Elections in Moscow, from which these days opposition candidates are removed under far-fetched pretexts, are supervised by the head of the Moscow City Electoral Committee, Major General Olga Kirillova. The Insider found an elite apartment, decorated for an elderly relative, and an expensive car in the general of the electoral troops. All this is difficult to explain by her officially declared income. Before heading the Moscow City Electoral Committee, Kirillova was the head of the Federal Migration Service of Russia in Moscow and the Main Directorate for Migration of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Coincidentally, her husband found a job at the Kyiv Ploshchad Group of Companies, a business entirely built on the labor force of migrants.
Olga Kirillova headed the Moscow City Electoral Commission in December 2021. The election of the chairman was non-alternative, there were no other candidates. All 14 members of the IPCC voted unanimously for Kirillova. As chairman, she will organize in Moscow the holding of elections for the President of Russia in 2024, State Duma deputies in 2026, the mayor of the capital and deputies of the Moscow City Duma in 2023 and 2024.
In addition, the capital’s electoral committee oversees the municipal elections in Moscow this year. They are already accompanied by scandals. So, the registration as a candidate was denied to the current deputy from the Zyuzino district Konstantin Jankauskas for alleged connection with Navalny’s headquarters. Other opposition candidates are prevented from being admitted to the elections: the Mundep in the Filevsky Park district Denis Prokuronovcandidates from Yabloko Irina Sobyanina and Nicholas of the Caucasuscandidates from platforms “Nomination” Ivan Shmatin and Eduard Kormyshakov, Yulia Ivanova. Also, independent deputies are massively persecuted by the security forces and the courts for demonstrating supposedly extremist symbols – the Smart Voting logo is recognized as such. Conviction under such an article closes the way to the elections.
Kirilova worked all her life in the public service. Since 1992, she has worked in the internal affairs bodies on Sakhalin. In 2006, she moved to work for the Federal Migration Service, where until 2012 she held the post of head of the FMS Department for the Sakhalin Region. In October 2012, Kirillova moved to the capital, where she became the head of the Federal Migration Service of Russia in Moscow. In 2016, she received the post of head of the Main Directorate for Migration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. A year later, by presidential decree, she was awarded the rank of Major General of Police. Olga met her husband, Yakov Kirillov, on Sakhalin. He is also a former police officer and once headed the Department of Internal Affairs for the Sakhalin Region.
Since 2020, an apartment with an area of 141.7 sq. m and the current market value of about 60 million rubles in the residential complex business class “Dubrovskaya Sloboda”. This happened after Kirillova left the post, and she did not need to declare the acquisition. In fact, Major General Kirillova had used this apartment before, but registered it with an elderly relative.
The apartment was purchased in 2014 in the name of Kirillova Agapia Yakovlevna, born in 1932 – mother-in-law of the head of the Moscow City Electoral Committee. At the time of the purchase, Agapia Yakovlevna was 82 years old, The Insider could not find any information about doing business and participating in legal entities. The Kirillov couple, for the five previous years buying an apartment, earned a total of less than 19 million rubles.
Yakov Kirillov prefers not only large apartments, but also large cars. He travels around Moscow in a Toyota Land Cruer Prado. The price of such a car in 2017 may achieve 4.5 million rubles, which is approximately equal to the earnings of the head of the family for two years.
According to The Insider, Yakov Kirillov was employed at Kyiv Ploshchad 1 LLC. The Kyiv Ploshchad group of companies was founded in 1992 by God Nisanov and Zarakh Iliev, they are the largest rentiers in Russia.
Year Nisanov is famous not only as a dollar billionaire and friend of the Naryshkin family, but also as a co-owner of the Sadovod market and the Food City agricultural cluster, the largest wholesale and retail food center in Russia. Food City is known in Moscow as a gathering place for illegal migrants. There are constant reports in the media about fights, rallies migrants and appeals to Putin from residents of nearby areas with a demand to restore order. Also Nisanov’s structures earned in the construction of migration centers.
Could Agapiya Yakovlevna buy this apartment on her own?
According to the surviving archive announcements, an apartment of comparable area could be purchased for 28 million rubles before the house was commissioned. This is more than two times lower than its current market value, but still amounts to almost 10 annual family income while working on Sakhalin, and neither she nor her husband had any other real estate that Kirillova could sell. And if it weren’t for the design of a capital apartment for her mother-in-law, Kirillova would have to justify the origin of the funds – according to the law, this is done if the purchase price exceeds 3 annual incomes. In a conversation with The Insider, Kirillova said: “If I’m not mistaken, the apartment cost 22 million. But I don’t remember exactly.” Even in this case, the registration of real estate in the mother-in-law allowed to bypass the anti-corruption requirement to justify income.
Why did they register an apartment in the name of an elderly woman and thus avoided declaration? Kirillova explains it this way: “Because she had a Moscow residence permit. When we arrived in Moscow to work on a transfer, we did not have a Moscow residence permit. She also had an apartment” (according to The Insider, we are talking about a 30-meter apartment on Donelaitis Street, now it has also been re-registered as Yakov Kirillov).
As for a possible conflict of interest in the control of migrants in Moscow, Kirillova also denies it:
