Russia's deputy prime minister boots out pesky local journalists who wanted to ask about his private jet and fancy home

Aides working for Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov refused to allow a reporter from the news website Znak.com attend a press briefing in Yekaterinberg earlier today, after the journalist said he wanted to ask Shuvalov about his private plane and luxurious apartment in downtown Moscow.

At first, one of Shuvalov's aides told the Znak.com reporter that the deputy prime minister would only respond to questions about soccer, given that his visit to Yekaterinberg was to review local preparations for the next World Cup, which Russia will host in 2018. Later, however, Shuvalov's team moved the press briefing to another location and made it accessible only to television journalists, barring access to the Znak.com reporter and several other correspondents.

According to Znak.com, a Bombardier Global Express air plane reportedly chartered by Shuvalov landed in Yekaterinberg on August 2, apparently confirming reports by anti-corruption activists about the deputy prime minister's luxurious travel habits.

• The Anti-Corruption Foundation, led by opposition leader Alexey Navalny, found 13 “coincidences” in which the airplane Bombardier Global Express happened to be in the same cities as Igor Shuvalov on the same days. The cities included Vladivostok, where Shuvalov recently participated in a forum, and Kazan, where he spoke about particularly small apartments in Moscow. The team also determined that Shuvalov used an airplane to travel to his family’s mansion in Salzburg, Austria, 18 times this year, and estimates that the cost of these trips to amounts to roughly 100 million rubles ($1.6 million). Finally, the team discovered that corgis (Welsh herding dogs) raised by Shuvalov’s wife also travel on this airplane, as, on eight occasions, the jet happened to turn up in cities that were holding Corgi dog shows at the time.
• Navalny's team has also accused Shuvalov of buying ten adjacent apartments on the 14th floor of Moscow’s Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building to create an impressive 719-square-meter (7,740-square-feet) 600-million-ruble ($9.4 million) apartment.
• The company “KSP Capital,” which manages Shuvalov's private assets, confirmed to reporters that Shuvalov does own property at the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building, claiming that the deputy prime minister isn't obligated to declare the real estate because he “doesn't use it.”