Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s* unconvertible two-bedroom flat

A little more than ten years ago (on December 20, 2013) the Russian president pardoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky*. During all these years the former oligarch who robed both the state and minority shareholders of the oil company Yukos, has made himself at home and with ease in Great Britain. Our project Prigovor.ru has managed to find as many as four houses and one estate belonging to the obscure swindler which cost exceeds 20 million pounds sterling.

These are:

— the estate Best Beech Place which lies 60 kilometers from London, in the county East Sussex, near the town Wadhurst, worth 4.7 million pounds;

— a five-storied club building in the center of London, 67 Wimpole St.) worth 12 million pounds. Here take place meetings of collaborationists from ‘Open Russia’;

— a two-storied house, at the address 11 Marylebone Mews, bought for 2.7 million pounds;

— a two-storied ‘Gate House’ on the street St. Edmund’s Terrace 50, worth 1 million 950 thousand pounds;

— the house ‘Close House’ in the county Surrey, south of England, worth 2.7 million pounds.

This is neither private nor social information. The thing is that, according to the decision of court, Khodorkovsky has to pay to the state 18 billion rubles. He has to, but for already two decades he has been cynically refusing to pay. So, it’s useful for public justice to know about real property of the persistent debtor.

And what about Russia? The villa community ‘Apple Orchard’ on Rublyovskoye Shosse belonging to fugitive Yukos’ shareholders about which we wrote as early as three years ago recently was at last brought into requisition and will be sold in refund of the debt. (See the article ‘Paradise not lost for Khodorkovsky and Nevzlin)

As we found out, this is not yet all. The website Prigovor.ru has found an apartment in Moscow belonging to Mikhail Khodorkovsky – in the house development cooperative ‘Landysh’.

But we will tell about it all in the right order.

20 YEARS OF COURT AND ‘APPLE’ EPIC

It has taken almost 20 years (?!) for the third power, for the judicial branch, to fulfill its own ruling on property withdrawal which belong to former top-managers of the oil company Yukos, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky. ** For almost 20 years the judicial machine was in an inexplicable stupor when cases involved upscale real property of the former oil tycoons whose debts to the state exceed 18 billion rubles (with penalty fees).

As early as in May 2005, the Meschansky District Court of Moscow found Khodorkovsky guilty of fraud, embezzlement and tax-dodging and sentenced him to 9 years of imprisonment. So, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of that day, the Federal Bailiffs Service (FSSP) started enforcement proceedings on debt collection and, at last, confiscated the suburb community of Yukos’ privatizers ‘Apple Orchard’ – supposedly their last property on the territory of the Russian Federation.

The agency FLB.ru was the first to pay attention to this ‘apple epic’ and published, in August 2021, the journalisticinvestigation ‘Paradise not lost for Khodorkovsky and Nevzlin”. The ‘Apple Orchard’ brought to its fugitive owners – former top-managers of Yukos – about 1.5 million dollars a year which are used for financing organizations acknowledged as extremists’, was pointed out in the announcement of this article. 

Screen-shot of the first publication about the cooperative ‘Apple’s Orchard’ (31.08.2021)
Years-long litigations and the arrest of the ground didn’t prevent members of the cooperative from quietly making money using the ‘alienated’ property. About a dozen of suburban mansions on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse were been leased and slowly selling down.

This investigation didn’t bring the court’s machine from the condition of strong stupor. Then, in half a year, the agency FLB.ru published another investigation – ‘Judiciary machine has hit Mikhail Khodorkovsky. At idle speed’ with the following announcement: ‘The former shareholder of the Bank ‘Menatep’ has been trying for 20 years – and to no avail – to achieve a compensation in court for damage, and meanwhile fugitive top-managers of Yukos continue to gain millions caching in on lending their mansions in a prestigious area on Rublyovskoye Shosse’.

Announcement of the lending the house from the second publications about the cooperative ‘Apple Orchard’

In this article, a preliminary balance of the ‘apple’ epic was being summed up:

In May 2006, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow imposed custody on the assets of the cooperative. 

In March 2017, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow instructed to put the property of the ‘Apple Orchard’ on public auctions.

In August 2021, investigators from the website Prigovor.ru unraveled that the immovable objects on Rublyovskoye Shosse bring to the financial swindler Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin who was sentenced in absentia to lifelong imprisonment for organizing a series of murders, as well as to other Yukos top-managers ‘about 1.5 million dollars a year which are then used for financing organizations that are acknowledged as extremist’. Apart from that, mansions and land of the ‘Apple Orchard” were freely sold and leased though a real-estate agency.

