Moscow, the capital of vast Russia, the richest city, which is a dream for millions. Someone sees in Moscow a place for a “chance of life”, having opened their own business, someone wants to get a job in a reputable company and receive a decent salary.
Through the prism of officials, Moscow is seen as the private purse of high-ranking servants of the people. The Moscow City Hall is an ideal place to improve your own life, because everyone knows about the corruption flows in the office of the mayor of the capital, but they remain untouchable, despite the close attention of the media and civil society. Under the cover of the Moscow City Hall, one of the non-public deputies of Sobyanin, Natalya Sergunina, was able to establish a wonderful life. What schemes of her own enrichment the official in the Government of Moscow has established – in our material.
Accustomed to gold from the cradle
Natalya Sergunina was born in Moscow on August 22, 1978 in an exemplary Soviet family. Her relatives worked as prosecutors, judges, lawyers. Also, Sergunina’s father was engaged in law, holding the position of a judge of a military tribunal, which was very honorable in the USSR. It is obvious that the whole family of Sergunina was associated with jurisprudence. In 2000, the future official graduated from the law faculty of the prestigious Moscow State University. Lomonosov with honors.
Lomonosov Moscow State University
After graduating from the university, Sergunina, thanks to influential relatives, managed to get a job in the legal department of the Ministry of Property of Russia, where she successfully worked until 2010.
In 2010, a new era began in Sergunina’s career, which can truly be called “golden” for an official. The young lawyer was invited to the Moscow government for the position of deputy mayor, to oversee the property department. But further – more. In 2013, she was assigned to head two profitable industries at the Moscow City Hall at once: economic and property-land. It is clear that managing such complexes in Moscow is the dream of most officials. There is a lot of property, it costs a lot of money, there is no effective control over its use. Only a man with an iron will would not take advantage of such an opportunity.
Natalia Sergunina with Sergei Sobyanin
In 2018, Sergunina went up, having received the position of head of the Mayor’s Office. Privately, she became one of the closest officials to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. The mayor trusts her with numerous important matters, and gets away with all the scandals.
Billions of income from the property of Moscow – in your pocket
Natalya Sergunina was a non-public official for a long time, although she headed super important industries in the Moscow government (which we have already mentioned).
But one way or another, thanks to their activities, which raised a number of questions in the public, they began to look at Sergunina more closely.
At a time when Sergunina took the position of head of the department of land resources and property of the city of Moscow, Moscow real estate immediately began to go under the hammer in large numbers.
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Of course, on the one hand, the process is correct – real estate (especially if it is not requested) needs constant maintenance, and as a result, waste of the municipal budget. What the city does not need is sold. Important property remains in the ownership of the capital. But the key question here is how to implement it. On the one hand, you can do everything for the city, on the other hand, you can do everything for yourself. Sergunina certainly chose the second option, turning the privatization in such a way that she was the only one to benefit.
In 2019, a huge corruption scandal related to the official was revealed. The case began in 2016, but remained secret for 3 years. It turned out that the auctions for the sale of municipal property in Moscow are often “accidentally” won by the Mercury company. There are no questions, maybe they offer a large amount of funds, and are out of competition. But no. In 3 auctions, where “Mercury” took part, the company raised the rate by the same amount, 466,150 rubles.
Got “Mercury” very tasty property. We are talking about houses that are a monument of architecture, and cost many times more than the sale price.
In the first line of purchases of “Mercury” in Moscow, we see a house on Serebryanichesky Lane. This is a historical building of the early 20s, with a total area of more than 1300 square meters. It turns out that “Mercury” bought the house under unrealistic conditions. One square meter = 66 thousand rubles. Of course, there are no such prices and never have been.
Now the hotel “Custor” works in this building. By the way, in the rest of the houses that Mercury acquired, the Custor Hotel was also opened.
It is obvious that all this looks unclean. Through a complex offshore system, “Mercury” belongs to the husband of Sergunina’s younger sister Irina Lazar Safaniev.
Lazar Safaniev
Thus, Natalya Sergunina, thanks to a family contract, was able to get property worth 6.5 billion rubles, which previously belonged to Moscow, and Muscovites, in fact.
In an embrace with Pavel Cho
But Sergunina’s billion-dollar scam was not enough. Enlisting the support (some talk about their romance) of the scandalous businessman Pavel Cho, the property department under the leadership of Sergunina moved to an elite business center, the Oko tower in Moscow City. 13.6 billion rubles were spent on moving the department. In addition, the Property Department purchased 135 parking spaces for cars worth more than a billion rubles. Very immodest life of the capital’s officials.
The previous owner of the said property was Pavel Te’s Capital Group.
Pavel Cho
It is noteworthy that no one was embarrassed that, in addition to the cosmic scale of the deal, the funds went to Cypriot offshores. That is, even taxes with a huge waste of the Department of Property of Moscow did not go to the state treasury.
But Pavel Te is a proven customer of the Moscow City Hall, working with the Serguninly Department. In addition to selling real estate to the department, Capital Group also provided very expensive services. “Capital Group” is the winner in three purchases of the state unitary enterprise of the city of Moscow “REM”, the founder of which was the Department of City Property. REM was liquidated in 2018, but the order history still exists. So, before the liquidation, Pavel Cho’s company completed 3 contracts for the total amount of 14.3 billion rubles for REM.
All in share – all is well.
It’s a sin not to clean the internet
For Natalya Sergunina, the ideal condition was to remain a non-public official. Funds (moreover, very considerable ones) flow like a river, there is no negativity, there is no extra attention. But still, as we have already mentioned, in 2019 her schemes became public property. Therefore, without thinking twice, she decided to clean up the Internet, but it was done for free, so it’s obvious that it’s not professional.
After the release of a journalistic investigation and Sergunina’s schemes (August 1, 2019), on August 3, an article about Sobyanin’s deputy was removed from Wikipedia. The official reason was given allegedly due to the insignificance of the material, but we understand that this is complete nonsense. And about much less significant personnel. Probably, for Sergunina, this situation was so traumatic that to this day there is no material about it on Wikipedia.
In any case, Sergunina’s corruption schemes have been known for more than 3 years, but this is not something that did not become a reason for initiating a criminal case, it generally passed by the authorities. Not a single official representative of the Moscow Government reacted in any way to the huge corruption in the property department. Sergunin is in his place, and judging by the scope of corruption associated with property in Moscow, we will remember it more than once.
