Source Speaker of the State Duma wants to distribute 600 million rubles to millionaire deputies. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin proposed increasing payments to his deputies and chairmen of Duma committees. Will the deputies realize the inappropriateness of the initiative and play the question back? Or will they replenish their pockets as if nothing had happened?

The idea of ​​raising salaries was voiced at the Duma Council in mid-November. It was voiced by the speaker himself Vyacheslav Volodin. According to leaks from Parliament, he suggested rewarding vice-speakers, committee chairs, and “maybe someone else.” It should be noted that chairmen of committees and vice-speakers participate in the Council of the Duma.

They comment on the news that caused resonance very reluctantly, referring to the fact that the decision has not yet been made and there is a discussion going on. The official protocol of the Council of the Duma briefly mentions the considered issue with a tactful wording – “on the allocation of funds for the purpose of material support for the activities of deputies.” Based on the results of the discussion, it was decided to instruct First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Ivan Melnikov and Chairman of the Regulations Committee Viktor Pinsky to prepare specific proposals.Apparently, the reason for this activity was the amendments to the law that came into force this summer, which determines the status of senators and deputies. From now on, payments to deputies are regulated not only by federal laws, but also by the regulations of the chambers of the Federal Assembly. That is, now parliamentarians can quietly assign additional payments to themselves.

At the same time, the same law sets guidelines for the level of social guarantees: ordinary deputies should receive salaries and all kinds of benefits at the level of a federal minister, the chairman of the State Duma – at the level of a prime minister, and vice-speakers of the State Duma – at the level of deputy prime ministers of the government. And on this point, reasonable questions arise for the State Duma and personally for Vyacheslav Volodin.

The fact is that the prime minister has been consistently reporting income at the level of 18–19 million a year in recent years. Since he does not have the right to engage in business, it is easy to conclude that we are talking about income at the place of work. At the same time, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin shows much more significant figures in his declaration: last year – 65 million, the year before last – 84 million, and even earlier – 100.2 million rubles. Since 2014, Vyacheslav Volodin has not received less than 60 million rubles.

Quiet income

It is not so easy to compare other deputies and members of the government. The fact is that the spread of figures in the declarations is very large, and information about income at the place of work in them is not distinguished from other incomes. At the same time, even official declarations show that the chairmen of the Duma committees live quite well, and some stand out with their incomes even against the background of other parliamentarians (see table). So the question of the need for increases looks like an attempt to arrange a feast during the plague. Moreover, it is planned to feed the already most well-fed. To do this, it is planned to divide 600 million rubles between some of the deputies, which the State Duma did not manage to spend this year on other items.

We looked at how the heads of committees and vice-speakers of the State Duma live, claiming additional payments.

Valery Gartung: pensioners and billions

Valery Karlovich Gartung once headed the Russian Party of Pensioners. In the program of that party there was such an interesting point: the elimination of the gap between the size of pension payments of various groups of citizens. How honest were the party functionaries in the wording? Is Valery Gartung trying to earn an income at the level of the average Russian pensioner? Then, of course, he must oppose the speaker's initiative and refuse the increase.

Moreover, even now he has an income above the average, even by the standards of parliament, receiving more than 30 million rubles for the last three years. Moreover, his wife declared 181.6 million rubles at the end of last year. How these figures reflect reality is another question. After all, the Chelyabinsk Forging and Pressing Plant, which, in fact, became a family enterprise of the Gartungs, reported on the results of 2021 a net profit of more than 3 billion rubles (founded in 1942, the enterprise is the largest manufacturer of stamped wheel disks in the CIS, in addition, it produces various auto parts). Does the beneficiary of this production really need a surcharge from the budget?

And here's another question. Now the former leader of pensioners heads the Committee for the Protection of Competition. It is not clear why a parliamentarian should receive an additional payment when monopolies flourish in almost all major markets of the Russian economy? Our Version regularly writes about the dominance of monopolists in retail and pharmacology. And now, in the course of the redistribution of companies leaving Russia, the positions of leading players are strengthening in many industries. The FAS has a ready excuse: they say that the department is doing everything possible within the framework of the current legislation. But then a question for parliamentarians: where are the new antimonopoly initiatives?

In fairness, it must be said that Valery Hartung is an active deputy. He put his signature under 111 bills. True, in many cases the exhaust from this is zero. For example, Gartung supported proposals for monthly payments of 10,000 rubles to carers for disabled children. He also signed the proposal that the minimum wage should not be lower than the subsistence minimum with a coefficient of 1.15. And for scholarships not lower than the subsistence level – too. All these initiatives have two points in common. First, they look like pitiful handouts to citizens from a fattening elite. Secondly, none of them passed, stuck in the annals of the State Duma for at least two years.

Pavel Zavalny comes from Gazprom

Pavel Zavalny, Chairman of the Energy Committee, also stands out for his considerable income. He has been working in this position since 2015, and got into parliament in 2011.

Prior to that, he made a career in the structures of Gazprom. Forbes and Transparency International, whose Russian branch is now recognized as a foreign agent, wrote about his clearly lobbying activities in favor of the gas giant. It is alleged that in the State Duma of the VI convocation he recommended rejecting the bill on liberalization of liquefied natural gas exports in order to retain this exclusive right for Gazprom, and also proposed amendments to offshore legislation that would allow the monopoly to create floating drilling rigs without the permission of the authorities and transfer them to ownership subsidiaries.

