( MOSCOW REGION ) – A four bedroom apartment in Dubai, a villa on the Italian coast, and a 2,400 square metre house with its own pond on Rublyovka are among the assets linked to the family of Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the Moscow region for nearly 14 years, according to a new investigation by the Anti Corruption Foundation.
The investigation, published on 10th September 2026 by Alexei Navalny’s team and presented by Georgy Alburov, traces how the Vorobyov family turned proximity to power into political careers, lucrative businesses and luxury property in Russia and abroad. Meanwhile, residents of the Moscow region face utility failures, landfills and crumbling infrastructure.
The foundation of the family’s fortunes was laid in Krasnoyarsk in the late 1980s, outside the regional Communist Party committee building. Two senior party officials watched a demonstration of happy workers below, balloons in their hands, banners reading “The Energy of Perestroika.” Trucks carried portraits of Lenin and floats proclaimed “All shipments, right on schedule.”
Those two officials were Yuri Vorobyov, then 40, and Sergei Shoigu, then 33. They had recently met but had already become close, their families visiting each other. Vorobyov’s son recalled how Shoigu and his wife came for a New Year’s Eve dinner, and while walking their guests out, they spotted a drunk man lying in a snowdrift. The two men carried him to the nearest police station together. It was the future emergencies minister’s first rescue operation.
A few months later, Shoigu left for Moscow, for the State Committee for Architecture and Construction. A year after that, he took charge of the newly formed rescue corps and summoned Yuri Vorobyov from Krasnoyarsk, making him his deputy. Their careers stayed intertwined for years, and their friendship never faded. They built houses next door to each other outside Moscow. The investigation notes this was the first drone footage ever shot by the foundation, 13 years ago. Compared to the palaces both men own today, those houses now look like peasant huts.
Yuri Vorobyov remained Shoigu’s deputy everywhere he went until 2007, when he retired to a seat in the Federation Council. But by then he had accomplished the most important task of his life: he had handed his son Andrei over to Shoigu’s care.
In 2000, Shoigu, then head of the Emergencies Ministry, was leading Unity, a party assembled in three months to back Vladimir Putin, which made it into the State Duma. He was rewarded with the post of deputy prime minister and began looking for people for his team, starting with close friends.
Andrei Vorobyov tells the story himself: “Once, in the locker room after a football match, he asked me: ‘Want to give it a try?'”
By that point Vorobyov, like many children of senior officials, had already become a businessman. He decided to give it a try.
After less than a year as Shoigu’s assistant, Vorobyov began building his career inside the newly formed United Russia party, which Shoigu had helped create. For twelve years he headed the party’s support fund, served as a senator from Adygea, a republic he never lived in, spent three terms as a State Duma deputy, ran the party’s executive committee and became deputy speaker of the Duma.
In May 2012, Shoigu became governor of the Moscow region. Six months later he became defence minister. The governor’s seat was empty, and Shoigu suggested to Putin that Andrei Vorobyov take his place. Putin agreed.
The Moscow region is not a suburb of the capital. It is an enormous territory, bigger than Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands combined. Nearly nine million residents, second only to Moscow itself, roughly the population of Austria. A budget of over one trillion rubles a year, around 12.2 billion US dollars or 9.1 billion pounds at current rates. This is where Rublyovka is located, the most expensive land in Russia. The region ranks first in the country for new housing construction.
The main asset of the Moscow region is the land itself. A single hectare in an elite village near Moscow costs more than entire districts in Zabaykalsky Krai, and construction permits are issued by an agency that answers directly to the governor.
In other words, Shoigu did not just hand his family friend a chair. He handed him a money printer. Vorobyov has been sitting on it for nearly 14 years, longer than any governor before him.
Much has changed since then. The political godfather, the once untouchable Minister Shoigu, is today described as a lonely old man waiting for them to come for him. His closest allies, the people who worked alongside him in the Moscow region and at the Defence Ministry, are all now behind bars. Yuri Vorobyov is quietly living out his days in the Federation Council. Of the three, only Andrei Vorobyov remains in a truly important post.
