Acting mayor of Moscow: He has nothing to hide

Acting Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said he had nothing to hide and all his property and the property owned by his relatives had been declared. “Everything was declared many years ago. So no one is hiding anything,” Sobyanin said, commenting on media reports about an apartment in central Moscow registered in the name of his daughter. Earlier, one of the mayoral candidates, opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny had questioned legality of the acquisition of the apartment reportedly owned by Sobyanin’s daughter. Sobyanin’s spokesperson Gulnara Penkova told journalists that the 308 square meter apartment had been provided to Sobyanin by the Kremlin’s property management department in January 2006 when he was presidential chief of staff at that time. “The apartment was duly privatized and officially declared,” she said. Viktor Khrekov, spokesperson for the presidential property management department, said the apartment had been given to Sobyanin as one of the high-ranking state officials in accordance with effective legislation. “This is standard practice,” he added.