Russian real estate abroad is managed by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Goszagransobstvennost”. This organization was established in 1996 and is subordinate to the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation. It is she who manages the issues of commercial use of foreign real estate transferred to the Federal State Unitary Enterprise on the basis of economic management, ensures its maintenance and operation. Russia’s property in Iran (today one of Russia’s important partners in the world) is no exception.
By the way, our countries are especially related to the current Western sanctions. The first restrictions against Iran were introduced in the early 1950s in response to the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and until recently this country was the most sanctioned. In the spring of 2022, everything changed: now Russia has the championship in this sense.
Pravo.Ru, 03/11/2020, “State foreign property filed a lawsuit against Inbank for $342,000”: Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Enterprise for Property Management Abroad” is a unitary enterprise founded in 1996. As follows from the information in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the main activity of the enterprise is the lease and management of own or leased real estate. It is headed by Sergey Sushkov. — Inset K.ru
@vchkogpu, 26.07.2021 05:06: The criminal community in the structure of the traffic police of the Stavropol Territory began long before the arrival Alexey Safonov chief, he smoothly picked up, built for decades by the former head of the traffic police of the Stavropol Territory, Boris Bulgakov and his longtime friend, the head of the Security Service of the traffic police, Georgy Samodurov, the money vertical, remaining only a cog in the corruption structure. According to the source, the threads of the Stavropol “octopus” stretch to the very top of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and not only. Here are some persons. […]
The operatives know about Bulgakov’s joint ownership of lands in the Stavropol Territory and the KChR, together with the former head of the Federal Property Management Agency of the Territory, and now the head of the State Foreign Property of the Russian Federation S.A. Sushkov. They own thousands of hectares in the Piedmont region of the region, where cones regularly fly to hunt wild animals. — Inset K.ru
Economics of “State foreign property”
The state-owned enterprise earns by renting out its real estate abroad, but the debit and credit barely converge. So, in 2021, the FSUE revenue amounted to 835 million rubles, and net profit – only 1.4 million.
So, in the property of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise there is a certain office building built in 1969. The total area is relatively small, only 152 sq. m, residential and even less – 51 sq. m. The address is not specified, in contrast to the cost of repairs. As follows from the terms of reference on the public procurement website, officials are ready to spend almost 3 million rubles on the reconstruction of the building. The amount is not the largest, but the problem is that there is no justification for such expenses in the documents. What kind of work, where is the building located, why is it in need of repair and how were the costs calculated? Mystery.
Only the performer is known: the firm from Anapa “A-Project”. Officials have not cooperated with it before (although the company has been operating since 2014). In addition to the Iranian project, the Kuban company received another contract – already for 6 million rubles.
Simultaneously with Tehran, “A-Project” should be engaged in the reconstruction of the building in the capital of Uruguay – Montevideo, the total area of which is 437 square meters. m, and residential – 227 sq. m. We can confidently say that this is not the embassy of the Russian Federation, which is located in a three-story building. Repair, as follows from the terms of reference, is required for a two-story mansion. And again, no justification, no details.
Money loves silence. Especially if it is dollars (namely, this currency is indicated in the purchase). In this case, the contracts are concluded in rubles. Why extra conversion is needed is not entirely clear.
However, secrecy is a normal story for State Foreign Property. India – 14 million rubles are pledged. for the renovation of an office building in New Delhi. London – 15 million rubles. for the renovation of the office building. There are no details either. Hundreds of millions of rubles are spent on the repair of Russian real estate abroad, but there are no publicly available justifications for such expenses. As well as addresses. And there are many such examples.
To make the correspondents feel more comfortable, the contractors had to carry out a whole range of works: examine the structural elements of the building, develop design and working documentation, obtain a positive opinion from experts … And all this costs about 19 million rubles. This figure does not include the repair itself – it’s scary to even imagine how much the reconstruction of the building for the MIA will ultimately cost the budget. However, this example is not the only one.
In July 2018, the same state-owned enterprise signed a contract for 23 million rubles, but this time Japan, the city of Tokyo, was listed as the place for the provision of services. Again, no addresses. Only brief parameters of the building: a three-story house, building area – 1007.64 sq. m. The decision of the arbitration court again gives us a clue. The mysterious building in need of immediate repair is located at Tokyo, Shinagawaku, Higashi, Gotanda, 3-9-13. Judging by Google maps, this is a small (looking office) building located in a quiet area of the Japanese capital. What is happening inside is tightly hidden behind the blinds, and there is a surveillance camera outside.
