You don't represent us

Scene four

You don't represent us

The story of how the Russian parliament became a collection of the worst people in the country

November 12, 2025

Characters:

Nikita Chaplin, Andrei Makarov, Sergei Krivonosov, Jamaladin Gasanov and other 526 members of the Federal Assembly of Russia with their households, known and secret

Project contents

United Russia ~~Nikita Chaplin~~ , who represents the Moscow region in the State Duma, at first glance does not correspond to the caricature of a Russian official. He is a young, smiling, brown-haired man with dimples on his cheeks, a good education, correct speech, a brilliant career (at 24 he was a deputy of the Moscow Regional Duma, at 31 he was its deputy speaker, at 39 he was a federal parliamentarian) and, most importantly, high birth. If he had been born in England, he would have been a lord, inheriting a seat in the House of Peers by inheritance. There are no titles in Russia, but Chaplin nevertheless inherited a seat in the lower house of parliament, and through several lines of his large and influential family.

The deputy’s great-grandfather also sat on the Moscow City Council immediately after the 1917 revolution; his grandfather was the director of the most important instrument-making plant in Ramenki, near Moscow. Finally, the deputy's father ~~Yuri Chaplin~~ went even further. Having started (obviously under the patronage of his father-in-law) with the leadership of the Ramensky Komsomol, in the new Russia he grew to become a member of the Federation Council, where he sat for 10 years, and also managed to work in the presidential administration and the leadership of several regions (including the Moscow region, which his son now represents in the Duma). The deputy’s mother also worked in parliament for some time, or more precisely, in the State Duma apparatus. But this is only half of the Chaplin family story.

Nikita married the heiress of another aristocratic family. His wife Natalya is the daughter of ~~Tatyana Nesterenko~~ , who was also once a State Duma deputy, and then worked for many years as Alexei Kudrin’s deputy in the Ministry of Finance. When in 2011, President ~~Dmitry Medvedev~~ dismissed Kudrin as a result of a loud scandal , it was Nesterenko who was given the role of representative of the Ministry of Finance at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers.

But this is not her main virtue. The media suspected that the deputy minister was lobbying for the interests of the bookmaking business and thus could help her second son-in-law. If her youngest daughter Natalya is married to a State Duma deputy, then the eldest Marina is married to businessman ~~Mikhail Danilov~~ , former co-owner of the bookmaking companies Bingo Boom and Star Bet, as well as a gambling business in Sochi

associated with local authorities ×

. Little is known about Danilov, but even so there are enough very telling facts - for example, he was close to the family of Luchka, one of the leaders of the Podolsk criminal group, whose name, Sergei Lalakin, is known much less than his nickname.

Using official position for family benefit is a family trait of the Chaplins-Nesterenkos. The main resource for enrichment is the Moscow region, which the young deputy represents in parliament and whose prosperity he should take care of. While in the early 2010s. Nikita was a deputy of the Moscow Regional Duma, and his father was a senator, the then governor of the Moscow region ~~Boris Gromov~~ transferred 1.5 thousand hectares of the Rublevsky forest to the boundaries of populated areas. This opened up the prospect of profit for the Chaplins, because in reality the decision meant that now the right people could use very expensive, if not priceless, ruble lands for development. The scheme looked like this: companies registered as a cover for the elderly grandmother of the deputy Ondina Ilyinichna Stepnova

and other people close to the Chaplin family ×

, took a long-term lease of 111 hectares of once untouchable forest (other lands were divided by equally influential people) - supposedly for a recreational business. But in fact, the Chaplins built cottage villages there. When, after some time, the Moscow region was headed first by ~~Sergei Shoigu~~ , and then by ~~Andrey Vorobyov~~ (Shoigu is like a second father to him, and the real one has been working as a vice-speaker in the Federation Council for many years), then grandmother Ondine transferred part of the lands to the relatives of the new leaders of the region

. In particular, a company in which a share belongs to Shoigu’s wife’s sister ~~Elena Antipina~~ - it is customary to hide expensive assets behind such distant relatives ×

. Apparently, thanks to this flexibility, the family is still very active in the Moscow region - 90-year-old Undina Ilyinichna still owns companies in the region that deal with tourism and recreation.

So Deputy Chaplin, although he does not look like a hardened bureaucrat, is in fact a typical parliamentarian of Putin’s era. As will be clear from our research, State Duma deputies and members of the Federation Council represent anyone and anything, but not the population of the regions from which they came to Moscow.

Parliament is the place with the greatest dominance of family ties of all the Russian government bodies that the Project studied as part of the “Fathers and Grandfathers” study. In total, we counted 526 people in the State Duma and the Federation Council whose relatives are successful in the civil service or in state-related business (in the State Duma - 372 out of 443 people, in the Federation Council - 154 out of 179). This is 85% of the total number of deputies and senators.