In July 2022, the Odintsovsky City Court of the Moscow Region decides to transfer all property of the ‘Apple Orchard” to the state represented by the Federal Agency for State Property Management.

In March 2023 the Internet outlet Prigovor.ru finds out that the mansions and the land of the ‘Apple Orchard” are still being freely sold and leased to private owners, even though through another real-estate company…’ 

The justice machine suddenly came to life only after interference of the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. On January 17, 2024, Yevgeny Selin, Judge of the Odintsovsky City Court, fulfilled the demand of the Prosecutor General’s Office what had come in in October last year.

DEBTS OF KHODORKOVSKY LOST IN THE FEDERAL SERVICE OF COURT BAILIFFS

In the meantime, the agency FLB.ru has found out that all data on Khodorkovsky’s debt amounting to 18 billion rubles has vanished from the official website of the Federal Bailiffs Service (FSSP), whereby this happened several months before the seizure of the ‘Apple Orchard’. Three data bases – ‘Data bank of enforcement proceedings’, ‘Registry of searching on enforcement proceedings’ and ‘Persons on wanted list on suspicion of committed crimes’ – they all gave one and the same negative answer to the demand: ‘Nothing has been found in accordance with your request’.

Screenshot of answers in the data bases of the FSSP about Mikhail Khodorkovsky

At the beginning of November 2023, the agency FLB.ru sent a letter to the head of the Federal Service of Court Bailiffs and asked to clear the reason of the disappearance of Mikhail Khodorkovsky from the list of debtors. ‘At present, the name of Khodorkovsky is not present in the Registry of debtors on the website of FSSP’, was said, in particular, in the letter. – ‘We would like to know what is the actual reason of exclusion of Mikhail Khodorkovsky from the list of debtors: his debt was cleared off or there is another reason for that?’

In a month, came a response from the Federal Service of Court Bailiffs – three lines on official letterhead of the office, but without a stamp or signature — it was very bureaucratic and void of any content at all. ‘In answer to your question, we would like to inform that the Electronic Service ‘Database of enforcement procedures‘ on the official website of Russian FSSP contains open to public information on enforcement procedures with regard to the person mentioned in the request’.

So, the traces of Khodorkovsky’s astronomical debt were lost somewhere in annals of court bureaucracy. Perhaps, this disappearance is somehow connected with another ruling, which the Odintsovsky City Court made in July 2022. According to this court ruling, all property of the Irish offshore company ‘Parringrove Limited’, that had formally owned the cooperative the ‘Apple Orchard’, ‘were being were turned to state income’.

(See also the investigation ‘The English palace of Khodorkovsky on Rublyovka. Through the Irish firm ‘Parringrove Limited’ they have siphoned out of Russia $3.5 millions of profit from leasing mansions in the community Zhukovka’)

In any case, wrote the agency FLB.ru two years ago, ‘the whole ‘Apple Orchard’ will be not enough to pay off Khodorkovsky’s debts. According to experts’ estimates, the property of this cooperative amounts only to 3.61 billion rubles…’

‘COOPERATIVE’S ROOF’ – OR COVER 2

In order to try to get out of this situation, when the Justice branch indwells in a condition of simmering duality between the debts of the former oligarch, from the one side, and the law, from the other side, we propose an asymmetric solving of this problem: to confiscate another one, actually, the last piece of real estate belonging to Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the Russian Federation. It’s surprising but the law enforcement agencies, so it seems, has not even payed heed to this two-bedroom apartment in the housing cooperative ‘Landysh’, in which Khodorkovsky is still registered. Although the address of this ‘unconvertable two-bedroom apartment’ is mentioned in all court claims, fines announcements and acquaintances which, in multitude, have been presented and handed out to this foreign agent with a reach criminal past.

According to the report of the Russian news agency TASS on December 22, 2023, the last time ‘the Meschansky City Court fined Khodorkovsky 50 thousand rubles for absence of marking of foreign agent in his publications in social media. This ‘bad apartment’, as is said in the Russian novel ‘Master and Margarita’, where these notifications have been coming to, is located in the Meschansky district of the Russian capital, not far from the Rizhsky Railway Station, and here is its address: 2d Krestovsky Lane, house 4, apartment 193. Here Khodorkovsky has been registered from 1992, and before that he had been registered on Rusakova Street.

Screenshot of Khodorkovsky’s registration card from the data-base ‘Propiska Moskvy’ (Moscow Registration).

