“Important Stories” found property worth more than a billion rubles from the family of a Foreign Ministry employee and Lavrov’s “close friend”

Foreign Ministry employee Svetlana Polyakova, who is called a “close friend” of Minister Sergei Lavrov, owns real estate worth more than a billion rubles, the investigation says .

Polyakova, according to Important Stories, owns an apartment of 260 square meters in the Prechistenka 13 complex worth about 700 million rubles, apartments in Sochi and a house in the Moscow region, which the publication valued at 50 and 57 million rubles. She also has several “luxury cars,” journalists noted.

Polyakova's daughter Polina received a higher education in the UK, owns several companies there, and in 2016 rented an apartment in Kensington for 999 years for £4.4 million. At the time of purchase, the amount was 440 million rubles, and she herself was 21 years old.

The publication’s source in the Foreign Ministry said that Lavrov has a “long-standing and very close relationship” with Polyakova. According to him, several people associated with Polyakova, including her brother's widow and a former business partner, received positions in the ministry.

In 2014, she accompanied the minister at the consecration of the temple in Tsarskoe Selo, and then, according to internal flight data, she flew with him “at least three times” to St. Petersburg and Sochi. Several users of the contact search application recorded her number as “Svetlana Lavrova.”

Until 2012, Polyakova was a co-owner of the Consul restaurant, located at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The establishment received government contracts for catering for students and employees of the institution; over the past five years, the restaurant’s revenue amounted to 97 million rubles, the publication clarifies.

71-year-old Sergei Lavrov is married and, according to his annual declarations , his family’s income ranged from 8 to 10 million rubles in different years. A year ago, the publication estimated the value of the minister’s family’s real estate at 600 million rubles.

Representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Polyakova herself did not answer the publication’s questions.