Cases are different. Some parliamentarians employ their children, wives and mistresses as their own assistants and apparatchiks. Others continue the dynasties of their older relatives, who worked as bureaucrats or sat in regional legislative assemblies. But the most fantastic thing is that in the Russian parliament there is naturally a practice of transferring mandates by inheritance, as in the English House of Peers.

Deputy ~~Jasharbek Uzdenov~~ - his sad achievement is that since his election in 2021, he has not attended a single meeting of the State Duma. All his life he was an active person: he ran a business and was involved in politics in his native Karachay-Cherkessia, and most importantly, he was close to the head of the region, Rashid Temrezov. For this, Uzdenov was sent to the Duma. It soon became clear, however, that the deputy seat was his dying gift. Uzdenov did not attend the meetings because by the time the parliament was formed he was already seriously ill. He died in 2023. In Karachay-Cherkessia, by-elections to parliament were immediately organized, and the vacant seat went to 25-year-old ~~Soltan Uzdenov~~ , the son of the deceased.

Chechen ~~Vakha Agayev~~ is an important person in the Caucasus; he was close to both the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and the founder of RussNeft, Ingush Mikhail Gutseriev, whose partner and friend he was for many years.

The oligarch valued his comrade so much that in 2011 he decided to send not only Vakha, but also his son ~~Bekhan Agayev~~ to the Duma. At the same time, the authorities tried to maintain decency, which made the whole story look even more comical. Father and son were, as it were, divided - Vakha was elected to the Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and his son was elected from United Russia and in Udmurtia. The Agayev family had no clear connection to any of these regions. This is also a distinctive feature of our parliament: almost every fifth deputy and senator

119 people - 20% of the total number of parliamentarians in both chambers ×

are in no way connected with the territories they represent.

The paired nomination of the Agayevs to the State Duma did not go unnoticed. In Udmurtia, locals staged a protest rally against the Varangian. Agayev Jr., of course, was not recalled, but he did not dare to go to the next convocation of the State Duma - he focused on the family business, while his father continued to sit in the Duma. It is unknown how this family saga would have developed further, but in 2020, Agayev Sr. became a victim of coronavirus. Gutseriev publicly mourned the death of his friend, but did not stop there - following the results of the next elections, Agayev Jr. returned to the Duma. It’s comical, but like Chaplin, this heir now also represents the Moscow region, to which he is related only in that he has a luxurious house on Rublyovka near Moscow.

In total, 15 “direct heirs” sit in both houses of parliament - people whose mothers and fathers were also deputies and senators in the past.

Parliamentarians by inheritance

•Deputies•

[

Bekkhan Agayev Son of a former State Duma deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/agaev-bekkhan-vakhaevich) [

Daniil Bessarabov Son of a former State Duma deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/bessarabov-daniil-vladimirovich) [

Roman Vodyanov Son of a Senator](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/vodyanov-roman-mikhaylovich) [

Sergei Kazankov Son of a former State Duma deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/kazankov-sergey-ivanovich) [

Anton Krasnoshtanov Son of a former State Duma deputy, father-in-law - current deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/skachkov-aleksandr-anatolevich) [

Ivan Musatov Son of a former State Duma deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/musatov-ivan-mikhaylovich) [

Svetlana Savitskaya Daughter of a deputy of the Supreme Council of the USSR](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/savitskaya-svetlana-evgenevna) [

Sergey Ten Son of a former State Duma deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/ten-sergey-yurevich) [

Soltan Uzdenov Son of a former State Duma deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/uzdenov-soltan-dzhasharbekovich) [

Nikita Chaplin Son of a former senator and son-in-law of a former State Duma deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/chaplin-nikita-yurevich) [

Rosa Chemeris Mother and stepfather are former State Duma deputies](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/chemeris-gasanova-roza-raziyat-basirovna) [

Alexander Yakubovsky Son of a former senator](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/yakubovskiy-aleksandr-vladimirovich)

•Senators•

[

Alexey Kondratenko Son of a former senator](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/kondratenko-aleksey-nikolaevich) [

Yulia Lazutkina Daughter of a former State Duma deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/lazutkina-yuliya-viktorovna) [

Vadim Sokolov Son of a former State Duma deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/sookolov-vadim-vyacheslavovich)

There are other types of dynasties in the State Duma.

“Everything was done to hide the truth about the secret connections of the Zionists with the Third Reich,” the announcer’s solemn voice sounds against the background of sad music. In the mid-70s, a retired security officer ~~Dmitry Zhukov~~, commissioned by the KGB, wrote the script for the film “Secret and Overt (Goals and Deeds of Zionism),” which tells about the events of the 20th century from the point of view of a thorough anti-Semite. The author directly declared Jews and Zionists to be the culprits of almost all misfortunes: “ Oddly enough, all the disasters that twice befell Europe and Russia in the 20th century are surprisingly intertwined with the benefits and growth of imperialism and international Zionism,” continued the same announcer.