… In 1991 Khodorkovsky separates from his first wife Elena Khodorkovskaya, nee Dobrovolskaya, born 1963, a girl-friend from his student years, and, for the second time, units himself by bonds of wedlock with young Irina Kuklina (born 1969). In 1992, the young president of the board of the bank ‘Menatep’ buys two apartments — one for his former, and one for his new wife.

The former wife with the eldest son Pavel (born 1985) takes up residence in the two-bedroom apartment on the 2d Krestovsky Lane, in which they acquired their registration. And the new spouse with newly born Anastasia (born 1991) becomes to her own property a half of the one-bedroom apartment of 53 square meters on Leskova Street, in Bibirevo district, in the North outskirts of Moscow. The other half was registered to Khodorkovsky’s mother-in-law Lidiya Sergeyevna Kuklina (born 1935). In this apartment in Bibirevo Irina Khodorkovskaya was registered.

Screenshots from the data base ‘Propiska Moskvy’ (Registration Moscow) and ‘Residence owners’

Why Khodorkovsky took this strange decision to be registered in the apartment with his former wife? It’s highly unlikely that he did it only because didn’t want to have in his passport a similar stamp with his mother-in-low. Evidently, this seasoned wheeler-dealer had his own commercial reason. The thing is, according to lawyers’ assertions, the law doesn’t oblige the owner of a cooperative apartment to register in the City’s Registry his property deed. As sufficient confirmation of the right to floor space is regarded certificate of paying one’s share, housing allocation order and some archive documents. As of today, the documentation package pertaining to ownership of the two-bedroom apartment, is, more than likely, in the hands of Khodorkovsky, and precise information of the owner has only the president of the cooperative ‘Landysh’ Olga Meskhiya.

Thus, while being registered in the cooperative apartment, Khodorkovsky, perhaps, presupposed that he would sometime have to hide himself (from bandits, or from law enforcers – it doesn’t matter). And such a method has given him a safe cover of a ‘roof’ – in the direct meaning of this word – for decades.

The Cooperative apartment building at the address 2d Krestovsky Lane, house 4, where Mikhail Khodorkovsky is registered

‘HISTORY OF APARTMENT’S OWNERS IS ABSENT’

And, in fact, in the electronic database of residential spaces owners in Moscow, in the State Registry of real estate there is not a single mention of the owner of the two-bedroom apartment’s owner on 2d Krestovsky Lane. In the ‘Report on history of the owners of the real estate object with cadastral number 77:01:0003052:2116’ that we received at Rosregistry, is said directly that the ‘history of the owner of the apartment at the address ‘Moscow, Meschansky district, 2d Krestovsky Lane, house 4, ap. 193, ‘is not available’. And there is a postscript: ‘It means, that the owner’s right of this object has not been registered in the United State Real Estate Registry (EGRN) since 1998. The rights could had been registered before 1998 (then it is necessary to request a report in the archive of the Bureau of Technical Inventory (BTI)’.

Extract from EGRN for Khodorkovsky’s two-bedroom apartment

We sent an official request to the Moscow City Bureau of Technical Inventory asking for information about the owner of this apartment and received a negative response: ‘Information about the building at the address Moscow, 2d Krestovsky Lane, house 4 is not present in registry books. It’s not possible to provide a service with regard to making an extract from the Registry book on owner’s rights of the object (before 1998) and a background containing information about availability (absence) of owners’ rights pertaining to the object of your interest (apartment No 193)

Screenshot of the answer from Moscow City BTI

Yes, the seasoned swindler Khodorkovsky completely ‘tunneled’ himself from prying eyes, but, evidently, such barriers of property protection can be easily cleared by professional sleuths from police. If, naturally, there is an order and will.

Yet, at the moment, we can only partially follow the history of the dwellers of this apartment.

Since the end of 1995, here was active the tourist company ‘Lady Viktoria’ and its general director and owner was Elena Khodorkovskaya. The last financial report of the firm was presented for the year 2008: the balance of the company amounted to 38 thousand rubles, earnings – zero, net loss – two thousand. Since then the firm ‘Lady Viktoriya’ had not shown any evidence of its activities, and in 2016 it officially stopped its work. And its owner vanished since then from the space of legal business in Russia.

