Malkin decided to resign from the Federation Council voluntarily

Senator Vitaly Malkin decided to resign early, Vadim Tyulpanov said at a meeting of the Federation Council Rules Committee.

“Our colleague Vitaly Malkin submitted an application for early resignation as a member of the Federation Council; in the upper house he represented the executive power of the Republic of Buryatia,” Interfax quotes Tyulpanov.

Malkin wrote a statement on March 25. The application will be considered at a meeting of the upper house on March 27.

Malkin came into the spotlight on March 14, when opposition leader Alexei Navalny published documents according to which the senator owns a real estate business in Canada. The documents say that in 2007, Malkin applied for a residence permit in Canada, but Canadian authorities refused him, suspecting him of criminal activities, including money laundering. Navalny studied Malkin’s application for a residence permit and found out that the Buryat senator has Israeli citizenship and a middle name - Avikhur Ben Bar.

Later, the media and bloggers found out that Malkin owns property in Corsica and New York and two companies in Luxembourg.

Vitaly Malkin has been a member of the Federation Council since 2004, and today holds the post of Deputy Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs. According to his 2011 income statement, Malkin has real estate in Italy. At the beginning of March 2013, the Izvestia newspaper wrote that Malkin was going to leave the Federation Council due to the ban on officials owning real estate abroad.

Yesterday Malkin confessed when he received an Israeli passport. Malkin promised to explain himself about real estate in Miami at a meeting of the Federation Council commission. The head of the commission, Yuri Vorobyov, said that journalists would be able to follow the meeting. Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko previously stated that Malkin would lose his senatorial powers if the information about dual citizenship turns out to be true.