FBK published an investigation into the luxury real estate of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. FBK published a large investigation about Dmitry Medvedev May I live like this, Dimon

The communists proposed in their document to instruct the Duma Security Committee to request information from security forces and registration authorities and organize an investigation into the alleged illegal activities of the charitable foundations and individuals mentioned in the FBK film in order to “understand the degree of reliability of the examples voiced by A.A. Navalny.” in the publication “He’s not Dimon for you.”

The head of the Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, United Russia member Vasily Piskarev, stated that “not a single one of his [Navalny’s] so-called investigations, including the last one in question, had and has nothing to do with the truth, much less with the fight against corruption." “The product of his creativity, as it turned out earlier, and I am sure, is now a kind of symbiosis of dirt, fantasy, staged tricks and falsifications with a pronounced political and provocative context,” the head of the security committee emphasized.

The day before, the speaker of the lower house, Vyacheslav Volodin, initiated the communists to check the facts of the FBK investigation. He stated that “it is wrong to involve the Duma in this story” and sees no point in considering the order, since “there is no injured party, there are no facts of bribery,” and this film “spreads false information.”

At the same time, the State Duma supported the protocol order of United Russia, demanding to investigate the corruption ties of ex-KPRF deputy Denis Voronenkov, who was killed in Kyiv. The authors of the text note that the deceased parliamentarian “used his corrupt connections in the Moscow prosecutor’s office, which closed the case.”

Deputies asked the Duma Security Committee to verify these facts by requesting information from the Prosecutor General's Office, "and also to report who worked in the leadership of the Moscow prosecutor's office in the period from 2000 to 2003." The State Duma supported the order. In turn, Sergei Reshulsky (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) saw in this decision a response to the demarche of the Communist faction against the leader of the United Russia Dmitry Medvedev. In his opinion, the order of United Russia is directly caused by the proposal of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to investigate the facts of Medvedev’s corruption, since they are trying to remind that the current deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Yuri Sinelshchikov, worked in the leadership of the Moscow prosecutor’s office in those years.​

On March 26, mass protests against corruption took place in more than 100 Russian cities. The reason for going to the rallies was the publication by Navalny’s FBK of a film about the property of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, “He’s Not Dimon to You.” The investigation stated that funds associated with Medvedev own property totaling 70 billion rubles.

Medvedev’s press secretary Natalya Timakova immediately after the release of the investigation stated that the FBK film “has a pronounced pre-election character, as he himself says.” According to her, it makes no sense to comment on the “propaganda attacks of an oppositional and convicted character.”

The prime minister himself commented on the FBK accusations a month later; on April 4, he stated that the investigation into his real estate and related funds was done according to the “compote principle.” “They pick up all sorts of crap there, collect all sorts of nonsense about me, if it concerns me, about people I know, and about people I’ve never even heard of. About some places I've been. About some places that I have never heard of either. They collect some papers, photographs, clothes there. Then they create such a product and present it,” Medvedev said during a meeting with workers of the Tambov Bacon LLC plant.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation has released another investigative film against the Russian prime minister.

Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation has released another investigation and film dedicated to the residences of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. According to the oppositionist, at least 70 billion rubles in money and property were transferred to funds associated with a second person in the state.

Navalny claims that in total Medvedv is associated with several expensive real estate properties, including the Milovka estate in Ples, which FBK wrote about last September, the estate in the village of Znamenskoye on Rublyovka, the cost of which is about 5 billion rubles, the residence intkbbee in the Kursk region, as well as vineyards in the Anapa region, a mansion on Krasnaya Polyana, a plot near the village of Maslovo on Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway, two plots by the sea in the Krasnodar Territory and a mansion in St. Petersburg. FBK claims that an offshore company, also associated with Medvedev, owns two yachts.

The Princess 32M yacht is valued at 865 million rubles

FBK stated that the listed property “was acquired with bribes from oligarchs and loans from state banks,” and almost all of the listed assets belong to charitable foundations and, in fact, “do not belong to anyone.” Navalny names friends, classmates of Medvedev and his “confidants” as managers of these facilities.

In particular, the current head of the Skalisty Bereg company, which owns the above-mentioned vineyards in Anapa, Andrey Skok is one of the key asset managers of Alexander Tkachev, the Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation. At the same time, FBK reminds that Medvedev and Tkachev are lobbying for preferences for the wine business, in which they both have an interest.