They didn’t dare show the film in wide release, especially since the authors used graphics from Goebbels’ film “The Eternal Jew” to illustrate their thoughts, and this looked completely wild. Nevertheless, Zhukov continued to play a prominent role in the USSR, entering the so-called “anti-Zionist circle” and leading the nationalist “Russian Club” (many leaders of modern Russian nationalism would later come from there). The son of Dmitry Zhukov ~~Alexander~~ made a brilliant career: after graduating from Moscow State University and Harvard, he was elected to the State Duma as a member of the democratic forces in the 90s, and in the 2000s he became Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government, naturally changing his party affiliation along the way and eventually becoming one of the faces of United Russia.

For the last 14 years, Zhukov, a native Muscovite, has been the first vice-speaker of the State Duma; in his last term, he represents Siberian regions in which he has never lived a day. Of course, unlike his father, he does not make anti-Semitic films, but he writes repressive laws, also designed to establish the “truth” (from the point of view of the authorities) about the events of the 20th century. It was Zhukov who became one of the authors of the law introducing punishment for “identifying the actions of the USSR and Nazi Germany” (under it you can get a fine or administrative arrest).

Among others, another native Muscovite voted for Zhukov’s law in the Duma, whose family is a living illustration of the connection between the USSR and the Third Reich. We are talking about deputy ~~Vyacheslav Nikonov~~ (for some reason he represents the Rostov region), the grandson of Stalin’s People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov, who signed an agreement on the division of Eastern Europe with Hitler’s minister Joachim Ribbentrop in 1939.

Some parliamentarians consider their dynasties to be truly ancient. For example, former Deputy Prime Minister and now senator from the Zaporozhye region (has nothing to do with it) ~~Dmitry Rogozin~~ is proud not only of his father - a lieutenant general of the Soviet army. In his book

"On the Western Front. No change" ×

he claimed that one of his ancestors was the boyar Nikolai Rogozin, an ally of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, who defeated foreign intervention in Russia in the early 17th century.

Rogozin probably put into this historical fact some kind of hint about his role in present-day Russia. But the real hint lies in another fact of his family history. Once upon a time, the senator himself became a victim of the fight against clanism - in the 80s he was not allowed to make a career in the KGB, since his father-in-law served in a senior position there (even in the USSR this was considered a conflict of interest). However, now Rogozin has nothing against nepotism - as soon as in 2011 he took the post of Deputy Prime Minister of the government responsible for the military industry, his 29-year-old son ~~Alexey~~ became the head of the plant for the production and disposal of ammunition. The son quickly climbed the mountain, soon becoming deputy director of the department of one of the most “monetary” divisions of the Ministry of Defense - property relations.

There are also “reverse dynasties” in parliament (as in other branches of government) - this is when an official who has risen in the hierarchy employs his ancestors in the civil service. ~~Nikolai Shcheglov~~ was born into the family of an official, albeit of low stature - his father headed the Trubchevsky district of the Bryansk region in the late 80s. All his life, Nikolai worked as a surgeon in the city hospital of Bryansk and even rose to the rank of chief physician, which, apparently, was the ceiling of his career. His son ~~Alexey~~ went further: he made a brilliant medical career in Moscow - he got a job at the Central Clinical Hospital and became Putin’s personal ENT specialist, constantly accompanying him on trips around the country. It was then that Nikolai Shcheglov experienced a “second youth”: first he was appointed deputy governor of Bryansk, and then sent as a deputy to the State Duma. The rest of the relatives were also involved: the deputy’s brother headed the Bryansk Rosselkhoznadzor for many years, and then the Plant Quarantine Center in Moscow, and his family started a “dairy” business that received more than 180 million rubles. government subsidies.

However, there is one particularly noteworthy dynasty in parliament that is best suited to describe another phenomenon - the Russian government is full of real criminals, swindlers, dubious characters and crooks, who nevertheless have been covered up at the top for years. Because these are the necessary swindlers.

One of the seats from Adygea in the Federation Council is occupied by 47-year-old ~~Murat Hapsirokov~~ . The father of the senator ~~Crimea-Geri~~ (for his own - Nazir) Hapsirokov in the 80s was a Komsomol member in Karachay-Cherkessia, in the early 90s he did business with scammers so closely that he earned in this environment the saying “drive” - Khaps or Hapsik. But then he unexpectedly became the manager of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

Two politicians of that time, recalling Khapsirokov Sr., were not shy in their assessments - he was a corrupt official, no matter what. But there was also a place for such a person in the system. In the second half of the 90s, Hapsirokov, together with his banker brothers Ashot and Suren Yeghiazaryan, provided private leisure for his boss, Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov. The latter’s meetings with prostitutes at the Yegiazaryans’ safe house were recorded on video, most likely on the orders of the security officers. One of the films was released in early 1999, when the Kremlin, with the help of Khaps, needed to overthrow the obstinate prosecutor general. The operation to discredit and remove Skuratov was supervised by the young head of the FSB ~~Vladimir Putin~~

. Read more about this story in the book “The Tsar in Person” ×

. After the sex scenes were shown on central television, Skuratov was finished as an opponent of the Kremlin, and as a result, Putin became the ruler of Russia. And therefore, Hapsirokov secured a bright future for himself and his family.

