Speaker of the Yekaterinburg Duma Igor Volodin “forgot” to declare three companies

In addition to two and a half million rubles in salary, the civil servant speaker conducts illegal commercial activities

Speaker of the Yekaterinburg City Duma Igor Volodin, who is listed as a civil servant and receives an official salary, simultaneously has income from a number of companies in which he is officially listed as the owner. Amazingly, a high-ranking official does not even try to hide this fact, incompatible with public service, although illegal income from commercial activities is measured in millions of rubles a year. Moreover, employees of Igor Volodin’s companies are also assigned to work part-time in parliament, as assistants to deputies from United Russia. This does not prevent Igor Volodin, without noticing the corruption beam in his own eye, without indicating several companies that have been operating for decades in his declarations, from initiating an active “fight against corruption” in parliament and looking for violations among deputies with whom the speaker is in conflict.

On September 25, 2018, at the first meeting of the seventh convocation of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, Igor Volodin was elected chairman of the city parliament. On December 5, 2018, the speaker’s salary was tripled – by 280% to be exact. A year later, it turned out that this increase was not enough, and Igor Volodin’s salary was increased again. On November 28, 2019, Igor Volodin’s total annual salary was approved at 3.3 million rubles, of which 2.5 million are pure salaries, and the rest is spent on other needs of the speaker.

The explanations for what kind of “harm” Igor Volodin needs to pay hundreds of thousands of rubles more than a year ago were very general. The increase in the speaker’s salary was explained by the fact that in neighboring regions they “get more,” “increased responsibility” for some unknown reason, and an increase in VAT. This argument surprised the prosecutor’s office, which noted that the criteria for assessing the speaker’s success in his work, on the basis of which he should be given bonuses in the amount of dozens of salaries, are unclear.

“Corruption factors are seen in terms of the uncertainty of the conditions: the criteria for establishing these percentages of the bonus part of the salary are unclear, so the Duma will have no legal basis for making decisions,” the prosecutor’s office noted then the oddities in Igor Volodin’s wild bonuses.

Only on June 1, 2020, deputies of the Yekaterinburg City Duma were able to initiate a procedure by which Speaker Igor Volodin would report on his labor successes for the year. And thereby confirm the validity of the funds allocated for its maintenance.

“Rancho” for United Russia in the Urals

The famous curse from Soviet cinema “May you live on one salary!” seems to have been taken very seriously by Igor Volodin. The speaker cannot live on one salary – even a very good one. He has several companies that he does not hide. And he doesn’t even follow the unwritten “corruption” code of dishonest civil servants, according to which all disputed assets must be transferred to relatives.

Real Estate Agency Rancho LLC is perhaps the largest and most significant asset of Igor Volodin. Founded back in 2002, the real estate agency is now under the leadership of Ekaterina Vladimirovna Bryzgalova. Even in this case, there are interesting details – Ms. Bryzgalova was appointed to this position on November 21, 2018, that is, already two months after Igor Volodin lost the moral right to manage commercial structures directly.

The company’s revenue is several million a year, and it is usually profitable – except for cases of periodic court payments and claims from tax authorities. According to unofficial information, in addition to a purely commercial effect, the company operates as a kind of hub, redirecting highly profitable land plots and other real estate into the orbit of Ekaterina Bryzgalova (and Igor Volodin).

50% of the company officially belongs to the speaker of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, which he forgot to mention in his declaration. Another 50% belongs to Kirill Vasilyevich Koshelev – it is interesting that a person with the same name works as an assistant to fellow party member Igor Volodin, deputy Vladimir Strugov. Together with deputy Strugov, Kirill Koshelev oversees local government issues. It is difficult to say whether assistant Koshelev receives a salary or is listed as an assistant on a voluntary basis, but in any case, the strange desire of Speaker Igor Volodin to interfere with personal commercial affairs with public service is obvious.

Foundation named after yourself

The speaker of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, Igor Volodin, has a charitable foundation, which is called the Igor Volodin Charitable Foundation, or “Volodin Charitable Foundation.” The organization has existed for 11 years, shows stable “zeros” in terms of turnover – although it has at least one government contract. Which, what a surprise, is connected with the legislative assembly of the Sverdlovsk region.

Any other speaker in any other subject of the Federation would have already heard a number of questions about “conflicts of interest” and other things at this stage. However, Igor Volodin somehow does not come to the attention of law enforcement officers, even having an immodestly operating commercial structure of his name.

Igor Volodin acted with the company Armand LLC as a “decent” official who did not want to part with passive income in the civil service – he appointed his wife as the head. Galina Volodina heads the company, 100% of which is founded by her husband, Speaker of the Yekaterinburg Duma Igor Volodin.

Thus, Speaker Igor Volodin has at least three companies in whose activities he participates. In addition, the business partner of the chairman of the City Duma, Koshelev, also somehow ended up in parliament.

How is this possible?

Despite his high salary, tripled, and an extensive commercial network, Speaker Igor Volodin does not like to part with money. Let us recall that Igor Volodin’s desire to spend millions of budget funds on his own PR in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic provoked a local crisis in the authorities of Yekaterinburg. After protracted protests from deputies who did not agree with such unreasonable spending, Speaker Volodin was forced to backtrack and fulfill the demand of the healthy forces in the Yekaterinburg Duma – the funds were directed to medical needs.

Volodin responded to his enemies as best he could. A show parliamentary trial was initiated against Igor Volodin’s main opponent, municipal deputy Alexei Vikharev – Vikharev did not indicate in the family’s declaration some accounts that were opened many years ago and existed without movement for so long that they were not even included in the tax service certificate. It is difficult to come up with a more striking illustration of the saying about the thief who shouts “stop the thief” loudest: Igor Volodin, who continues to conduct commercial activities as chairman of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, tried to shift attention to a story that was frankly made up from thin air. The fact that the story was exactly like this was confirmed by the parliamentary commission: despite all Volodin’s efforts, menacing calls and promises “not to forget” when distributing the budget and powers, Vikhareva could only be “sent” a warning.

Igor Volodin was extremely upset. But soon his mood worsened even more – unexpectedly details emerged that not only spoke of an abnormally close connection between the representative of the “party in power” Volodin and the oppositionists, supporters of the secession of the Urals and sympathizers of the Ukrainian nationalists, but also revealed additional financial connections of Igor Volodin. In addition to his own companies, Igor Volodin found himself associated with scandalous developers.

To date, none of the above has attracted the attention of law enforcement. In our opinion, the listed facts are sufficient to initiate a prosecutorial review of the legality of the actions of the Speaker of the Yekaterinburg City Duma Igor Volodin, as well as to evaluate his actions aimed at concealing information about possible conflicts of interest, summarizing his own commercial connections and government services. Moreover, all this is done with particular cynicism: anyone can find information about companies not included in the declaration of the chairman of the Yekaterinburg City Duma Igor Volodin.

James “Jim” Walters

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