The owner of the largest share in the Kursk estates and Anapa vineyards is Tekhinpro Company CJSC. The director of this organization is Vladimir Dyachenko, whose name was mentioned in Medvedev’s email hacked in 2014. Oppositionists claim that Medvedev ordered personal items via the Internet in the name of Dyachenko and the address of Tekhinpro Company CJSC. It is noteworthy that the mail belongs to the prime minister, and FBK employees were able to compare the shopping list preserved in the mail and the sneakers with the shirts that appeared on Medvedev.

In addition, Dyachenko heads PromTechInvest CJSC, which manages the estate on Rublyovka, donated to a foundation associated with Medvedev.

Navalny about Medvedev. FBK investigation. VIDEO

Dmitry Medvedev's press secretary Natalya Timakova told Interfax that Navalny's investigation is part of the election campaign and refused to comment on it:

“Navalny’s material is of a pronounced election nature, as he himself says at the end of the video. It makes no sense to comment on the propaganda attacks of an opposition and convicted character who said that he is already waging some kind of election campaign and is fighting the authorities,” the agency quotes Timakova .

Users of social networks have already reacted to the FBK publication.

Memo for Shoigu in case of war with NATO and Italy:
P.1 Do not touch Medvedev’s vineyards
P.2 Do not touch Medvedev’s vineyards

— Russian Economy (@PutinsEconomy)

The “Dar” Foundation, stated in the publication, is headed by Medvedev’s classmate and friend Ilya Eliseev. Navalny calls him one of the closest people to the head of government. Thus, Eliseev manages the Mansurovo agricultural complex and other agricultural enterprises in the Kursk region, as follows from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. In the same area, the Navalny Foundation notes, the head of government has a “family estate, which he regularly visits”: “A chapel was built on the site of a house that once belonged to Medvedev’s grandfather. The estate and tens of thousands of square meters of agricultural land are the property of Mansurovo.

Among the members of the board of directors of Mansurovo is Andrei Medvedev, whom FBK calls the prime minister’s cousin. He is also the owner of a small share in the Seim-Agro company. The main founder of Seim-Agro is the Kurskpromteplitsa company, which belongs to the Sotsgosproekt foundation, associated with Medvedev.

Andrei Medvedev refused to confirm to RBC his family connection with the Russian prime minister. “This is a purely personal question, I do not consider it necessary to answer it,” he said. He also noted that “he received neither help nor interference from the said person [Dmitry Medvedev].” “If this were really the case, as a true patriot of our state, I would be truly saddened. Such accusations have no basis. This is fiction and folklore,” Medvedev is sure.

Vineyard in Tuscany

A subsidiary of the Dar Foundation has registered a house on Rublyovka and 20 hectares of land, which previously belonged to the presidential administration and were sold, according to FBK, “200 times cheaper than the market value.” FBK refers to court materials and information from Rosreestr.

Eliseev’s student Philip Polyansky and former director of Dar heads the company Certum-Invest, as indicated in the extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The company acquired a historic mansion in St. Petersburg, then transferred it to Dar, after which the building was rebuilt into an elite building of 29 apartments.

Eliseev owns the Cyprus offshore company Furcina, to which two sea yachts are registered, according to extracts from the Cyprus register of legal entities. FBK estimated their cost at $16 million. “We see them moored near the Milovka estate in Ples, which is Medvedev’s residence. Both yachts are named “Photinia”, which is the church equivalent of the name Svetlana. This is the name of Dmitry Medvedev’s wife,” the authors of the investigation note.

A winery in Italian Tuscany is registered with the same offshore company, as indicated in the legal entity’s annual report. “After the purchase, Sergei Stupnitsky became the manager of the winery, a man who had previously worked as the director of another winery associated with the Prime Minister, Anapa’s Skalistoy Bereg,” FBK emphasizes. A representative of Fattoria della Aiola, through which Furcina controls wine production, in a comment to RNS denied the winery’s connection with Medvedev.

The Sotsgosproekt fund, associated with Medvedev, according to SPARK-Interfax, owns a stake in the Skalisty Bereg company. She, in turn, owns vineyards in Anapa. One of the directors of the Rocky Coast subsequently became the director of the Gradislava Foundation. Medvedev’s Plyos estate is “registered” to this fund, the authors of the investigation write.

In addition to Eliseev, FBK names Vladimir Dyachenko as a key figure in the prime minister’s entourage. “This person is involved in the daily management of the Rublyovsky estate in Znamensky, received as a gift from Alisher Usmanov,” Navalny’s foundation points out.