In 2000, he was suspected of taking another bribe, but this did not hinder his brilliant career - under Putin, Khaps was appointed assistant to the head of the presidential administration, where he worked until his death in 2011. On the occasion of the death of Khaps, the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an obituary with the following words: “He achieved everything in this life through his own labor, without outside help or patronage.”

. It’s worth reading the full text of the eulogy - you rarely see such funny obituaries ×

. As soon as Khapsirokov Sr. died, his son was made a senator.

Another member of the Federation Council with Caucasian roots ( read about the genealogical characteristics of officials from this region here ) is ~~Maxim Kavdzharadze~~ . His criminal career began literally in adolescence, when he was twice caught blackmailing and brutally beating a peer. For this he was sent to a special vocational school and forced labor. Then Kavdzharadze became part of the Orekhov group and made a living, among other things, by providing wealthy Muscovites with road passes for the State Duma and the Federation Council for a fee. That is, in his case, the career elevator was the fastest: from a parking attendant at the parliament building to the chair of a legislator.

To avoid questions, Kavjaradze tried to change his biography - he wrote in the questionnaires that he had no criminal record, that he had a higher education (he allegedly graduated from the Law Institute at the Ministry of Internal Affairs in a few months), and in some records he even changed his last name to “Kavdisaridze” - apparently to make it more difficult to establish the truth about his past. Information about his problems with the law surfaced when Kavjaradze made an unsuccessful attempt in 2003 to become an auditor of the Accounts Chamber. But these facts had no impact on his parliamentary career ×

. Kavjaradze entered parliament (he has been sitting in the Federation Council since 2001) in parallel with his patron Ashot Yeghiazaryan, in those years a State Duma deputy, whom we mentioned above in connection with the scandalous filming of Prosecutor General Skuratov. In the 90s, Yeghiazaryan headed the Moscow National Bank (Kavjaradze was his deputy chairman). And at the end of that “hard” decade, Yeghiazaryan bought a seat in the Duma faction of the LDPR, where he sat until 2011, when he was forced to flee Russia due to accusations of money laundering and fraud.

Of course, Yeghiazaryan is not the only paid deputy in the history of the State Duma. The practice of buying mandates is ubiquitous. It was for money that the mentioned capitalist ~~Vakha Agayev~~ , or billionaire Vitaly Yuzhilin became a parliamentarian from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation - for money the communists were not embarrassed even by an obvious ideological conflict. Bribes flourished in all factions, but the champions were always the LDPR, where billionaire Suleiman Kerimov (his case is described in detail here ), a whole gang of St. Petersburg crime bosses and a lot of other crooks ended up on commercial terms. Based on the stories of a former State Duma deputy and ex-senator, we know that the standard price for joining the party’s electoral list was $5 million in cash. A deputy with a telling surname was responsible for the back office in the same LDPR - ~~Vadim Dengin~~ (now he is a senator).

Most commercial deputies buy not so much proximity to power as legal immunity. Currently, at least 37 deputies and senators sit in parliament, most likely there to escape criminal cases. In total, every tenth member of parliament could have had problems with the law in the past - at least 63 people out of 622 studied, the Project calculation showed ×

.

In words, the authorities fought crime in parliament. In 2011, oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov lost his place as head of the Right Cause party due to the fact that he included the popular but previously convicted Yekaterinburg politician Yevgeny Roizman on the election list. The Kremlin then proclaimed that it would no longer allow criminals into the Duma, and therefore Roizman had no place on the lists. Prokhorov, defending a fellow party member, came into conflict with the Kremlin and, as a result, paid the price. First, Right Cause was taken away from him, and then his new political project, the Civic Platform party. It’s paradoxical, but the Kremlin assigned another figure with a criminal past, who is still hiding from criminal prosecution in the Duma, to take away his last batch from Prokhorov - ~~Rifat Shaikhutdinov~~ . In the 2000s, he was suspected of deliberately bankrupting the Main Air Transport Agency in the interests of the already mentioned Suleiman Kerimov. But this businessman was elected to the Duma just in time from the same LDPR and therefore escaped punishment. After he helped the Kremlin take the party away from Prokhorov, he was made a deputy from the Civic Platform, and when this party was no longer needed, he returned to the LDPR.

The current parliament even has its own gangster dynasty. ~~Dzhamaladin Hasanov~~ sits in the State Duma - many of his relatives participated in criminal activities, but the main one was always his uncle, ~~Said Amirov~~ . He is an experienced bandit leader from Dagestan; there were only eight attempts on his life known to the press. During one of them, in the early 90s, a bullet broke Amirov’s spine, since then he moved in a wheelchair and bore the nickname Bloody Roosevelt in his circles. Bloody - because people were constantly dying around Amirov. One day, competitors detonated a car bomb near Amirov’s house, killing 18 people at once. Another time, Amirov himself, hunting for his enemy, was going to shoot down a Makhachkala-Moscow flight plane with an anti-aircraft missile. Everything described looks outrageous even for bandits, but with Amirov the situation was even worse, because this man was a civil servant, deputy, regional deputy prime minister and mayor of the capital of Dagestan for 24 years. He served in his last post for 15 years in a row, regularly receiving incentives from Moscow. A few months after Amirov was recognized as the best mayor of the country in 2012, he was arrested by FSB special forces specially flown in from Moscow.