He managed that by understanding early on that patrons come and go, but Putin and United Russia stay put. Vorobyov became a loyal Putinist and an ardent supporter of the war. In March 2022 he appeared in public with the letter Z on his chest and turned the entire region into one giant pro war installation. War symbols appeared on garbage trucks and snowplows. Schoolchildren lined up to form the letters Z and V, posing with placards. Pro war rallies were held with bussed in public sector workers. Even the cows in the Moscow region were lined up to form a Z.
But not a single member of his own family bought into any of this propaganda. None of them waved flags at the rallies, and none of them went to the front.
As governor, Vorobyov continues serving United Russia. With elections coming up, it is time to pay that debt back. The investigation refers not only to the classic ballot stuffing, carousel voting and rewritten protocols in his region. Vorobyov is on the federal party list, heading the regional group for the Moscow region.
He will not actually become a deputy. He is the classic locomotive: a recognisable face pulling the list along. Voters cast their ballot for the face, and after the election the locomotive gives up his seat, leaving completely unknown people to take it in the Duma.
Duma candidates are required to file a financial declaration. Putin scrapped that requirement for officials and governors in 2022, citing the war, but the rule still applies to Duma candidates. So the investigation examined what the governor has accumulated.
Annual income: just over 78 million rubles, around 950,000 US dollars or 710,000 pounds. Bank accounts: 300 million rubles, around 3.7 million US dollars or 2.7 million pounds. Two hectares of land. A 615 square metre house, a 215 square metre bathhouse, a 360 square metre garage. Impressive for a man who has spent the last 26 years exclusively in public service.
The house is new in his declaration, but it is not a freshly bought property. It is the very house from the foundation’s first drone footage, next to Shoigu’s. Yuri Vorobyov, the retired senator, finally transferred it to his son. But that is not where Vorobyov lives.
The governor of one of Russia’s wealthiest regions lives at his mother’s place. His actual address appears repeatedly in leaked data: Barvikha, Klenovaya Street, house 9. The whole property belongs to Lyudmila Vorobyova, a pensioner. On Rublyovka she owns a 2,400 square metre house, two hectares of land and her own private pond with a sports complex. Value: roughly 4 billion rubles, around 49 million US dollars or 36 million pounds.
A few years ago there was a fire there, and the news referred to the place as “Governor Vorobyov’s house.” The neighbouring plot belongs to his brother, Maxim Vorobyov. A third neighbouring house used to belong to the sister of Shoigu’s wife. After the investigation, it was quickly transferred to an unknown citizen of Uzbekistan.
The investigation also examined an official news item from the Moscow region government’s website: “The wife of the Moscow region governor, Yekaterina Bagdasarova, took part in a tourist gathering.” Bagdasarova’s Instagram shows photos with Vorobyov from the house on Rublyovka, with its recognisable columns. She is seen walking with him into a church, making dumplings, embracing him at Lake Baikal and in Venice, seeing their children off to school. They have flown abroad together dozens of times, almost always on private planes.
Bagdasarova leads an active public life. She heads the Union of Russian Women chapter in the Moscow region, meets with activists under portraits of Putin, receives awards from the Patriarch personally, welcomes delegations at the regional government, becomes the godmother of the submarine Mozhaysk, and visits social rehabilitation centres as the governor’s wife.
But there is no such thing, and never has been, as a “First Lady” or “governor’s wife” named Yekaterina Bagdasarova. A woman by that name exists. The children with Vorobyov exist. The columns exist. The submarine exists. What does not exist is a marriage. Vorobyov and Bagdasarova have lived together for many years. He mentioned her in an interview as far back as 2012. They are raising children together, but they have never registered the marriage at a civil registry office.
The investigation states it does not care how anyone chooses to arrange their relationships. But it stops being a private matter the moment one of them enters public service. In every case examined, this kind of unofficial wife arrangement exists for one reason: to keep something out of the declaration.