Donations and loans

Navalny writes, citing financial statements, that funds associated with Medvedev have several sources of funding. Firstly, as FBK notes, “NOVATEK shareholders Leonid Mikhelson and Leonid Simanovsky contributed 33 billion rubles to the authorized capital of the Dar fund.” Secondly, the management company of the Dar fund received loans from Gazprombank in the amount of 11 billion rubles, as follows from the financial institution’s reporting. “Such support from Gazprombank can be explained very simply. Medvedev’s main confidant, Ilya Eliseev, is the deputy chairman of the board of this bank,” Navalny points out. “Together with the money received from the oligarchs, the volume of funds circulating between Medvedev’s funds and companies is almost 70 billion rubles.”

The Meritage company manages all the property of the Prime Minister. FBK makes this conclusion, for example, on the basis that the company selects personnel for all other legal entities associated with the head of government.

“Although Eliseev is a classmate of Medvedev, he is still a fairly independent figure. That is, what belongs to Eliseev cannot also belong to Medvedev. For the role of majordomo - manager of Medvedev’s property, Eliseev’s figure is too big,” -

FBK investigation: will Medvedev be removed and Navalny imprisoned?

Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation published an investigation dedicated to Dmitry Medvedev. The main topic is real estate objects (they were filmed by quadcopters from a bird's eye view) belonging to funds and companies that, according to the authors of the publication, are associated with the Prime Minister.

This caused a predictable scandal. However, all the components of the scandal also do not go beyond the predictable.

Representatives of the authorities refuse to discuss the “delirium of a criminal” (quote from United Russia General Council Secretary Sergei Neverov). Navalny parodies the statements of his opponents and calls for voting for himself in the 2018 elections.

The only thing that is fundamentally new so far is the scale of suspicions leveled against the prime minister and the leader of the ruling party. Actually, this makes us wait for some other development of events. After all, according to the laws of dialectics, the amount of compromising evidence must sooner or later transform into a new quality of the political situation. In short, there are two pressing issues on the agenda: will Medvedev be removed and Navalny imprisoned? We asked well-known Russian experts and troublemakers themselves to answer these and a number of other questions.

“The struggle for the position of prime minister has intensified”

Valery SOLOVEY, professor at MGIMO, political scientist, historian.

Many people see in Navalny’s investigation what we usually call a “leak.” Do you have a different opinion?

This is a natural assumption that cannot but arise in “Byzantine” Russian politics. But, judging by the nature of the film, work on it went on for quite a long time. This is the fruit of serious work. The fact that someone from the competent authorities could know about this work but did not interfere is another matter. Of course, this may be beneficial for someone. It is believed that Medvedev's position has recently weakened somewhat - even before the film appeared. The struggle for the position of prime minister has intensified: there are several people in the upper echelons of power who are vying for this position. In addition, Dmitry Anatolyevich has long-standing ill-wishers, very powerful and influential, who are fighting against him to the best of their ability. All this, I emphasize, does not mean at all that these people are, as we say, customers.

Navalny follows his political logic. It is transparent - to compromise the most prominent representatives of the elite. This causes: a) attention to you; b) if not panic, then confusion among the elite. This is always beneficial to the opposition, there is nothing so tricky here.

- Do the contenders for the prime minister's post expect to replace Medvedev after the presidential elections?

In most cases, the point is that the issue should be resolved before the elections.

- To what extent will Navalny’s investigation affect the prime minister’s political prospects?

It will have an effect, but in a paradoxical way. This will allow him to strengthen his position. Because the rule in power is: never retreat and never make excuses.

- So Navalny, it turns out, is strengthening Medvedev’s position?

In fact, yes, and this, by the way, is also an argument against the fact that someone allegedly ordered him to investigate. So I think, I’m even convinced that Navalny acted completely independently, following his own logic. Well, those who knew about it simply did not interfere.

What consequences could this have for Navalny himself? Today the question of whether he will be imprisoned or not will be actively discussed.

This would be stupidity on the part of the authorities. Thus, she would sign for the correctness of those accusations and hints that appear in the film. So of course she won't do it. Well, as for Navalny’s participation in the presidential elections, the issue, in general, has been resolved. I can say that even before the film there was a clear consensus on this issue in the corridors of power: Navalny should not be allowed to participate in the elections. And the scandal caused by the investigation will only “cement” this anti-Navalnov consensus.

- Well, what goals does Navalny himself pursue in this case? Short term, long term?

Navalny believes that the fight against corruption can bring political success. This is evidenced by the experience of a number of countries, including the USSR; one can recall Yeltsin’s revelations of the nomenklatura. But, in my opinion, the situation in Russia is different now. An anti-corruption campaign can and does attract some attention to the person who is doing it, and promotes recognition. But it does not automatically turn him into a serious political figure.