He was charged with many serious crimes and sentenced to life. A tragicomic detail: on board the plane that Amirov wanted to blow up was his competitor Sagid Murtazaliev, also an influential Dagestani gangster with a long criminal history. But he, like Amirov, was an honored official for many years; at the time of the assassination attempt, he was the head of the Dagestan Pension Fund. After a while, they will also try to arrest Murtazaliev for murder, but he will have time to hide abroad.

This whole bloody mess did not in any way affect the career of deputy Hasanov, although he was suspected of crimes. He has been sitting in the State Duma since 2007 - with a break of one term from 2016 to 2021, ×

and the only thing he does there is change parties - Hasanov was in the LDPR, Right Cause, A Just Russia, and now he is a United Russia member.

Murderers and gangsters in the current parliament

• [

Alexander Lugovoi

Deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/lugovoy-andrey-konstantinovich)

Former intelligence officer, one of the key suspects in the polonium poisoning in London of former FSB officer and defector Alexander Litvinenko. A British investigation found that the operation was carried out "probably with Putin's approval." Since 2007, Lugovoi has been sitting in the State Duma.

The deputy’s wife makes money from cryptocurrency mining, and his brother makes money from government contracts for certification of employees of the Russian Guard, Rosatom, Rostec and Gazprom. * [

Adam Delimkhanov

Deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/delimkhanov-adam-sultanovich) [

Suleiman Geremeev

Senator](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/geremeev-suleyman-sadulaevich)

The nukers of the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, are behind a number of contract killings. Delimkhanov is personally involved in the elimination of Kadyrov’s critics, including the murder of FSB officer Movladi Baysarov in Moscow. He is so inviolable that he goes to parliament with a weapon. And Geremeev was directly involved in the murder of Boris Nemtsov.

Both have relatives who occupy prominent security and bureaucratic positions in Chechnya. * [

Roman Teryushkov

Deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/teryushkov-roman-igorevich)

Former leader of the Young Guard of United Russia, suspected of involvement in organizing the beating of journalist Oleg Kashin. The case was hushed up, and Teryushkov soon became the Minister of Sports of the Moscow Region. In this position, he appeared at public events with authorities from the Podolsk organized crime group - Sergei Lalakin (Luchok) and Anatoly Petrov (Petrukha).

The deputy’s father, Igor Teryushkov, heads the industrial corporation Ecorecycling, created on the initiative of the Federation Council, which unites waste processing enterprises. She actively interacts with authorities and participates in the development of environmental legislation. * [

Boris Ivanyuzhenkov

Deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/ivanyuzhenkov-boris-viktorovich)

One of the leaders of Podolsk gangsters, known under the nickname Rotan. Together with his vocational school classmate Sergei “Luchk” Lalakin, Ivanyuzhenkov was part of a gangster group known for many crimes, including serious ones. In 1999, when Putin had just come to power, Ivanyuzhenkov, a master of sports in wrestling, worked as Russia's Minister of Sports.

The deputy’s relatives work in the family business of managing real estate in shopping centers in Podolsk. * [

Andrey Skoch

Deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/skoch-andrey-vladimirovich)

He started his first business in the late 80s together with reputable entrepreneur Lev Kvetny. Both were members of the Solntsevo organized crime group, which controlled small businesses in Moscow. Skoch, as an athlete, led the power wing of Solntsevo. Having entered politics, he sued the media over materials about his connection with bandits and cleared information about himself on the Internet.

The deputy’s father, Vladimir Skoch, and his daughter, Varvara, are the billionaire’s main figures. Varvara Skoch married Yevgeny Manturov, the son of the first deputy prime minister of the Russian government ~~Denis Manturov~~ . * [

Murad Gadzhiev

Deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/gadzhiev-murad-stanislavovich)

He comes from a family of titled Dagestan wrestlers. In the 70s, his father, Stanislav Gadzhiev, became a local trade union leader, which opened the way for the family to get rich. Over time, with the help of local bandits, several sanatoriums and recreation centers, a stadium and the family’s main asset, the Derbent Cognac Factory, which the Gadzhiev family took over in the early nineties, came under the control of the family. Immediately after this, Murad Gadzhiev became a deputy - first in the region, and since 2011 in the State Duma.