Home sites in Japan reveal the owner of this office – Novosti Press Agency. This is the English translation of the original title. RIA News” (until 1990 APN – Novosti Press Agency).
Meanwhile, Japan has imposed numerous sanctions against Russia and has already expelled several diplomats. There is no mention of journalists yet. But you never know. However, a holy place is never empty – in the case of their expulsion, other guests will be able to enter the renovated building. Moreover, one of its tasks “Goszagransobstvennost” calls “the provision of federal property for rent abroad.”
“BBC Russian Service”, 09/20/2018, “Renovation of the Capitol in Havana. Almost $10 million – to an unknown company from Sochi”: The restoration of the dome of the Cuban Capitol for 630 million rubles (9.4 million dollars) from the Russian budget will be handled by the little-known Sochi company SMS-Development, the BBC Russian Service found out. Two weeks before the conclusion of the contract, she entered the first stage of bankruptcy. […]
Now the only owner of “SMS-Development” is businesswoman Ekaterina Parshina. But at the origins of the company was the ex-head of the “North Caucasian Department of Property Relations” of the Russian Ministry of Defense Anatoly Parshin (data from SPARK-Interfax). His social work as a member of the United Russia party is regularly covered on the company’s website. Parshin was responsible for military property in southern Russia, including the Stavropol Territory, from 2013 to 2017. In the same period, the department of the Federal Property Management Agency in the Stavropol Territory was headed by Sergei Sushkov, the current director of State Foreign Property.
“I’m not ready to answer this question,” Vladimir Kiselev, director of SMS Development, commented on the assumption that the choice of his company could be connected with the likely acquaintance of Sushkov and Parshin at work in the property block of the Southern Federal District. — Inset K.ru
BBC Russian Service, 08/16/2018, “Russia gave 642 million rubles for the renovation of the Capitol in Havana. Who knows”: As a rule, the presidential administration and its subordinate organization Goszagransobstvennost spend money abroad on Russian property, and not on restoring the cultural values of other countries. Basically, these are the buildings of diplomatic missions and residences of ambassadors.
There are also four cultural objects belonging to the administrators – the Cathedral of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Nice (France), the courtyard of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bari (Italy), the museum and park complex in Jericho (Palestine), the Sergius Compound in Jerusalem (Israel).
Project documentation for the restoration of the historical appearance of the interiors of the late 19th – early 20th centuries in the Sergievsky Compound cost the budget in 2015 25.6 million rubles. In 2011, Glavzarubezhstroy carried out restoration work there for more than 300 million rubles, according to SPARK-Marketing data.
The most expensive foreign contract for 7.9 billion rubles was concluded for the construction of a Russian cultural center in Paris. In 2017, the organization purchased the installation of an air conditioning system in a residential building in Tehran for 1.14 billion rubles, and the repair of a steam boiler in the same place cost another 250 million rubles. — Inset K.ru
Four buildings are located near the building of the Russian Embassy in the Czech Republic. In total, we are talking about more than 150 apartments, and at least some of them are rented to third parties.
In one of the buildings on Volkerova Street, house 1067/13, the Intourist company has been registered since 1993.
In the house at st. Ovenetska, 39, several enterprises are registered, among the owners of which are immigrants from the USSR. Since 1992, the Soviet-Italian company “Sovitalprodmash”, owned, according to an extract from the register of Czech legal entities, by the Russian Oleg Kalashnikov and founded by the company of the same name from Volzhsk. At the same address, you can find another Russian-owned company that handles visas to Russia. There is also a row firms of Russian citizens and immigrants from the USSR.
“We started our investigation with a report that one of the foreigners living in this house could not get a residence permit because he could not get the signing of a lease agreement,” one of the authors of the publication, journalist Lukasz Prhal, told Radio Liberty in an interview. According to him, the fact of illegal leasing of diplomatic housing is confirmed not only by eyewitness accounts, but also by a lawsuit against Alexandra Terentyevadealing with the collection of payment for the rental of apartments. As Alexander Maklakov, who could not get the lease agreement signed and filed a lawsuit, told Deník N, Terentyev, who is an employee of Roszagranproperty, beat him.
Russia received four Prague houses for use on the basis of agreements concluded before the Velvet Revolution between the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. After the collapse of the USSR, the Czech state became the owner of the buildings, but the old contract was not terminated and the apartment buildings, together with the tenants, went to Russia. In Soviet times, representatives of the embassy, as well as employees of the Soviet special services sent to Prague after the events of 1968, lived in these houses. The buildings were transferred to the use of the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
According to the Vienna Convention governing diplomatic relations between countries, real estate provided for the use of diplomats cannot be rented out. Obviously, this was connected both with problems with the impossibility of signing an agreement with Maklakov and other tenants, and with the fact that apartments in four buildings of the Russian Embassy in the Czech Republic were mostly rented out for a short time.
