The family of the Deputy Minister of Justice Sviridenko, who oversees “foreign agents”, found real estate on the Cote d’Azur

The family of Deputy Minister of Justice Oleg Sviridenko, who oversees “foreign agents”, found real estate on the Cote d’Azur. Investigation issued the Agency publication, which was created by the Project’s investigative team after it was recognized as an undesirable organization and was closed.

As the journalists found out, Deputy Minister of Justice Oleg Sviridenko, who in the past held the post of Deputy Head of the Supreme Court, loves expensive travel abroad – his wife, with whom the official divorced fictitiously, owns real estate in the territory of a NATO country.

According to the authors of the investigation, Sviridenko divorced his wife Natalya Poluichik in 1999, but this did not prevent them from having two children in 2002 and 2005. In early 2020, when the qualification board was considering his application for reappointment to the post of deputy head of the Supreme Court, Sviridenko said that he never had assets abroad. They also asked him about relatives and acquaintances on whom these assets can be registered. According to the former deputy head of the Armed Forces, he has no personal life; the last time he spoke with his ex-wife was in 2005.

As the “Agency” found out, this is not the case. Sviridenko’s allegations are refuted by photographs on the pages in social networks of his loved ones. For example, in the summer of 2013, he and his ex-wife and two children were vacationing in the French Alps and playing tennis in the United Arab Emirates, and in 2014 they all went skiing together again to France. The spouses attend social events together, and in the caption to one of the 2016 photos, Natalya Poluichik writes that she is “ready for the birthday of her beloved husband” – the photo was published on Sviridenko’s birthday.

In addition, according to journalists, Natalya Poluichik has a mansion with a tennis court in the village of Bulatovo south of Moscow, which began to be built after the fictitious divorce of the spouses. It also turned out that in Moscow and the region Poluichik has four spacious residential real estate and property in the elite residential complex Karat Apartments in Sochi.

But Poluichik’s assets are not limited to Russia, the family of the Deputy Minister of Justice, who decides which media in Russia should be recognized as a “foreign agent”, for many years hid and did not declare their property on the territory of the NATO country. In November 2012, Poluichik purchased an apartment in the French town of Antibes on the Cote d’Azur for 775 thousand euros.

Formally, Natalia Poluichik has no income that would allow her to own such a significant amount of assets. The Agency notes that Natalia’s entire business is the Roman Kovgan Dance School LLC registered in Moscow, where her daughter Daria teaches. At the same time, the company does not show any profit. Despite this, the contract for the purchase of a villa in France states that Poluichik purchases housing with his own funds.

The villa was sold in 2019 for 680 thousand euros, they were paid in cash.

The Agency also discovered Sviridenko’s connections with businessman Yuri Volikov, who in 2015 had cocaine in his rented apartment on Krutitskaya Embankment in Moscow during a search. The case file mentions Natalya Poluichik, she explained to the investigation about the apartment at her disposal, owned by Volikov. Volikov himself said that he had given the apartment for use to the “deputy” Poluichik. Who is this deputy and why the apartment was transferred to him is unknown. Later, this apartment was transferred to the son of ex-judge Sviridenko – Alexander.

According to the Agency, Poluichik received 2 million rubles a month from Volikov’s company in 2015-2017. Earlier, in another firm of the entrepreneur, the salary was paid to another ex-wife of Sviridenko Elena. The authors also found out that the real estate in the Volikov business center in Strogino is owned by the citizen of Belarus Maria Sviridenko, who is presumably the mother of the Deputy Minister of Justice.