The deputy's entire family - wife, father-in-law, brothers and children - manage the family business. * [

Nikolay Valuev

Deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/valuev-nikolay-sergeevich)

St. Petersburg boxer, world heavyweight champion according to WBA. His first boxing coach was involved in “protecting” stalls and small firms. The bandits took Nikolai to meetings with businessmen to intimidate him, which is why the future deputy was given the nickname “Kolya the Sledgehammer.” Valuev admitted to journalists that he was once involved in an extortion case, but insisted that he never hit anyone outside the ring, the Izvestia newspaper wrote.

Nikolai Valuev’s wife does business with Tatarstan entrepreneur Sirin Badrutdinov, who, in turn, earns money from contracts with the state-owned Transneft. Together they built a technology park in the Zavolzhye industrial zone in the Ulyanovsk region.

‹

›

Among the series of dubious personalities in parliament, there are also those whose nature of success is difficult to understand immediately. Taking a closer look, it turns out that all their merit is that they somehow pleased the top management and nothing more.

In the winter of 2021, the legendary Malibu nightclub was demolished on the southern pier of the seaport of Sochi. “An era has passed,” city residents wrote on social networks, recalling the noisy parties by the sea at the beginning of the Putin era. The club went down the drain for the sake of reconstructing the embankment, local authorities explained, and as compensation its owner was paid a whole billion rubles

, reported Rossiyskaya Gazeta ×

. True, the name of the owner was not publicly disclosed. This is understandable, because Malibu was one of the clubs of State Duma deputy ~~Sergei Krivonosov~~ , a retired officer who gained access to power for his ability to gracefully host Putin.

It all started in the summer of 2010 - then Prime Minister Putin, actor Jean-Claude Van Damme and wrestler Fedor Emelianenko, while relaxing in Sochi, entered a structure built on stilts over the sea, which resembled either an oil production platform or a raft on the water. Hence the name - the club "Platforma". Inside there was a transparent dance floor overlooking the underwater world, but the place was easily suitable for more than just dancing. There was a sambo tournament between Russian athletes and representatives of other countries. Of course, the victory was mostly won by the Russians before Putin’s eyes, but it was not the head of government who was invited to present the main award, but the owner of the club, Sergei Krivonosov. He managed to ensure that since then an international combat sambo tournament was held annually in his club, and moreover, the Russian elite, led by Putin, gathered there every time.

The very next summer of 2011, Putin watched with rapture as, in the main fight of the tournament, the Russian fighter Maxim Grishin literally destroyed the little-known Brazilian Julio Cesar de Lima. This was the brilliant idea of ​​the organizers - to invite casual or already retired MMA fighters from other countries, whom Russian athletes would invariably defeat in front of the country’s leadership. Putin was delighted, and within a few months Krivonosov was elected to the Duma for the first time. And the president continued to visit his club - in 2012 he took with him the actor Steven Seagal, in 2013 the head of Kazakhstan, in 2014 the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan - similar visits continued until 2018.

Krivonosov’s secret is apparently simple - he did not organize the tournaments alone, they were held by a certain League S-70, in which Putin’s longtime acquaintance Renat Laishev (president of the Sambo-70 sports school) is the president. Laishev first met Putin back in the 90s and immediately told the future president about the school

, Laishev himself told sports.ru ×

. The head of state clearly liked it - Sambo-70 eventually turned into a real sports “state corporation”, which subordinated several sports schools in the capital, including the Khrustalny Ice Palace, where the best figure skaters in the world train. She also receives contracts for the construction of sports facilities in Moscow.

One more detail could have contributed to Krivonosov’s political career. His clubs in Sochi are known as places where important people meet escort girls, says a former Sochi politician who has been to Krivonosov’s clubs ×

. One of the Project’s interlocutors calls Krivonosov “the main pimp of Sochi,” recalling that during the president’s visits to his Black Sea dacha, many Putin’s security guards disappeared in the deputy’s clubs “with the girls.” One of the guests at Krivonosov’s events, aspiring actress Sofia Nikitchuk, even worked as an assistant to Krivonosov in parliament. However, there were also dances at the deputy’s establishments; Putin’s daughters from his first marriage liked to go there for this purpose, the local politician knows ×

.

Who else received a mandate for services provided to Putin and his friends

[

Lyudmila Narusova

Senator](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/narusova-lyudmila-borisovna)

The widow of the mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, the man who launched Putin's political career.

[

Vladislav Reznik

Deputy](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/reznik-vladislav-matusovich)

An old acquaintance of the president from the days of working together as stuntmen at Lenfilm. In the late 80s, he was deputy chairman of the board of directors of Rossiya Bank, one of the first commercial banks in the USSR. The bank's assets were formed mainly from the funds of the Leningrad Regional Committee. The bank became the “wallet” of Putin and his friends.

[

Vladimir Kozhin

Senator](https://nepotism.proekt.media/cards/kozhin-vladimir-igorevich)

Former long-term presidential manager. Under him, the Kremlin, the Moscow region and other residences of the head of state were rebuilt to suit Putin’s tastes.

