to plant some flattering
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reviews all over the place.
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Celebrities were invited there; Butman opened
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his jazz café there; the Moscow 24 TV channel, controlled by his father,
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kept airing one
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glowing segment after another.
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The restaurant was opened by a man who
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owns a peasant farm
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in the Zaoksky District of Tula Region.
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.
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The man's name is Nikolai, and the girl
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was also apparently named Nikolai—presumably that's where
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the name came from.
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Nicolas. The owner's surname was not
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disclosed. But it didn't work out—the restaurant
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went bust and closed. And that's where the story of this would-be businessman ends,
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but
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the story of his real estate begins.
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Take a look at where the company is registered:
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10 Trubetskaya Street, an elite residential
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complex in Khamovniki.
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One square meter here costs
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1.4 million rubles.
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Nikolai bought an apartment in this building—
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226 square meters (about 2,430 sq ft). It's not hard to calculate
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that this comes to just over 300 million rubles.
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Nikolai was 29 years old
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when he bought it. Let's call
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things by their proper names: an apartment
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worth 300 million rubles was bought for him by his father, the official.
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Do you think I'm making baseless accusations against poor
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Gorbenko-Fyodorov?
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I have another argument—or rather,
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another apartment in the very same building in
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Khamovniki: 174 square meters
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belonging to Gorbenko's daughter,
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Anastasia Alexandrovna.
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And to her husband as well—that's where, in fact,
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the new surname comes from. The apartment is worth 240
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million rubles. Gorbenko's daughter bought it
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at the age of 21. So once again, let's call
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things by their proper names: an apartment
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worth 240 million rubles
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was gifted to her by her father.
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So, just in the children's apartments alone, we've found
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540 million rubles.
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Another 60 million is the value of the elder Gorbenkos' apartment,
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which he bought while serving as director
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of the state-owned newspaper *Rossiyskaya Gazeta*.
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And then there's the country house—another 500 million. That brings the total to
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1.1 billion rubles. And let me remind you
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that any normal member of parliament...
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The Moscow City Duma can simply print out
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yesterday’s investigations and today’s
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investigation, send a couple of inquiries,
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file a complaint, and that’s it—Gorbenko would be under
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investigation, and then let him explain for himself
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where he got more than a billion from. And that is exactly
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the reason why Gorbenko bans
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rallies, why his boss Sobyanin
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has, for no reason at all, unleashed
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unprecedented repression—because they
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are afraid. They have nothing to say if they are
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asked.
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I urge you: take part in Smart Voting
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(a tactical voting strategy in Russia). It really matters. United Russia members
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and the majority in the Moscow City Duma
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are what guarantee impunity precisely
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for crooks like Gorbenko.
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Register and vote on September 8.
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Subscribe to our channel.
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They tell the truth here.