Translated material
Golden cells. Part One
The story of how the encirclement of Vladimir Putin bought the palace of Leonid Brezhnev.
Project team, February 10, 2021
The structures of the Bank "Russia", formally owned by friends of the President of Russia and his former mistress, acquired another object of elite real estate. This is the famous summer cottage Leonid Brezhnev in the Crimea, which Vladimir Putin wanted to possess for several years.
In the 70s of the twentieth century, despite the omnipotent KGB, “stagnation” and “iron curtains”, Soviet people, and foreigners, knew the place where the then leader of our country Leonid Brezhnev was resting. On the famous state expense No. 1 in Crimea, Secretary Generals Posed to reporters in Shyzlong - the Secretary General was shot on vacation by TASS photographer Vladimir Musaelian -, he hosted foreign leaders in the state department No. 1 Brezhnev held negotiations with the party leaders of the GDR Valter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, the Henser of the Hungarian Socialist Party Yanosh Kadar and the main Bulgarian communist Todor Zhivkov, the leaders of the Polish United Workers' Party Edward Gerek and Wojciech Yaruzelsky. In 1971, Brezhnev met in a summer house with the Chancellor of Germany Willy Brandt, in 1974 he received US President Richard Nixon and recovered his health - in the last years of his life, Brezhnev regularly rested in Crimea.
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Brezhnev came to the Crimea until the last days: during his return to Moscow from Yalta in the fall of 1982, he was already accompanied by a reanimobile. Two months later, Brezhnev died, and for many years the cottage ceased to be “first” for many years.
Of course, both Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev, but rarely and, apparently, without a big hunt, visited the “wisteria”. Gorbachev was resting in the "wisteria", but, considering the location of the cottage unsafe, he ordered to build a new residence - at Cape Sarych near Foros. After this, the “wisteria” gradually began to fade until in the mid-90s it turned into an expensive one-the Ukrainian media wrote that the night in the “Wisteria” at the beginning of the two thousandth cost about $ 300-, but a public boarding house. So it would probably have continued if in 2014 Crimea had not become part of Russia.
State Damn No. 1 "Glycinia"
- built in 1955 for the Secretary General of the Central Committee of the CPSU Nikita Khrushchev
- located in the village of Oreanda near Yalta, on the outskirts of the old Livadia Park, divided at the end of the 19th century on the lands of the Crimean estate of the Romanov family
- A modest two -story mansion from untreated yellow sandstone included 14 rooms, a dining room for 40 people, a fireplace and a banquet hall
-The heated pool appeared in the country in 1961, before that Khrushchev was content with a vacation on a 400-meter beach fenced from others with a simple plank fence. Later, sports grounds, a sauna, a bathhouse, a bar on the beach, a pier for yachts, and corps for vacationers were added to the infrastructure
Faceless Janis
In August 2019, the Crimean authorities announced that the State Duma No. 1, nationalized after the inclusion of Crimea in Russia, was sold with auction for a large price even for Crimean real estate - 1.2 billion rubles - at open tenders, “Project” found only two recreational facilities in Crimea, more expensive: the Forer sanatorium for 1.4 billion rubles went to the Federation of Trade Unions of Tatarstan; The villa of the Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov was sold to Gazprom structures for almost 2 billion rubles. The authorities were not called the buyer.
What exactly did the buyer of "glycin" acquire
-a land plot of 26 hectares, one part of which belongs to the monument to the garden art "Small Livadiy Park", the other-to the botanical reserve "South Berezhny Dubrava"
- four sleeping buildings and a medical case
- Four open and one covered pool
- Summer house, bar, climatopavilion, greenhouse
-Administrative and official building with garages.
- The total area of buildings is 14.5 thousand square meters. m
The name of the company that bought “wisteria” soon became clear-it was AO “Oreanda-12”, registered eight months before the auction. The general director of the society was a certain Janis Ermanis from Moscow. This joint -stock company did not have another business, and Ermanis did not occupy neither before nor after senior positions in other companies. But it looked like Ermanis should be a billionaire-it follows from the documents that the company bought a cottage for the borrowed funds that Ermanis himself provided to her, by the end of 2019, Oreanda-12 JSC owed 1.6 billion rubles to Ermanis.
