Dmitry Rogozin commented on Transparency International’s publication about his apartment “for 500 million rubles.” He called these figures nonsense and told how he ended up with this apartment

Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Rogozin (Photo: Daria Samsonova/press service of the head of the Republic of Crimea/TASS)

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, in an interview with Ekho Moskvy , said that the apartment mentioned in the Transparency International publication was given to him as a result of an exchange for an apartment in Tishinsky Lane, which had previously been provided to him as a high-ranking official and was subsequently privatized.

The Deputy Prime Minister clarified that when he returned from Brussels, where he worked as the Russian ambassador, he did not have any housing. “No apartment, no dacha, nothing. Obviously, I had to apply. I turned to the government leadership with a request to provide me, as a high-ranking official, with housing,” Rogozin said.

When asked for clarification whether this was a service apartment, the Deputy Prime Minister replied: “This is not a service apartment. A service apartment cannot be privatized by law. It was an apartment provided to me for personal use. And, accordingly, I had every right to privatize it, which I, of course, did, and hoped to live there,” he explained.

Later, according to Rogozin, he and his wife wanted to find housing closer to their son and grandchildren. “We found such an apartment,” Rogozin said. “This is one apartment that consists of two connected apartments. Accordingly, since it is still the ground floor, that is, it is a basement, semi-basement and, therefore, the first floor. But my wife wanted such an apartment because she also needed a music studio. She writes songs, she is the author of both music and words, now her songs have become in demand. I'm very happy about this - what she's doing. Therefore, we were looking for an option in which it would be possible, without disturbing the neighbors, for her to record songs and so on,” Rogozin explained.

As a result, the Deputy Prime Minister clarified, an exchange was made. “I exchanged the apartment that I privatized on Tishinka, this prestigious renovated apartment, for an apartment that had a larger living space. But its owner agreed to the exchange, because for some reason he wanted to move to the center, to the house where he considered his future life most pleasant,” Rogozin said.

At the same time, the Deputy Prime Minister stated that the cost of his apartment indicated in the materials of Transparency International does not correspond to reality. “The figures that appear in all these so-called revelations are, of course, also bullshit. <…> Well, she’s not worth that kind of money. That's bullshit! This is some kind of stupidity!” - he said.

“The exchange documents indicate an amount of 31 million rubles,” said Rogozin, clarifying that this is the cadastral value. “But in fact, these apartments have no market value. This is the apartment of the [Presidential] Administration,” he added.

“And that apartment costs 29 million, for which the exchange was made. Cadastre on cadastre, 31 and 29. But there are three more parking spaces. Therefore, it turned out approximately the same. And so the lawyer suggested doing this simply by exchanging an apartment for an apartment,” the Deputy Prime Minister said.

“Moreover, when I made this exchange, I, naturally, submitted all the documents to the tax office, reported to the presidential administration, the relevant department, to which I was obliged to report any changes in my property. They carried out an appropriate check, and, in fact, the issue was closed,” Rogozin said.

At the end of March, the Russian branch of Transparency International reported that it had discovered an apartment worth 500 million rubles. , which, according to NGOs, may belong to Rogozin. We were talking about an apartment with an area of 346 square meters. m, which is located on Starovolynskaya Street. The cost of this property exceeds half a billion rubles, Transparency claims, which is 10 times more than the income of the Deputy Prime Minister’s family over four years.

Rogozin spoke about his apartment “for 500 million rubles.”