People associated with martial arts are generally held in high esteem - after all, the president loves these sports. At the beginning of the Putin era, the head of state's judo sparring partner Arkady Rotenberg, a former coach and petty criminal figure from St. Petersburg, moved to Moscow, where brilliant prospects then opened up for people like him. Unlike Putin, Rotenberg did not waste time on education in his youth - in the 70s, under the patronage of his criminal coach, he received a diploma at the Lesgaft Institute of Physical Education for the sake of decency. In the 2000s, for greater representativeness, Rotenberg decided to become a candidate of science and came for a dissertation at his home university, which by that time had become a university. Rotenberg was assigned a scientific supervisor - ~~Nikolai Tsed~~ .

He is a former special forces soldier and hand-to-hand combat trainer. Together Tsed and Rotenberg wrote, or rather partially copied

, as Dissernet later established, ×

work entitled “Adaptation of martial arts in the system of physical training of pre-university educational institutions.” Thus, Putin’s friend became a candidate of science (later he would also write a doctoral dissertation), and Tsed ensured a comfortable life for himself and his family for many years to come. Rotenberg first appointed the scientific director to positions in his banking and alcohol assets, and then made him a civil servant. “I somehow became an official gradually, but I don’t like that word,” Tsed flirted in an interview, adding that he prefers to be called “a servant of the sovereign.” Since 2021, this servant has been a State Duma deputy from St. Petersburg, and one of his sons , as if by accident, has become a big developer in this region.

Is there anyone in the Russian parliament who truly understands lawmaking? There are, although there are very few such people. It is more correct to call them lobbyists - there are deputies and senators who serve one master throughout their entire career (for example, an oligarch or company that sent them to parliament), and there are those who constantly change their “employers”. One of the largest lobbying groups in parliament is the people of the Rostec state corporation and personally its head ~~Sergei Chemezov~~ , an old friend of the president. For example, the already described senator ~~Kavjaradze~~ is one of them. His patron is Elena Sierra, one of the directors of Rostec. There are also examples of family lobbyists. ~~Alfiya Kogogina~~ has been working as a deputy for 14 years, she is the wife of the co-owner and general director of KamAZ (slightly less than half controlled by Rostec) ~~Sergei Kogogin~~ . He always gave Alfie positions. Back in the late 90s, when Kogogin became the Minister of Economy and Industry of Tatarstan, he assigned Alfia, then his mistress, to the republican State Statistics Committee. Having become the director of the plant, Kogogin appointed her head of the entire leasing direction. Numerous children of the Kogogins from previous marriages also earn money from KamAZ. Some of them live abroad, but receive their salaries at KamAZ. Хотя сама Когогина (теперь официальная жена) уже через год в Госдуме заявила , что «уже не мыслит категориями КамАЗа», а думает о состоянии российского автопрома в целом, предприятие ее мужа продолжает получать миллиардные госсубсидии и льготы, десятилетиями балансируя на грани рентабельности.

Но самый многопрофильный и профессиональный лоббист в российском парламенте — глава бюджетного комитета ~~Андрей Макаров~~ (работает депутатом с небольшим перерывом аж с 1993 года, сейчас представляет Чувашию, Нижегородскую и Рязанскую область, к которым не имеет никакого отношения). Его мать при советах была председателем Мособлсуда, а отчим возглавлял столичную коллегию адвокатов. Их сын стал чем-то посередине — он как адвокат защищал зятя Леонида Брежнева Юрия Чурбанова, а как обвинитель сажал в тюрьму общественника-антисемита Константина Смирнова-Осташвили.

Вероятно, еще в 70-х юный Макаров, учившийся тогда на юрфаке МГУ, а на досуге игравший в шахматы, был завербован госбезопасностью под кличкой «Таня» — так утверждал бывший сотрудник советских спецслужб Владимир Попов, курировавший спортивное направление в Пятой службе КГБ

. Позже о том же писал известный журналист Марк Дейч ×

. Юный Макаров крутился вокруг гроссмейстеров Льва Корчного и Бориса Гулько, которые находились под колпаком спецслужб. Впоследствии Гулько вспоминал забавный эпизод, характеризующий карьеру Макарова. На студенческом турнире в начале 70-х начинающий юрист Макаров предлагал фальсифицировать результаты игр: от Гулько требовалось подсказывать ходы, которые «Таня» должен был незаметно передавать другим шахматистам из их команды. Гулько отдельно вспоминает: статус Макарова в команде был непонятным, «вертелся у всех под ногами», что, вероятно, означает, что активного молодого человека туда пристроили спецслужбы, как соглядатая.