The law requires full asset disclosure from an official spouse. Vorobyov and Bagdasarova sidestep that requirement. Duma candidates are required to declare all foreign property, both their own and their spouse’s. It is a separate, highly detailed document: not just “there is an apartment,” but the purchase date, the amount, the country and even where the money came from.
The governor of the Chelyabinsk region, for example, listed his wife’s apartment in Cyprus. Former minister, now deputy, Maxim Topilin listed his wife’s apartment in Bulgaria. The governor of the Murmansk region disclosed his wife’s property in Spain. In that same document, Vorobyov has nothing. No foreign property, no spouse listed. Yet both should be there.
In January 2024, on the very day Vorobyov was meeting with freezing residents of Solnechnogorsk, who had to install mobile boiler units in the streets because the old heating system was falling apart, his unofficial wife Yekaterina Bagdasarova was buying an apartment in Dubai. The Madinat Jumeirah Living complex, right across from the Burj Al Arab. The governor’s family bought a four bedroom apartment there, 247 square metres. Marble kitchens, high ceilings. A rooftop terrace with views of the Persian Gulf, swimming pools, jacuzzis and a climate controlled covered bridge connecting the building to the neighbouring resort. Price: 350 million rubles, around 4.3 million US dollars or 3.2 million pounds. The apartment appears in none of Vorobyov’s declarations.
Dubai is popular with the Vorobyov family in general. The investigation describes it as the perfect city for a United Russia official: warm, by the sea, no sanctions, direct flights from Moscow, and nobody asks awkward questions about money. Rack up some votes for Putin and United Russia, and off you fly to Dubai, where there is no war and no collapsing boiler systems.
A few weeks before Vorobyov’s wife made her purchase, his brother Maxim’s wife, Israeli citizen Svetlana Kalininskaya, also bought an apartment in Dubai. It is in the Royal Atlantis Residences on Palm Jumeirah, the complex that opened with a Beyoncé concert, for which she was reportedly paid 24 million dollars for one night. The complex has ninety pools, both private and shared, including one on the roof. Residents get access to Dubai’s longest private beach, two kilometres long, and a massive aquarium full of marine life inside the bar. Kalininskaya bought 178 square metres for 230 million rubles, around 2.8 million US dollars or 2.1 million pounds.
The biggest Dubai purchase in the family belongs to Vorobyov’s in law. The mother of Mark Tipikin, husband of the governor’s older daughter, is also an Israeli citizen, Elena Veretilnaya. In 2022 she bought a property at Six Senses Residences The Palm. It is a villa in the sky: a two storey home on the building’s top floors, with its own rooftop garden terrace and a pool overlooking all of Dubai. Total area: 600 square metres. Inside: hand selected Italian marble and floor to ceiling windows. Downstairs: a 6,000 square metre wellness complex with a longevity clinic and a dedicated biohacking room, the kind of place where wealthy people try to buy themselves an extra twenty years of life. Price: 900 million rubles, around 11 million US dollars or 8.2 million pounds.
Vorobyov is not legally obligated to declare his brother’s or in laws’ apartments. But Bagdasarova’s apartment in Dubai he would have had to declare, if she were officially his wife. And it is not just Dubai. He is hiding plenty back in Russia too.
Bagdasarova is listed as the owner of an apartment in Moscow, on Yefremova Street: 348 square metres in Knightsbridge Private Park, a gated community in Khamovniki built in the finest traditions of English residential architecture, complete with its own park, kindergarten and five star hotel level concierge service. Today that apartment is worth roughly a billion rubles, around 12.2 million US dollars or 9.1 million pounds.
Another of Bagdasarova’s apartments is in St Petersburg, on Krestovsky Island, in the Imperial Yacht Club complex. It is 252 square metres, worth 600 million rubles, around 7.3 million US dollars or 5.5 million pounds. It has its own yacht marina, a helipad and 600 metres of granite embankment behind a private fence. Among the neighbours: Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller. Altogether, the non existent first lady of the Moscow region has property registered in her name worth nearly 2 billion rubles, around 24.4 million US dollars or 18.2 million pounds.