Corruption in Russia today is the norm. There is a mass belief that power - simply because it is power - has the right to be corrupt. And it even has to be corrupt. From my point of view, the opposition should formulate a different message to society, based not on the fight against corruption, but on something else. On certain basic interests of society, which are quite easy to read. However, Navalny prefers to follow an anti-corruption strategy. I repeat, it is not without meaning, but politically it does not look that effective.

Is the FBK information its own investigation or a leak?

I’m almost sure that Navalny’s structures helped process the materials, but the primary information came from other sources that attack Medvedev. These could be political figures who want to replace the Prime Minister. But some believe: on the contrary, these are figures from the prime minister’s entourage who are interested in leaving him. After all, the president will never allow the removal of a person against whom an external attack has begun.

Perhaps it was, relatively speaking, the CIA or British intelligence that gave the material to Navalny, or perhaps someone is masquerading as the CIA and British intelligence. Perhaps this is some kind of revenge for the fact that Medvedev did not approve state support for some business projects. The last version seems to me the most plausible - practice shows that most of these types of conflicts are related to business.

- How will the publication of the investigation affect Dmitry Medvedev’s career?

I think that Medvedev, or rather not even him, but one of the government departments, will be forced to provide a clear and precise explanation for all the assets that are mentioned in the investigation. But this most likely will not affect Medvedev’s political career.

- And if we talk about the influence on Navalny’s positions?

There is no legal way to interfere with Navalny’s publication; he cannot be prosecuted for libel. But he may become a personal enemy of Dmitry Medvedev... I do not expect any plus or minus for Navalny in terms of participation in the elections. But he attracted more attention to himself than he had before - in terms of positioning himself as the leader of the radical opposition against the authorities. I think that Kasyanov and Yavlinsky are jealous of Navalny.

Ilya SCHUMANOV, Deputy General Director of Transparency International-Russia, gave us a legal assessment of the FBK investigation:

In my opinion, there is potentially a situation of unresolved conflict of interest that is an offence. It concerns the relationship between the deputy chairman of the board of Gazprombank Ilya Eliseev and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev - both in the context of the existence of personal and friendly relations between them, and in the formal possibility of Mr. Medvedev’s influence on the organizations on the board of which Mr. Eliseev is.

It is extremely difficult to diagnose formal corruption violations in other stories. This raises more questions from the ethical side than from the legal side.

- Is it realistic to conduct an investigation due to a potential conflict of interest?

In Russian practice this is real. But Dmitry Medvedev is a political figure, he is the leader of the party, he is the prime minister. And Navalny is his opponent on the political agenda...

Strange parallels

The FBK investigation was published on March 2. Meanwhile, on February 15, “Interlocutor” published an article on its website under the heading “Medvedev’s GIFT. How are the prime minister and the financial-industrial group connected” - its structure is largely repeated in Navalny and Co. We talked about this strange coincidence, which made us talk about a centralized “leak,” with the author of the article in Sobesednik, deputy editor-in-chief Oleg Roldugin, and an employee of the FBK investigation department Georgy Alburov.

Oleg ROLDUGIN:

It's hard to believe, but we really worked in parallel, independently of each other. I don’t think that Navalny stole anything from me, although we wrote about many of the facts he mentioned in the film several years ago. He doesn't refer to them, but that's the format. There is another weak point in Navalny’s investigation, in my opinion - it mainly relies on photos from Instagram, geographical maps and extracts from official registers. However, there are not enough conversations with real people. In my next investigation on one of the topics raised by Navalny, there will be, for example, such a conversation, and I took up this topic even before Navalny.

- Still, what do you think, does Navalny collect information himself or do they bring him ready-made investigations?

He has all the information from open sources, why leak it - you just need to find it correctly.

Why did you take on Medvedev and right now, a year before the presidential elections? His supporters claim that all this is a deliberate “drain” of the prime minister...

A familiar topic. So there's nothing more to say. But in this case, I didn’t understand what the presidential elections had to do with it. Have we announced that Medvedev wants to compete with the president?

How do you explain the coincidences with the publication in Sobesednik? A coincidence seems unlikely to many.

Our investigation lasted six months: on several flights (of quadcopters over real estate - “MK”) everything was beautiful and green, very different from what is now visible on the street.

They started writing about the DAR fund (mentioned by FBK - “MK”) back in 2011, they write about it regularly, but the same thing, without indicating a new invoice. We learned about the Sobesednik investigation from the announcement of their article, and we were very nervous: someone had written to us before! But they only had one new part.

If you have been studying a topic for six months, then those at the top could not help but find out about it! It’s even easy to record the flights of quadcopters, not to mention wiretapping and so on.