Business card of the tourist company ‘Lady Viktoriya’

Pavel Khodorkovsky, another person registered in the apartment on 2d Krestovsky Lane, moved to Switzerland when he was 14 years old (in 1999). From 18 years old he has been living in the United States, and now he actively helps his father in anti-Russian activities. In New York Khodorkovsky Jr. with the former Yukos Lawyer Pavel Ivlev created a so-called ‘Institute of Modern Russia, IMR’ which for more than 10 years has been working for American secret services. By the way, Ivlev takes an active part in projects of the CIA on dismemberment of Russia. (See also the investigation‘Carrier of corruption’)

In 2017, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation acknowledged activities of IMR as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky with parents, his first wife and eldest son Pavel. Berlin, 2013

Thus, as of today, this two-bedroom apartment either has been vacant for a long period of time, or has been working as a ‘letter box’. Meanwhile, the State Duma, in January 2024, unanimously approved the bill on property confiscation for several crimes against security of Russia. Such crimes Khodorkovsky father and his son routinely commit fast every day, as this has become their profession and source of livelihood. These are ‘public dissemination knowingly false information about Russian Armed Forces’ (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and ‘financing of activities directed against security of Russia by way of committing any kind of sabotage crimes (Article 281-281.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) as well as other anti-state crimes.

And even if the cadastral value of the apartment on 2d Krestovsky Lane, according to the extract from the State Registry (Rosreyestr) that we received, amounts only to 14.5 million rubles. Of course, for Khodorkovsky such a sum is simply pocket money, yet the value of this two-bedroom apartment is important not in its monetary equivalent, but in its symbolic meaning. This apartment is the last piece of property belonging to the ‘steward of non-system opposition’ in Russia; this small flat in the center of Moscow has been for Khodorkovsky, to some extent, his fairytale ‘unconvertible ruble’.

Extract from EGRN Registry – a ‘certificate’ of Khodorkovsky’s unconvertible ruble

The magic ruble, according to Slav mythology, has an extraordinary quality – it always returns to its owner after small purchases. Owing of this, as they say, ‘nontransferable silver coin’ gave a feeling of one’s exclusiveness and confidence in successful future. ‘Everything will be as it should!’ – these words have repeated the owner of this ‘unconvertible’ two-bedroom apartment, watching from outside how court bailiffs, like under a spell, keep away from his last asset in Russia.
Author: Alexey Chelnokov

See the Russian version at: «Неразменная «трёшка» Ходорковского*»

More on this subject:

‘A little house of a gatekeeper. Mikhail Khodorkovsky has bought a two-stories flat in London for 2 million pounds’
The website Prigovor.ru has found in Great Britain another house belonging to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. On the whole, this finance swindler and collaborationist has in London and its suburbs five luxury real estate units with total value amounting to 24 million pounds or nearly 5 billion rubles.

‘The place of gathering of good Russians’
Khodorkovsky’s propaganda base in the center of London.

‘British luxury of Khodorkovsky’
The website Prigovor.ru has found in Great Britain a mansion of Mikhail Khodorkovsky worth 4.7 million pounds. The estate ‘Best Beech Place’ is situated at a distance of 60 kilometers from London, in the county West Sussex, near the little town Wadhurst.

‘Persistent dodger-billionaires’
For already 18 years Khodorkovsky and Lebedev have been openly and cynically ignoring a court’s ruling, and journalist of the agency FLB.ru have repeatedly written about it in their investigations.

* Khodorkovsky Mikhail Borisovich, born 26.06.1963, — on 20.05.2022 was acknowledged by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as a physical person fulfilling functions of a foreign agent. Included into the Registry of foreign agents with No 389. In 2015, Russia put Khodorkovsky on international wanted list because of his involvement in the murder of the mayor of the town Nefteyugansk Vladimir Petukhov and attempted murder of the entrepreneur Yevgeny Rybin;

* Nevzlin Leonid Borisovich, born 21.09.1959, Individual Insurance Account Number (SNILS) 094-463-07079 – on 20.05.2022 was acknowledged by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation,– on 23.06.2023 was included in the Registry of foreign agents with No 622. On August 1, 2008, Navzlin, as ordering customer and organizer of five murders and six attempted murders was sentence in absentia to lifelong imprisonment. The European Court of Human Rights, summering up Nevzlin’s claim in 2022, pointed out that it had not established any ‘bias of court’ in Russia;

** Institute of Modern Russia, Inc. — organization whose activities are acknowledged as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation by the decision of the Office of Prosecutor General of 26.04.2017;

** ‘Otkrytaya Rossia’ (Open Russia), Great Britain – organization whose activities was acknowledged as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation by the decision of the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation of 26.04.2017