Before he became Russia’s Attorney General, Igor Krasnov received a high-end apartment from the presidential administration. This information was later hidden in state records.

Russia’s Federal Service for State Registration (“Rosreestr”) hid data on a high-end apartment belonging to Igor Krasnov after the former deputy head of the Russian Investigative Committee became the country’s attorney general in January 2020, Open Media reports.

Krasnov reportedly owns a 124 meter square apartment (that’s more than 1,300 square feet) in the “White Swan” luxury residential complex on Moscow’s Michurinsky Avenue. As Kommersant reported in 2008, this residential complex is located on land belonging to the Russian Presidential Administration’s Central Clinical Hospital. What’s more, the complex was built on a site that used to be a walking park for the hospital’s patients.

According to the real estate database Cian.ru, one square meter of this residential building is worth roughly 473,000 rubles on average (about $6,400). Therefore, Krasnov’s apartment has an estimated value of 58.8 million rubles (more than $795,500). Open Media reports that Krasnov and his wife earned 8.9 million rubles from 2012–2018, according to his declarations.

Krasnov received the apartment on Michurinsky Avenue from the government directly. According to his declarations, he has occupied it since 2017. Until mid-2018, the apartment belonged to the presidential administration, but then the property was transferred to Krasnov and his underage daughter (under what conditions, is not specified).

This information, drawn from Rosreestr’s “Unified State Real Estate Registry” (EGRN), was obtained by Open Media at the end of January 2020, shortly after Krasnov was appointed to the role of attorney general. In records from mid-April, the names of the apartment owners had already been hidden — and replaced with the words “Russian Federation.”

Information about assets belonging to the family of Krasnov’s predecessor, ex-attorney general Yuri Chaika, has been classified, as well. In 2016, opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK) revealed that Rosreester had recorded the names of Chaika’s sons, Artem and Igor, in its database as “ЛСДУ3”(transliterated as “LSDU3”)and “ЙФЯУ9” (“IFYAU9”). Both Artem and Igor Chaika have previously appeared in FBK investigations on illegal enrichment. These “code names” were later replaced in the database with the term “value is missing.” Russian courts did not find anything about this illegal. In 2017, the State Duma officially allowed Russia’s senior officials to keep information about their assets classified.

Artem and Igor Chaika’s real estate holdings (the ones that were hidden in the Rosreestr database) are located in the village of Uspenskoye, off the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye highway outside of Moscow. As it turns out, Igor Krasnov also enjoys fancy real estate in the Moscow suburbs — in the prestigious neighborhood of Rublyovka, in particular. Since 2018, his declarations have shown that he rents a cottage in the village of Zhukovka-1. According to the Rosreestr’s registry, this house is part of the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye recreation complex, which is registered to the presidential administration. According to data from Cian.ru, renting a cottage in Zhukovka-1 can cost 200,000 rubles per month (roughly $2,700).

According to Open Media, unlike Yuri Chiaka’s family, Igor Krasnov’s close relatives did not become big in the business world during his time in the civil service. Krasnov’s parents currently live in the city of Lipetsk in western Russia; his mother sang in the Northern Russian Folk Choir, and his father was the artistic director of the Lipetsk State Orchestra of Russian Folk Instruments. His sister is linked to the financial sector. Her last job was with BCS Global Markets, a division of one of Russia’s leading financial service companies, the BCS Financial Group.

Meanwhile, Krasnov’s wife has not been mentioned in his declarations since 2017. One source told Open Media that the couple had divorced. RBC’s sources said that Krasnov’s ex-wife is a relative of Ivan Tkachev, the head of the Federal Security Service’s “Department K” — the economic crimes unit.

Summary by Olga Korelina

Translation by Eilish Hart