The president of Russian Railways may run a state-owned company but he enjoys a posh dacha in suburban Moscow owned by companies set up in Cyprus and Panama by people with connections to him.

By Roman Anin

A few lines posted earlier this month on a popular Russian online forum saying the president of the Russian Railways owns a chunk of land with a luxurious dacha on it, in a posh suburban area of Moscow ignited a heated discussion in the Russian blogosphere.

The post prompted Russian blogger Alexei Navalny to follow up, and he published a document identifying rail president Vladimir Yakunin as the former owner of the same plot where the dacha is situated. The document, retrieved from the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastral Records and Cartography, showed that Yakunin owned the land from 2007 to 2011. Beginning in February 2011, a nested structure of offshore Cyprus and Panamanian replaced him as the landowner.

OCCRP partner Novaya Gazeta took up the story from there to find out who the new owners are. The paper found a series of connections between Yakunin's family and the offshore companies that took over the property.

The 70,000-square-meter plot the country house stands on is located in one of the most popular areas of the Moscow suburbs, in the village of Akulinino. According to similar listings from real estate agencies that work in the area, the price of 100 square meters of land near Akulinino starts at $3,000, putting the current value of the plot at more than $2 million. Based on information from persons familiar with construction expenses, it could cost tens of millions of dollars to build such a structure given the size of the dacha, the infrastructure and the expensive decorative work.

According to land records, the current land owner is the Cyprus-based company Mirolo Investments Ltd. The company obtained the rights to the plot Feb. 25, 2011, the same day Yakunin officially ceased to be its owner.

According to documents from the Cyprus registry of companies, Mirolo Investments is owned by the Panama-based Skiron Holdings S.A.. The trail goes cold in Panama as Skiron Holdings is owned by proxies -- designated shareholders who serve to obscure the real ownership of a company. However, multiple searches through the Russian registrar of commercial enterprises revealed that the Mirolo Investments is connected to the Yakunin family.

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