Alexei Navalny, candidate for Moscow’s mayor, writes about the daughter of the current mayor and the extravagant lifestyle of the Sobyanins. – Ed.
Oh, Sergei Semyonovich [Sobyanin], so it’s that eternal lying of the “civil servants” – it’s like a quagmire.
Acting Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has stated that the apartment in the center of Moscow was long ago declared [on income and asset statements for officials] through the establish procedure, and the statements by the opposition in this regard are speculative. “Everything has been declared for so many years now, no one is hiding anything from anyone. For seven years, it has been in the declaration, therefore everything else is speculation,” Sobyanin told journalists.
Gulnar Penkova, acting press secretary for the acting city boss confirmed that the apartment was privatized through the established procedure and officially declared.
“This is standard practice,” she indicated. Earlier Penkova reported that the 308-square-meter apartment at No. 12/1 Rochdelskaya Street was given to Sobyanin by the president’s administrative department in January 2006 as the head of the presidential administration.
But we’re not talking about the declaration here, but the lawfulness of the acquisition. Otherwise, tomorrow, you could declare Gorky Park as your own property, telling everyone, “The Park was long ago declared, therefore the rest is all speculation.”
We’ve already learned that civil servant Sobyanin has once privatized an apartment in Tyumen of 116 square meters (otherwise, how else could he take it?) but you can only privatize an apartment once in your life.
And in any event, the apartment on Rochdelskaya Street is either government housing, which cannot be privatized or it is obtained for public lease [for free] ahead of the queue, which is possible if Sobyanin is an orphan, suffers from epilepsy or a hurricane blew away his Tyumen apartment.
All right, as for these wonderful 308 square meters in the center of Moscow, we will await answers from the prosecutor’s office.
It will be interesting to see what they think up: will they declare Sobyanin an orphan or a leper? We’ll have to wait.
Meanwhile, let’s recall that Civil Servant Sobyanin has a second daughter: Anna Sergeyevna Sobyanin.
As is fitting for the daughter of a major civil servant, she is terribly talented. As is well known, the knack for business awakens in the children of civil servants immediately after their parents take office.
On 18 October 2011, two weeks after her 25th birthday (she was born on 2 October 1986), Anna Sergeyevna Sobyanina bought an apartment in Central District in St. Petersburg, at Malaya Konyushennaya St. No. 14.
Even if you have never been in St. Petersburg, the names of the nearby buildings – Mars Field, Nevsky Prospect, Palace Square, which everyone has read about in books a million times — speak for themselves – it is an excellent place. VERY EXPENSIVE.
The apartment of Anna Sobyanina, the daughter of a civil servant, is 204.9 square meters.
Now, apartments in this building of 152 square meters are selling for 86.2 million rubles; thus, the apartment of the young Anna Sergeyevna is worth now about 116.6 million rubles.
This is how her house looks. Beautiful, eh?
Few have had the fortune even to visit such a home.
On the other hand, few have had the fortune of being born the daughter of Civil Servant Sobyanin.
How does the 25-year-old daughter of a civil servant, whose maximum salary for the last 10 years was 27 million rubles come to have an apartment worth 116 million rubles?
Perish the very thought that Civil Servant Sobyanin gave this magnificent apartment in the center of St. Pete’s as a gift to his daughter for her 25th birthday. That would not be like a civil servant to do!
Of course, Anna Sergeyevna Sobyanina earned all this herself.
In the previous year, she had become one of the founders of the Forus Group, Ltd.
Her neighbor in the same building, Vyacheslav Vladimirovich Kalashnikov (born 12.07.1984) was another founder.
On the Forus Group site, there is a detailed description about this company:
The managing company Forus Group provides drafting, building, capital repair, and reconstruction, and remodeling of residential, public and administrative buildings and historical and cultural monuments. We provide furnishing and interior decorating and perform landscaping design work and manage moving, customs and delivery of non-metallic building materials.
The Forus Group owns its own factories in the Russian Federation and manufacture furniture from economy class to production of elite wooden interiors.
