Family of Putin's chief of staff found to own 1.6 billion rubles in real estate

The family of Anton Vaino, the chief of staff of Russia’s presidential administration, reportedly owns properties in Moscow and the Moscow region that are worth a total of 1.6 billion rubles ($25 million). The Russian outlet Republic reported its discovery of the properties on September 23.

Among the real estate owned by the Vaino family, Republic listed an apartment at 26 Bolshaya Yakimanka Street in Moscow that is valued at 55.4 million rubles ($867,170). The apartment, which spans 104.4 square meters (1,124 square feet), belongs to Vaino’s father and grandfather.

Vaino’s relatives also own an apartment at 5 Runovsky Alley that measures at 85.4 square meters (915 square feet) and is valued at 32 million rubles ($500,800). Vaino himself received the apartment from the Moscow government in 2006 and gave it away three years later to a certain Galina Shulenkova. Republic describes Shulenkova as Vaino’s mother-in-law.

A third, even more expensive Moscow apartment, which is located in the elite housing complex Dom na Tishinke, is listed as the property of Vaino’s wife and son, Yelena Shulenkova and Alexander Vaino. The home is worth 115 million rubles ($1.8 million) and spans 155.5 square meters (1,674 square feet). Shulenkova and Vaino’s neighbors in Dom na Tishinke include multiple members of the Putin presidential administration, multiple regional governors, Deputy General Prosecutor Nikolai Vinnichenko, and Foreign Intelligence Service head Sergey Naryshkin.

In 2012, Yelena Shulenkova also owned a plot of land containing two homes in the independent homebuilder’s co-op Rechnoye, which is located on the Rublyovo-Uspensky Highway. That property was valued at 500 million rubles (now $7.8 million).

Shulenkova sold that land to Tatiana Yezhevskaya, whom Baltic news sources name as Vaino’s maternal aunt. Yezhevskaya also owns a 172.5-square-meter (1,857-square-foot) apartment in Moscow that is valued at 115 million rubles ($1.8 million).

The Vaino family also owns three other plots of land, including two homes, that are worth about 800 million rubles ($12.5 million) in total. One of the homes, which has 214.5 square meters (2,309 square feet) of floor space, has not been listed on Vaino’s financial declarations. All three plots are located in the Pirogovo complex, which is owned primarily by Russia’s Industry and Trade Minister, Denis Manturov. In July of 2019, ownership of all property within Pirogovo was transferred to Manturov’s mother.

Another plot of land belonging to the Vainos was sold in 2017 along with a 454.2-square-meter (4,887-square-foot) home for 255.8 million rubles ($4 million). 2,840 square meters of land (30,570 square feet) were transferred in the sale. Anton Vaino and Yelena Shulenkova have declared 342 million rubles ($5.4 million) in income since 2011, Republic noted. Most of that income came from the sale of their Pirogovo home.