Who wants to become a billionaire

The declaration campaign revealed a phenomenal increase in the legal income of many officials

The declaration campaign is usually noisy, but this time the publication of information about the property and income of civil servants and deputies coincided with the blocking of Telegram in Russia, and the aftertaste in the information space was lost due to the missile strike of the Western coalition on Syria. And yet, against the background of the routine, there are numbers that are worth noticing and analyzing.

The declarations were submitted at a very interesting moment in the political cycle, when the results of the elections have already been announced, and the inauguration and the subsequent formation of a new cabinet of ministers are yet to come. Against this background, one can hypothesize that honesty is now more important than false modesty. Because the political influence of public opinion on reshuffles in the federal government is minimal, which means that legalizing the excess wealth of individual characters will not harm them as much as trying to further hide them. Moreover, the president, who makes personnel decisions, has more opportunities to verify declarations than an outside observer.

And here is the result: in the presidential administration, in the government, and in parliament, there were people who have become richer over the past year.

Not many times. And not even multiple times. It turns out that being in the civil service, you can increase your own income hundreds of times.

turned out to be the champion of the 2017 season among parliamentarians Suleiman Kerimov , whose official income increased 229 times, to 2.7 billion rubles. However, it is not difficult for Kerimov to get into the cash - it is enough to sell something unnecessary, and the senator has a lot of good stuff. It is also a foreign policy signal. As we remember, French law enforcers accuse Kerimov of legalizing illegal income through the purchase of real estate. So the more white declared income of the senator, the better for building a public position that he is just a rich man who can spend money at his own discretion.

Even more impressive is the increase in the legal income of Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin , who declared 2.9 billion rubles - 293 times more than in 2016. And all because Khloponin sold overseas property. That is, he acted not only practically, but also patriotically.

Much less convincing (I would even say, rather embarrassing) is the official explanation for the sudden increase in the annual income of the Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev . In 2017, he declared 548 million rubles, which is almost 100 times more than a year earlier. And all because the minister's elderly mother gave him securities. Now the family business is officially in his hands, albeit in trust management. There will be something to do in case of parting with the civil service. Especially since

now it will be even more difficult to portray the absence of a conflict of interest. After all, "mother's securities" are associated mainly with enterprises of the agro-industrial complex, which is led by Alexander Tkachev.

The income of the head of the presidential administration, Anton Vaino , increased at a less impressive pace, but significantly enough to stand out from the general trend. In 2017, he declared more than 255 million rubles, which is more than 26 times more than a year earlier. The source of the beautiful figure in the declaration is the sale of real estate. But now the head of the administration is at the same time the richest official in it. This is completely optional (Medvedev is rather poor by the standards of his office), but still pleasant.

While other previously poor people are getting richer, the champions of past seasons are on the sidelines. For example, Andrey Palkin, an Arkhangelsk-based United Russia deputy, who declared 678.5 million rubles in 2016, has now filed a personal bankruptcy petition with the court.

If we leave Tkachev's incident out of the brackets, then even numbers with ten zeros can hardly shock anyone now. Legal wealth is not a stigma, and even in those cases when this thesis is tested on the masses. For the second presidential election in a row, the billionaire candidate is gaining millions of votes, and if the right-wingers, who are supposed to be tolerant of private property, voted for Prokhorov, the left-wingers voted for Grudinin.

In addition, we are talking only about white incomes. But not a single representative of power is close to being as rich as Colonel Zakharchenko was rich.

The mechanism for filing declarations does not imply disclosure of information about the reasons for changes in the welfare of officials, only numbers. It seems that if you add this intriguing moment, then the next campaign can become much more exciting than the current one.