The good life Journalists tie new luxury real estate to relatives of the man who heads Russia’s aerospace and defense corporation
Investigative journalists at the website Proekt have uncovered evidence that relatives of Sergey Chemezov, the head of Rostec, the Russian state-owned defense and high-tech holding conglomerate, own luxury real estate outside Moscow that’s worth almost 4 billion rubles ($62.8 million).
Based on state registration records, Chemezov’s 74-year-old mother-in-law, Lyudmila Rukavishnikova, owns eight hectares (20 acres) of land in the town of Razdory, one of the most expensive parts of the Rublyovka neighborhood. The property includes a large mansion and several smaller structures. Proekt estimates that the real estate is worth 3 billion rubles ($47.1 million).
Proekt journalists determined that there’s no way Rukavishnikova could have afforded the home on her own, given that the businesses registered in her name generate either losses or very small profits. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project previously reported that Rukavishnikova “managed to acquire several Rostec assets,” including a business center in Moscow, and apparently “used them to make money.”
In addition to the Rublyovka real estate, the 74-year-old woman also has a 700-square-meter (7,535-square-feet) penthouse on Malaya Nikitskaya Street in downtown Moscow, according to the website Sobesednik, which said the property was worth 2 billion rubles in March 2019.
Rukavishnikova isn’t Chemezov’s only relative with lavish real-estate holdings. Proekt reporters found that his second wife, Ekaterina Ignatova, owns two properties in the Rublyovka’s “Zhukovka-2” dacha community. They’re about 47 acres together and worth an estimated 233 million rubles ($3.7 million).
Ekaterina Ignatova also owns a two-story, 1,434-square-meter (15,435-square-foot) apartment at Okhotny Ryad, built where the old “Moskva” hotel used to stand, according to investigators at the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Open Media. The former organization estimates that the property is worth 5 billion rubles ($78.7 million).
Ignatova also owned 1.58 hectares (3.9 acres) of land in Rublyovka, the newspaper Vedomosti previously reported (though this story was later retracted by court order). The property included a three-story mansion that was sold in 2016 for $30 million. Two years later, in an accounting trick widely used to conceal true ownership, the deed to the real estate was reregistered under the name “The Russian Federation.” It’s currently unknown who owns the property.
Sergey Chemezov’s son, 35-year-old businessman Alexander, owns 29 acres of land in the “Zhukovka-3” settlement and a nearly 690-square-meter (7,427-square-foot) home. Proekt says property this size is worth 440 million rubles ($6.9 million). The same community is home to Lyubov Chemezova, the Rostec CEO’s first wife, who owns 78 acres and a 580-square-meter (6,243-square-foot) house. Journalists say the land alone is worth more than 250 million rubles ($3.9 million).
According to the TV network Dozhd, Chemezov’s first wife also owns a 250-square-meter (2,690-square-foot) apartment on Shvedskiy Tupik in central Moscow. The property is worth an estimated $6 million.
Summary by Alexander Baklanov
Translation by Kevin Rothrock