The project managed to find billionaire Ermanis in a depressed area in the east of Moscow. Janis grew up in a regular nine -story building in Golyanov, went to school through the street. By education, he is an economist, in his youth he became interested in the Vietnamese martial arts of Vin-Chong-Fate-Zu-Kuen. Now Ermanis gives private lessons in wines-chun in one of the halls of the capital. According to colleagues and family, Janis leads a modest way of life and has no big money.
In a conversation with the “project”, Ermanis did not deny the fact of acquiring a cottage, but refused to comment on the purchase. Soon after the purchase of the cottage, Ermanis left the director of the legal entity associated with “glycia”, except for Oreanda-12 JSC in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the Oreanda Holding JSC and Opeanda-12 JSC, where he was also the director.
"Glycinium" of discord
To understand who can stand behind the mysterious buyer of the Brezhnev summer cottage, it is worth studying the history of “wisteria”. In November 2004, they already tried to privatize it: then the Russian State Bank VTB concluded a transaction on the purchase of a summer house for 77.9 million hryvnias - about $ 15 million at the then rate.
However, already in the spring of 2005, the new President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, who won the election to Moscow’s displeasure, demanded a contract with Moscow to break, and the advance payment - about a third of the amount - return the VTB. The Crimean prosecutor’s office took under the visor: litigation began. In the end, the Commercial Court of Ukraine ruled: the alienation of the cottage from state property was illegal, since the "wisteria" stands on protected lands, the privatization of which is prohibited. The deal was terminated.
Although formally, the Buyer of Glicene was a Russian bank, it was intended for President Putin.
- In fact, no one made special secrets from this. From the very beginning it was said that the cottage is bought "as the official residence of the President of Russia in the Crimea." The contract was concluded with the government of the President of the Russian Federation. Later, the buyer became the Russian “Vneshotorgbank,” recalled in the book “After the Maidan. Notes of the President »Leonid Kuchma. The fact that the cottage was intended specifically for Putin was then said by the prosecutor of Crimea Viktor Shemchuk.
Even the contract for the purchase of the cottage was signed during the trip of Putin in the Crimea - November 12, 2004, the Ukrainian media wrote. On this day, Kuchma and Putin opened the Kerch ferry restored after a long downtime. On the Crimean coast, they were met by the Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was held on the second round of elections of the President of Ukraine, who is warmly supported by Moscow.
After the celebrations, Kuchma and Putin went to the Artek children's camp. Theoretically, they could have visited the “wisteria” - the State District at that time legally belonged to the children's camp - under Ukraine, “wisteria” passed from hand to hand several times. In the middle of the two thousandths, she belonged to the administrations of the President of Ukraine, who was also subordinate to Artek. "Glicene" was attached to the children's camp.
In the 90s, Brezhnev’s State Duma could be easily hit. Source: Bigpicture.ru , Martin Parr
The fact that Putin eventually lost the desired cottage, probably, could also have considerable consequences. According to the Verkhovna Rada deputy Gennady Moskal, who previously headed the Ukrainian Security Service, precisely because of the “Gas War”, the first “Gas War” began between Moscow and Kiev-in 2004, the head of Naftogaz of Ukraine, Aleksey Ivchenko, newly appointed by the Gazprom, to pay for the supply and transit of gas to Europe, not according to Barter schemes, like this It was earlier, but according to individual contracts. In response, Russia raised gas prices for Ukraine to the European level. Later, Russia even stated that the Ukrainian side steals fuel from the pipeline. This incident launched a protracted gas conflict, which continues to this day.
- Putin asked our residence “wisteria”, and our highest leadership refused him. In the criminal language, "hidden." Vladimir Vladimirovich clearly still hid the resentment. They say that the stingy pays twice, and Ukraine has already paid a million times for this completely stupid act, ”Moskal said in 2009.