The advertisements for the rental of premises in houses intended for Russian diplomats were found by journalists mainly on Booking.com or on Czech real estate websites. “We found several ads on the pages of the site bezrealitky.cz, but the ads were erased there at the end of last year. We also found that diplomatic apartments were rented out for a very short period of time to seasonal foreign workers – for three to four weeks,” says Lukas Prchal. the people who rented these apartments told us about the extremely non-standard methods of the embassy employee who was in charge of these apartments – he took payment only in cash and did not issue any documents.
The Russian embassy in Prague declined to comment, stressing that “all issues related to Russian real estate in the Czech Republic are regulated under bilateral agreements based on the principles of reciprocity.”
Last December, the Russian embassy in the Czech Republic came under the spotlight because of reports of an exorbitant car fleet. As it turned out, there are almost 1.5 cars per Russian diplomat in Prague, and all these cars enjoy diplomatic protection.
“Radio Liberty”, 09.12.2018, “Inflated car fleet of the Russian Embassy”: 71 cars with diplomatic plates are registered at the Russian Embassy in the Czech Republic. There are almost 1.5 cars per one Russian diplomat. All these cars enjoy diplomatic protection: according to international treaties, they cannot be fined for improper parking or speeding, and the police do not have the right to search a car with special numbers. […] The Russian Embassy in the Czech Republic has 140 employees, of which 53 are holders of a diplomatic passport. In 2016, these numbers were lower: 51 diplomats and 86 administrative and technical officers. […]
Special numbers for diplomatic missions in the Czech Republic are issued by the Ministry of Transport at the request of the Department of Diplomatic Protocol of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Diplomats use numbers with the letters CD (this is an abbreviation from the French corps diplomatique). Not only diplomats directly, but their wives (husbands) or children have the right to drive such cars. Embassies also receive special numbers with the letters XX and XS for administrative employees. However, according to international treaties, these cars, without the consent of their passengers, do not have the right to inspect or fine for speeding or parking in the wrong place. — Inset K.ru
Czech intelligence in their annual reports informs about the extremely intensive activity of the Russian special services and Moscow’s attempts to influence the course of political events in the Czech Republic and Central Europe. These reports say that twice as many diplomats are registered at the Russian embassy as, for example, in the diplomatic missions of Germany or the United States, and there are suspicions that some of them are intelligence officers under diplomatic cover.
Russia makes money on apartments owned by the Czech Republic, tenants pay in cash and complain about violence and bullying – with such a headline in the Czech publication Deník N, an investigation was published on the work of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “State Foreign Property” in Prague. NV found out the details of this story – why strangers live in apartments instead of diplomats, why an employee of a Russian state-owned enterprise is suspected of beating a citizen of Ukraine, and how the cat Stepan turned out to be hostage.
RBC claimedthat Gennady Yavnik played a major role in distribution of funding Konstantinovsky Palace as the residence of Vladimir Putin, and now manages the Konstantinovsky Foundation, which was created in January 2001 with the aim of reviving the Konstantinovsky Palace and Park Ensemble in Strelna. Strelna is one of the most famous residences of Vladimir Putin.
In 2011, Gennady Andreevich Yavnik mentioned in connection with the waste of money during the repair of the Hermitage. Then it turned out that more than a billion rubles were allocated to his companies for the reconstruction of historical sites in St. Petersburg: the Kamennoostrovsky Theater, the House of Music and the Eastern Wing of the General Staff.
The structures of Yavnik received 600 hectares in the Nevsky forest park for free use, wrote “Fontanka”.
A former employee of the Prague State Foreign Property Agency said that Yavnik’s distant relative Alexander Terentyev’s relations with the ambassador and other diplomats deteriorated almost immediately after his appointment. But there was no talk of replacing him, she says: any resignation and appointment in this structure is a long bureaucratic process, and it is almost impossible to remove a well-connected person from his post.
The author of the Czech investigation, Petra Prohaskova, claims that a criminal case has been opened in the Czech Ministry of Internal Affairs about financial violations in the delivery of diplomatic real estate. The editors did not respond to inquiries sent to the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Goszagransobstvennost” and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Czech Republic.
On Wednesday, March 6, the head of the State Foreign Property Sergei Sushkov arrived in Prague. It is known that he discussed the signing of a new agreement with the diplomatic service of the Czech Republic.