Naturally, in our office everything is completely wiretapped. You just need to talk less and communicate more via secure means of communication. When we filmed with quadcopters, we were never caught. Perhaps they simply didn’t notice because the drone was flying high. Or one time we might have been noticed, but loud snow removal equipment was working nearby.

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On Thursday, March 2, Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation published materials from another investigation: this time, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev became its key person.

It turned out that for the needs of Medvedev and his family, several magnificent country residences were built in different parts of Russia, luxury yachts, mansions and wineries were purchased. In addition, FBK employees discovered that an offshore company associated with Medvedev owns a huge estate with vineyards and olive groves in Italian Tuscany.

FBK was able to convincingly prove that the Prime Minister actually uses all this property by comparing photographs from Medvedev’s Instagram with aerial photography data of palaces and estates. The documents discovered by Navalny’s employees showed that this entire empire is financed through a system of charitable foundations, which, in turn, are filled with multi-billion dollar contributions from businessmen and loans from commercial banks.

Thus, the head of the Russian government was caught in corruption of fantastic proportions. The value of all assets mentioned in the investigation is estimated by FBK at approximately 70 billion rubles (more than $1 billion). Summing up the results of the work done, Alexey Navalny said that “the entire system of power is rotten from head to toe” and called for people to vote for his candidacy in the 2018 presidential elections.

It would seem that presidential candidate Navalny has made a very strong move, and his opponents from the Russian government will have to work hard to fend off accusations backed by convincing evidence.

However, based on the experience of the reaction to Navalny’s past investigations, one can say with a high degree of confidence that no extra efforts will have to be made to refute the accusations made by the authorities, and Dmitry Medvedev personally, will not have to make any efforts. The very first comments from representatives of the government and the presidential administration showed: this time again, the country’s leadership will use a rhetorical device that has long been worked out and is quite acceptable to the broad masses of Russians - an indication that Navalny himself is convicted in a fraud case, and his “anti-government propaganda” you just have to ignore it.

What under no circumstances would be an adequate response to accusations of corruption in any European country or the United States - in the case of Russian public opinion turns out to be a sufficient and convincing argument.

The problem of relations between government and business, and the spending of funds by government officials is viewed in Russia from a completely different angle than in Western societies. Russian ideas about what an official can do and what he cannot do are based on a complex system of traditional views on the nature of power and private property, inherited almost from the period of medieval Muscovite Rus', as well as on the painful experience of the last decades following the collapse of the USSR.

For centuries of Russian history, private property was under close state control, and involvement in political power, in turn, implied unspoken but wide opportunities for the personal enrichment of officials. During the Soviet period, private property came under an official ban, which, of course, did not contribute to the strengthening of this institution and the eradication of corruption.

In the post-Soviet period, Russian society went through the process of privatization of state assets, and, it seems, this should have laid the foundations for “civilized” relations between government and business, based on the principles of modern law.

However, in reality, the privatization of the 1990s was only the first step in this direction. Government officials who ensured the process of transferring multi-billion-dollar Soviet “national property” into the hands of resourceful businessmen did not at all consider themselves less worthy contenders for a piece of the state pie.

It can be argued that the entire “Putin era,” the sad corruption results of which Navalny quite rightly laments, is a period when there was a gradual equalization of the imbalance in the distribution of assets between “businessmen” and “officials” that developed in the late 1990s.

It is of course possible, and even necessary, to consider this situation from a moral point of view, as Navalny and his employees do, but to count on the fact that popular anger will allow the creation of the “correct” institution of private property and the “correct” government in Russia is quite naive , especially for a presidential candidate.

Many commentators have already noted that with his anti-corruption revelations, Navalny, as a politician, rather short-sightedly isolated himself from all the existing centers of political influence in the country, except for the blind popular element. He accused liberals (who usually include Dmitry Medvedev), centrists, and conservatives of corruption.

In addition, he and his supporters react rather painfully to criticism from other opposition groups, in particular those who point out to Navalny the counterproductiveness of strict moralism as a tool of political struggle in the conditions of modern Russia, mired in cynicism. The inevitable discord within the opposition on this issue will only further weaken its electoral prospects

As a result, with a high degree of probability, Navalny’s new investigation, directed against the Russian authorities, will only help strengthen the political positions of President Putin, and Dmitry Medvedev himself, because Putin, as is well known, in response to external pressure is inclined to only strengthen support for members of his teams that were hit.

The Russian average person can draw the conclusion from this whole story that the “bosses” are at least capable of keeping the oligarchs under control and forcing them to “chip in” to build beautiful palaces, while the oppositionists are only engaged in moralizing, quarreling with each other and do not own even the most the simplest methods of conducting coalition political struggle.