Trusted buyer
Ermanis was listed not only by the director, but also by the only shareholder of Oreanda-12, according to the report of the AO for 2019. To find out who is behind the face value, the holder of the register of shares of the enterprise will help - this is the St. Petersburg company "Center for Accounting and Registration" (CUR). It was created in 2014 as a pocket registrar of the Bank "Russia", the main shareholder of which is the old friend of the President Yuri Kovalchuk. All other bank shareholders are also Putin’s close associates, and the Bank of the Bank of the Bank Svetlana Krivonogikh was even the president’s mistress and his third daughter’s probable mother. Formal co -owners of the CUR are five individuals, all are associated with the bank.
Tsur holds the register of shareholders of the Russian Bank itself and the National Media Group, as well as - almost all Crimean assets controlled by Kovalchuk:
- Massandra JSC. The enterprise acquired from the state in December 2020 includes nine independent Winzavods with equipment and old basements and the largest wines collection in the world, numbering 1 million bottles. On rent from the enterprise - 4 thousand hectares of Crimean vineyards;
- Optima JSC, which bought the “Inkerman Factory of Marych Win” in Sevastopol from foreign owners, and the agricultural light of the Chernomorets, which belongs to the vineyards of the plant;
- JSC “Schampanian Vin“ New Light ”plant, which bought the Vinzavod of the same name from the Crimean authorities in 2017;
- JSC “My wine”, which controls not only “Inkerman”, “Massandra” and “New Light”, but also the “Divnodorskoye estate” in the Krasnodar Territory - the very one where the most famous of Putin’s palaces is located;
- Genbank JSC is one of the three large Crimean banks working on the peninsula under the sanctions, except for Genbank, the Rossiya Bank itself and the RNKB Bank, owned by the Federal Property Management Agency, work from large in Crimea.
Kovalchuk and associated people and companies, as one of the previous investigations of the “project” showed , is owned by luxury real estate throughout the country, which is used by President Putin himself.
How Kovalchuk builds places for the president's leisure
Kovalchuk and associated people and companies own lands and elite real estate scattered throughout the country, and much indicates that Putin uses these objects.
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Part 2. An investigation about how a close friend of Vladimir Putin received part of Russia
Part 3. Portrait of Yuri Kovalchuk, the second person in the country
Putin's cottage
The village of Nizhnya Oreanda today is the sanatorium stretching along the sea, fenced with a low fence of rods with barbed wire stretched on top. Above the slope are two old two-story buildings and several dozen garages and sheds, which turned into cheap mini-hotels in the post-Soviet years.
"Wisteria" is at a dead end. A modest passing without a sign, but with cameras. In the booth - a guard. “Private territory, passage is prohibited,” he replies. Who the owner refuses to speak, citing the fact that he came to the village recently.
There have been no guests in the country for more than five years, the inhabitants of the village say. The pergoles on the open terrace of the sleeping building from a distance look worn out, the facades are peeling, and the park’s alleys behind the fence are groomed. An employee of the Kremlin sanatorium "Lower Oreanda". In 2016, the Nizhnya Oreanda sanatorium went on to the jurisdiction of the Presidential Administration, and now there are patients of the presidential Central Clinical Hospital, pilots of the special flight detachment of Russia and the judges, as well as ordinary beneficiaries from Moscow and regions. A person can also get into the sanatorium “from the street”, the cost of the room is from 3.7 thousand rubles. During the night, he says that construction work is underway in the “wisteria”: “Sometimes KamAZs go in that direction.” Behind the fence of the cottage from the side of the Livadia Park, the knock of the chipper and the screech of the saw are really heard.
In Yalta, closest to the country of the Bolshoi City, the “wisteria” is called “Putin” - local realtors, local historians, and the operator of the local television channel spoke about this “project”. But when and who will relax in the “wisteria” now, no one knows for certain.