Back to Bagdasarova’s Instagram. Among the dumplings, the churches and the kids in military uniforms, there is a photo taken against what looks very much like a seaside resort town. Posted on 26th July 2017. That is the day she and Vorobyov flew back on a private plane from Pisa, the nearest airport to Forte dei Marmi, the most expensive resort on the Italian coast and, at the same time, the most Russian one.
Back in 2014, The New York Times was already writing that in August, fur coats hang from the shop windows there, and the beach clubs serve vodka on ice. The place had earned the nickname “the Russian colony,” since a third of the homes there belonged to Russians. Google Street View confirmed the theory.
Twenty minutes on foot from there is a villa with a pool. On 29th January 2019, its new owners became a young Russian couple: Mark Tipikin and Yekaterina Vorobyova. That is the governor’s eldest daughter and her husband. They were 25 and 23 at the time. A two storey, 340 square metre mansion sits on a quarter hectare plot in a quiet neighbourhood among wealthy neighbours. It is just over a kilometre to the beach and the boutique lined promenade. Today the house is worth around half a billion rubles, around 6.1 million US dollars or 4.6 million pounds, and the Vorobyov family still owns it. No sanctions have ever been placed on it.
The biggest fan of life abroad in this family is the governor’s brother, Maxim, the one Andrei transferred the business to when he went into public service. Journalists have found him owning an apartment in Paris worth 12 million euros, around 14 million US dollars or 10.3 million pounds, in a historic building near the Bois de Boulogne, previously home to the founder of Lacoste. They have also found apartments in Monaco, just steps from the Monte Carlo casino, along with a full set of passports for the family: Israeli, Latvian and Singaporean.
The investigation addresses the likely objection that the Vorobyovs are well known businessmen with Russian Sea and fish processing plants, and that it is all honestly earned. It states it will not pretend to call them honest businessmen. Russian Sea is a family business, but it was losing money until Gennady Timchenko, a friend of Putin and Shoigu, became a co owner. After that, competitors in the fishing industry were eliminated one by one, with the help of the Federal Fisheries Agency and the FSB. A few months after their family friend Shoigu became defence minister, Russian Sea landed a billion ruble contract to supply fish to the army.
The company Samolet, the largest developer in the Moscow region, entirely dependent on decisions made by Vorobyov, took on Vorobyov’s brother as a partner in multi billion ruble projects. The investigation states that such coincidences simply do not happen. The source of the Vorobyov family’s billions is not talent or a special gift for catching fish. It is power, what is known in Russia as administrative leverage. First it was the father’s power, working as a senior official at the Emergencies Ministry under Shoigu. Then it was Shoigu’s own power, promoting the Vorobyovs and their business. And now it is the power of Andrei Vorobyov himself, master of one of Russia’s wealthiest regions. They hold the money printer in their own hands.
The Vorobyovs now have palaces, apartments worth billions of rubles, residences in Dubai, Italy, France and Monaco, and a stack of passports letting them live somewhere with no Putin and no United Russia.
What did the people of the Moscow region get in return? Klimovsk, freezing because the pipes burst. Children in Volokolamsk hospitalised after a gas leak from the landfill. The town of Pushkino, where 50 homes sat flooded with sewage for months. Every winter in the Moscow region looks like an endless chronicle of utility infrastructure collapse.
The investigation returns to where it began: Krasnoyarsk, the regional party committee, two party officials by the window, a happy demonstration marching below. Nearly forty years have passed. One of them went on to serve as minister and governor; the other spent decades as his closest ally, and that man’s billionaire son now runs one of the country’s wealthiest regions.
The offices have changed, the titles, the slogans, even the generations. But the system itself has barely changed at all. Back then, the party elite handed out positions among their own. Now, by that same principle, Putin’s elite hands out not just positions, but government contracts, land and billions of rubles.
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