Кличка приклеилась к Макарову на всю жизнь. Коллеги по Госдуме и сейчас за глаза называют его «депутатом Таней», намекая еще и на его вероятную гомосексуальную ориентацию. Макаров мог работать на кого угодно: он одновременно лоббировал интересы «Евраза» миллиардера Романа Абрамовича и губернатора Кемеровской области, коммуниста-деспота Амана Тулеева. На досуге продолжал заниматься шахматами, одно время даже был главой национальной шахматной федерации. Но опять не обошлось без фальсификаций — для получения титула международного мастера (предшествует гроссмейстеру) он предоставил данные о победах на серьезных турнирах. Быстро выяснилось, что результаты были поддельными, а представленные Макаровым партии были переписаны у выдающихся игроков прошлого, включая чемпиона мира Александра Алехина

, писал Polit.ru ×

. Таня умудрился сфальсифицировать даже собственную семью. Его жена Наталия заработала несколько сотен миллионов рублей на поставке спецтехники правительству Кузбасса, лоббистом которого был ее муж. Но избиратели об этом факте не знали, потому что еще в 2014 году Макаров фиктивно развелся и удалил упоминания о жене из своей публичной декларации о доходах. На самом деле Макаровы и сейчас продолжают вместе летать на отдых за границу.

Все это не мешает Макарову быть очень влиятельным — настолько, что он устроил в Думу двух своих сотрудников. Адвокат его бюро, москвичка ~~Ольга Ануфриева~~ стала депутатом от уральских регионов. А партнер бюро Михаил Орлов возглавил экспертный совет при комиссии по бюджету и налогам.

Подобного рода «лоббистов» в парламенте мы насчитали не менее 90 человек (15% процентов от общего числа изученных нами депутатов и сенаторов). Это люди, прошлое которых связано с работой в интересах крупных частных и государственных ресурсодобывающих компаний, девелоперского, банковского и других бизнесов, принадлежащих богатейшим людям страны.

Есть в обеих палатах парламента и свое алкогольно-табачное лобби. Например, депутат ~~Надежда Школкина~~ , которую недруги прозвали «Надькой-окурком»

, которое упоминается , к примеру, в материалах мордовских СМИ ×

. Ее лобби в пользу табачной индустрии было настолько явным, что в 2011 году, когда она прошла в думу от Мордовии (до этого она заседала в парламенте от Рязанской области, а в 2021 — уже от Тульской), компания Philip Morris тут же направила в регион значительные суммы на благотворительность, хотя бизнес-интересов у компании там не было. А ~~Владимир Сенин~~ еще до своего избрания в Думу был вице-президентом и лоббистом «Альфа-банка», но не только его — в 2016 году он получил от компании Uber $ 300 тыс. за помощь в продвижении закона о такси, который, правда, так и не был принят. В 2021 году лоббист избирался в Госдуму, а год спустя произошла масштабная утечка документов Uber, из которой и выяснились его расценки. Естественно, это никак не повредило его карьере. Есть в Думе и представители букмекерского бизнеса — например, ~~Амир Хамитов~~ , бывший гендиректор одной из крупнейших в России букмекерских компаний Winline и совладелец платежной системы «Мобильная карта», которую Путин своим указом сделал единым оператором ставок на спорт.

Рядом с лоббистами в Госдуме и Совфеде сидят владельцы крупнейших компаний и их родственники. Больше 10 лет назад власти обещали избавиться от богачей в парламенте. «В нашем списке нет олигархов», — уверял ~~Вячеслав Володин~~ , тогда один из лидеров «Единой России», перед думскими выборами 2011 года. Год спустя от олигархов в составе верхней палаты вроде бы начала избавляться и спикер Совета федерации ~~Валентина Матвиенко~~ . Но все это была, конечно, показуха.

Сейчас около 10% парламентариев — миллиардеры и миллионеры, а также члены их семей, хотя бы раз попадавшие в рейтинги российских бизнес-изданий Forbes и РБК — это ежегодные рейтинги российских миллиардеров, богатейших госслужащих (в том числе, отдельный женский рейтинг), рейтинги российских компаний в разных сферах и рейтинг жен и мужей, зарабатывающих гораздо больше своих партнеров, а также рейтинг самых богатых кандидатов в депутаты от РБК за 2021 год ×

.

Российский парламент не представляет россиян, зато он довольно точно отражает структуру российской власти, которая не ограничивается наследниками, лоббистами и бандитами, о которых говорилось выше.

Около 22% от числа депутатов и сенаторов — минимум 137 человек из 622 в обеих палатах ×

— это силовики.

Among them:

Ministry of Defense

71

Ministry of Internal Affairs

33

КГБ и ФСБ

20

Прокуратура, суды, ФСИН, ФСО

17

Еще не менее 18 мандатов (3% от общего числа парламентариев) в обеих палатах парламента достались людям, которых можно назвать «пропагандистами». Это журналисты, актеры, певцы, политологи и политтехнологи, а также завсегдатаи антизападных ток-шоу и пропагандистских мероприятий Кремля.

Руководители обеих палат парламента ничем не отличаются от своих коллег. Председатель Госдумы ~~Володин~~ записывает бизнес на престарелую мать, всю жизнь работавшую учительницей на селе. Спикер Совета федерации в той же роли использовала наркозависимого сына. Историю ~~Матвиенко~~ и других важных для Путина женщин, мы расскажем в следующей части спецпроекта.