We provide the client the opportunity to hand off to our company the functions of approval of project documents and oversight of all sub-contractors, taking responsibility for the entire process as a whole.
We’re in a stage of active growth; we’re growing creative and intellectual potential, developing technical and production bases, opening new lines of work and strengthening our positions in the building market. Throughout its history, Forus Group has earned the reputation of a reliable and stable company. Among our clients are major government agencies, financial organizations and private persons. Forus Group responsibly oversees all stages of the project from its idea to its embodiment. The standard of quality of Forus Group exceeds the highest expectations of the client.
It “exceeds the highest expectations of the client.”
Wonderful.
Let’s find out quickly then who these clients are, under the section “buildings.”
INSTANTLY
The building of administrative bodies (Khanty-Mansiysk)
Russian Federation President’s Conference Room
Government International Communications Work Stations
Engineering and Utilities Complex (Khanty-Mansiysk)
Director’s Office Work Stations for Government International Communications
And finally, my favorite part.
Greetings to Serdyukov and Vasilyeva:
Guest House for the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense
Negotiation Room in the Building of the Administration of the Russian Federation Defense Ministry
All that’s missing is “Director’s Office, Rosoboronservis, JSA.”
WHAT AN AMAZING COINCIDENCE.
The talented daughter of Civil Servant Sobyanin places furniture in the places where her father Sergei Sobyanin civil-serves with such talent.
The interests of Anna Sobyanina’s firm extend exclusively to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Khanty-Mansiysk.
And exclusively for government buildings.
The Forus Group not only constructs buildings and remodels directors’ offices it founded a separate firm (named Rosinterio) and opened up production in Reutovo, a suburb of Moscow which is involved in manufacturing the furniture for them. The price list is on the site with a copy on Google Documents.
Here is a brief excerpt:
We were able to find only one tender, whose winner was Anna Sobyanina’s firm. This was delivery of luxury furniture for the leadership of the Khanty-Manskiysky Autonomous District.
Forus Group receives all its other orders without competition. It is quiet and elegant – through sub-contracting.
We observe this sort of thing often at the Anti-Corruption Fund: if you want to win a contract, make an agreement right away with the right sub-contractor which belongs to such talented children of civil servants.
Perhaps you could suppose that Anna Sergeyevna Sobyanina simply found a rich husband.
But evidently, and to her fortune, she married for love. We have not found her husband to be involved in any business activity (here he is in Vkontakte, take a look before they delete it)
Most likely, he is simply not a civil servant’s son; therefore, he has no business talents.
With regard to all of the above, I have some simple, polite and reasonable questions for Civil Servant Sobyanin:
1. Sergei Semyonovich, in what way and with what income has your daughter at the age of 25 purchased an apartment that exceeds in cost triple your income for ten years?
2. Is this related to the fact that the business of your daughter consists of delivering luxury furniture for government needs with the people whom you could directly influence to sign these contracts, as you are in civil service in Moscow and Tyumen Region?
Since Civil Servant Sobyanin continues not to answer these previous questions, we have sent the inquiries to the prosecutor’s office and the Investigative Committee with a request to inspect the actions of the Sobyanin family on suspicion of corruption, and separately, inspect the deliveries to the Defense Ministry on suspicion of ties to Rosoboronservis OJSC.
We would like all Muscovites and residents of Russia to ask these questions of Civil Servant Sobyanin.
We have created a site for this: http://sobyanin.mashina.org/
It’s very easy. Print a flyer from this site on your own printer at home or work and every day, for the period of a week, put it up in your hallway.
50,000 people could easily distribute 500,000 leaflets and in a few days tell 2 million Russian citizens about the remarkable business successes of the daughter of Civil Servant Sobyanin.
They won’t tell you this on television, so that means we have to tell you ourselves. We have all the opportunities for this.
Don’t be lazy, your laziness will hurt the state budget and gladden the “civil servants.”
I will be grateful for any help in distributing this post and information about it. Thanks in advance.