A major anti-corruption operation took place in Kuban. Ex-mayor of Sochi Alexey Kopaygorodsky and his subordinates were detained. It appears that officials at Russia’s premier resort lived like oligarchs.
Who was detained during the special services operation
Alexey Kopaygorodsky, the ex-mayor of Sochi, was detained in Lugansk tonight. After his resignation, he volunteered for the Northern Military District. Most likely, he ended up in the front-line zone for the same reasons as the lawyer Elman Pashayev and husband Elena Blinovsky– due to problems with law enforcement agencies. Kopaygorodsky has already been taken to Moscow. A criminal case has been opened. Other defendants include former deputy mayor Oleg Burlev and the head of the Khostinsky district of the city Ivan Savin. Kopaigorodsky’s wife was also brought in for questioning by the Investigative Committee. Anastasia Gredina. Searches were carried out at everyone’s home and place of work.
According to the SHOT telegram channel, ex-mayor of Sochi Alexei Kopaygorodsky is preliminary suspected of embezzlement, creating an organized criminal group and selling places in cemeteries. Earlier, ex-adviser to the mayor of Sochi Roman Pishchur was detained in the case of the so-called ritual organized crime group. He was arrested two months ago and sent to a pre-trial detention center. According to investigators, Pishchur, together with his accomplices, sold places in the cemetery – prices ranged from 200 thousand to three million rubles. Perhaps the former mayor also participated in the fraud.
Alexey Kopaygorodsky may also be connected with the case of laundering 600 million rubles together with the former deputy head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations for the Krasnodar Territory, Colonel Sergei Simonenko, who was detained in early August on suspicion of taking a bribe and exceeding official authority.
In court it turned out that a criminal case had been initiated under Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“misappropriation or embezzlement on an especially large scale”).
How the former mayor of Sochi lived
Alexey Kopaygorodsky ruled Sochi for only a short time – from September 2019 to May of this year, then he resigned and went to the Northern Military District. Previously, he worked in the administration of the Krasnodar region, and for a couple of years as deputy governor.
As the mayor of Sochi, Kopaygorodsky went out to meetings with the population in a windbreaker and down jacket, like from Loro Piana (over a million rubles), a bomber jacket and raincoat, like Brioni (650 thousand), and a jacket very similar to Canali (191 thousand). It would be much cheaper to build a new staircase to Mount Batareika in the city center to replace the old emergency one, because of which Sochi residents suffered for ten years.
Alexey Kopaygorodsky is an exemplary family man who is raising five children with his wife Anastasia Gredina. His father-in-law and mother-in-law look very rich. They had just returned from Venice; before that they had vacationed in Bali and celebrated the New Year in Courchevel.
The wife’s father is 61 years old Dmitry Gredin – a biker on an expensive Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a member of a motorcycle club. In the nineties, he was involved in ensuring the operability of boiler houses in the Krasnodar villages. Now he has a scattering of objects in Krasnodar, including a parking lot on Kalinina Street for 63 million rubles, shopping arcades nearby for 79 million rubles and five shopping centers under the single brand “Euroremont Shopping Quarter”, the most expensive of which costs 100 million rubles. We are talking only about the cadastral value; the market value can be many times higher.
The wife’s stepmother, 53-year-old Vladilena Gredina, a socialite, is on the covers of Krasnodar glossy magazines. On social networks she has a lot of joint photos with stars, for example with singer Mikhail Shufutinsky and politician Irina Khakamada. In the past, she is a dentist at a public clinic. Now a restaurateur, she owns the trademarks of the restaurant-museum “Stan”, the chain of cafes “Dikanka” and the burger restaurant “Vakula” – all establishments serve Ukrainian dishes and are located in Krasnodar, one of them is right on the banks of the Kuban River with permission to use the water area. The mother-in-law manages this business through three LLCs – with total income of over 411 million rubles.
Everything is fine with the apartments of my wife’s parents too. The mother-in-law has an apartment with a sea view in the Gelendzhik club house on Primorskaya Street, as well as spacious apartments in the Krasnodar business-class residential complex “Admiral” on Kuban Embankment. The total cost is over one hundred million rubles.
The 39-year-old wife of the ex-mayor – Anastasia Gredina – In terms of wealth, he is not far behind his father and stepmother. In Sochi, she has 20 acres of land on Kievskaya Street (probably for development). In Krasnodar he uses a cottage on Kurskaya Street. Also connected to it are two good private houses in the village of Elizavetinskaya and a couple of non-residential buildings in the Krinitsa gardening community. All this will cost over 50 million rubles. But the most expensive asset, which is also associated with her, is a penthouse of 280 square meters and two basement rooms in the elite Talisman house on Kurortny Prospekt in Sochi.
Former mayor Alexey Kopaygorodsky seems like a poor relative compared to his wealthy relatives. He does not own real estate, uses his wife’s cottage, earns much less than her, for example, in 2021 she received an income of over 37.5 million rubles, and he received 27 times less, only 1.4 million rubles.
Cars – Land Rover SUV, Geely Monjaro and Hyundai Santa Fe crossovers – are also registered in the name of the spouse.