Having come to the Duma, Pavel Zavalny immediately became one of the richest deputies. In 2011, he showed an income of 250 million. Even then, a Bentley Continental, a Porsche Cayenne and two Mercedes-Benz S-classes were in his garage. In recent years, the declaration of the parliamentarian looks somewhat more modest, but the way of life is unlikely to have changed. He still has two residential buildings, the larger of which has an area of ​​706 “squares”, and two apartments of more than 200 meters. For two with his wife, four land plots, the largest of which is 60 acres. Of course, all this splendor must be maintained. Apparently, just for such a case, Vyacheslav Volodin came up with cash bonuses for the heads of committees?Obviously, judging by the declared income, the head of the committee for construction and housing and communal services, Sergei Pakhomov, does not need an increase. The very amount of the deputy's income of more than 20 million rubles already raises questions, since this is clearly more than a deputy's salary, and Pakhomov has not been working in business since the beginning of the 2000s. Even more gossip was caused by the habit of the parliamentarian to wear a watch, which connoisseurs estimate at 34 million rubles. Pakhomov, by the way, is one of the few deputies who openly shows his family's overseas property. An apartment in Bulgaria appears in the extensive list of his wife's property.

If it is impossible to determine the sources of the well-being of deputy Pakhomov from official data, then sites with compromising evidence offer a lot of explanations. They mainly concern his career in the regions. Here is the scandal with the construction of a bypass road in Ivanovo, which resulted in additional budget expenditures of $3 million. And the forestry business in the same region, where certain firms received allotments on very favorable terms … What kind of corruption stories are not attributed to Sergei Pakhomov. Perhaps this is an echo of the showdown of the regional elites. But what does a parliamentarian do at the federal level? The statistics of the work of the committee, which he heads, suggests that his profile bills are sometimes without movement for years. True, there was one striking example of the rapid passage of a very important law. In 2020, the law “on all-Russian renovation” was rapidly adopted. Now developers can receive city blocks with non-emergency housing for integrated development. Under the guise of work on the project, the provision was removed from the text, according to which only territories in which 50% or more are emergency apartment buildings could be included in the renovation program. So construction companies can demolish any building by agreement with local authorities, without regard to the interests of the residents of the houses. True, then the profile committee was headed not by Sergei Pakhomov, but by Alexei Didenko. In the current convocation of the State Duma, Alexei Didenko oversees issues of regional policy and local self-government.

Alexey Gordeev's retirement experience

Among the vice-speakers of the State Duma, Alexander Zhukov and Alexei Gordeev stand out with their income. Both at one time held high positions in the executive branch. Zhukov was Deputy Prime Minister from 2004–2011. Gordeev held a similar position from 2018 to 2020, and before that he was the presidential envoy to the Central Federal District, the governor of the Voronezh region and the federal minister of agriculture.

True, Zhukov's income last year is probably due to the sale of real estate. Prior to that, he annually received 5-6 million, which corresponds to the average income of a deputy. In the current convocation of the Duma, 66-year-old Alexander Zhukov oversees one of the most important areas – work on the budget. For example, the deputies proposed 750 amendments to the last law on the budget (adopted the other day in the second reading), 605 of them are likely to be taken into account. Thus, about 2 trillion rubles will be redistributed.

As for the 67-year-old Alexei Gordeev, he is possibly one of the richest vice-speakers of the State Duma. He consistently declares amounts more than other colleagues. In addition, luxurious properties are attributed to his family, the source of which probably lies in the agricultural sector. But in this context, something else is more interesting. When he was the governor of the Voronezh region on the eve of the new year 2015, he made a nice gift to local officials. Journalists dubbed it “the law of golden pensions.” Since that time, a number of local officials, when they retire, receive an additional payment in the form of 75% of the average earnings for the last six months of work. And they will receive this bonus for life (!). It is known that in 2022 the regional budget will spend 265 million 966 thousand rubles for these purposes (or 728 thousand per day, as local journalists calculated). Over the past four years, VIP pensioners have been paid almost a billion rubles from the regional budget. “It was possible to build two schools!” – local sites are indignant.

Maxim Topilin's career and chrysotiles

Another beneficiary of the speaker's generosity may be the head of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy Maxim Topilin. He is well known to citizens for his work in the executive branch. From 2008 to 2012, Topilin was Tatiana Golikova's Deputy Minister of Health. And then, until 2020, he served as Minister of Labor and Social Security in the Medvedev government. It was he who oversaw the topic of raising the retirement age. At that time, officials were actively pronouncing the thesis that raising the retirement age would allow raising pensions above the inflation rate. Did it work?

In 2020, Maxim Topilin became the Chairman of the Board of the Pension Fund, but he held this “hot” position for only a year. Now the former official sits in the State Duma, and what is remarkable: his official earnings in parliament came out more than in previous places of work. And with the wife's money, it turns out quite well.

The parliamentarian's wife Maria Topilina, according to Regnum, is listed as a co-owner of Mineral Trading. The company is engaged in the export of chrysotile mined by the Uralasbest plant. PJSC “Uralasbest” produces 21% of chrysotile in the world, and “Mineral Trading” earns a commission on export deliveries. According to the results of 2020, the company received 95.6 million in net profit, according to open financial statements.

By the way

The informal title of the poorest MP is now 28 -year-old Anton Tkachev from the New People party. He got into the Duma only in October, so he has not yet reached the usual income level for a parliamentarian of 4-5 million rubles a year (about 400 thousand a month). In his declaration for the last year, the income is only 1.1 million rubles. True, this does not quite fit with the lifestyle of the newly minted deputy. The other day, footage from his wedding leaked to the Network. The parliamentarian married a television personality from “House-2” Valeria Demchenko, also known as Lera Frost. Gossips say that only the Cartier brand rings that the newlyweds exchanged cost about 1 million rubles. And the party at the restaurant on Rublyovka obviously cost no less. Judging by the bride’s social networks, she has long been striving for a luxurious life and is used to receiving very expensive gifts. Well, even if the deputy had to go into debt for the attention of the beauty, in the Duma he will quickly improve his financial situation.

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