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A computer-generated image of the Bolshoi Utrish resort’s main building, a three-story pink villa with four spacious bedrooms, a spa and two wine cellars.
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Despite Kremlin denials, mounting evidence suggests that the Kremlin does indeed have links to an obscure organization overseeing the contentious construction of a luxury resort in the heart of what was supposed to be an environmentally protected nature reserve.
Here are a few of the links between the Kremlin and the organization, Dar:
The head of Dar's supervisory board is a college friend of President Dmitry Medvedev who once worked under him at .
Dar's managing company has the same address, phone number and director as a cultural foundation overseen by Medvedev's wife, Svetlana Medvedeva.
And a leaked copy of the apparent blueprint for the planned Black Sea resort bears the name of the head of the Office of Presidential Affairs, Vladimir Kozhin, whose signature would "authorize" the project.
Yet the Kremlin insists that it has no ties with the ritzy resort, which remains in the works despite protests from environmentalists and hundreds of local residents, or with Dar, whose formal name is the Foundation for Regional Noncommercial Projects "Dar."
Kozhin, in his most recent denial last week, adamantly rejected the notion that the Kremlin "had anything to do with" the resort in the Bolshoi Utrish park in the Krasnodar region.
"It's being built by one of the foundations. There are many of them," Kozhin said when asked who was behind the resort by a host on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Environmentalists, who have been painstakingly tracking the project since its inception in 2008, said it appears that Kremlin officials are determined to build a new vacation residence on the coastline property and are ready to move mountains to make sure that it happens — even at the risk of provoking social unrest amid the economic crisis.
The resort promises to dazzle. Its main building, a pretty three-story pink villa suited for the French Riviera, will have four spacious bedrooms, along with a "jasper room," a pool, a movie theater, a spa, two wine cellars and apartments for a personal chef, doctor and head of security, according to a 42-page leaked document that includes floor plans and computer-generated images of the future resort, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times.
Other resort perks include a helipad for three helicopters, a banya and three kinds of saunas, massage rooms, a sports facility with tennis courts, a marina and yacht club, a guesthouse and a VIP apartment building. The vast area will be guarded by a special security system that uses technology to "reveal subversive and terrorist devices."
Waiting staff and security guards are to be housed in a five-story building with 66 apartments and a total capacity for 178 people. The apartment building will also have a practice shooting range.
The Office of Presidential Affairs, which manages most buildings for the federal government, including Medvedev's official residences, has not confirmed the existence of the document or Kozhin's signature on it. But sources who helped publish the document on the Internet, including on the web site of the North Caucasus Environmental Watch organization, vouched for its authenticity in interviews with The Moscow Times. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity.
The first evidence of the Kremlin's involvement in the resort surfaced in April when Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachyov signed into law a document titled the "Krasnodar Forest Plan," a list of current and future recreational areas in the region. The forest plan describes the future resort as a "health and recreation complex" and says it was initiated by the construction department of the Office of Presidential Affairs.
The regional government must have "made a mistake," a spokesman for the Office of Presidential Affairs, Viktor Khrekov, told The Moscow Times at the time.
Although the Krasnodar administration has had 10 months to correct any mistakes, the forest plan still reflected the involvement of the Office of Presidential Affairs in the resort on Thursday.
The land being used for the resort was leased to Dar under an agreement signed with the Krasnodar region in the summer of 2008, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times. The agreement, however, limits Dar's use of the land to mundane forestry duties like "developing a trail network" and extinguishing fires.
The land is a picturesque seaside plot that environmentalists say is the most valuable territory in the whole Bolshoi Utrish park. The park's unique combination of dry subtropical forest and coastal ecosystem led environmentalists to lobby for its designation as a federally protected reserve, which would make it one of about 100 protected reserves in Russia that qualify for its own staff of scientists and higher state funding.
The federal government agreed to designate the Bolshoi Utrish park as a federal reserve, with then-President Vladimir Putin issuing a decree in 2001 to create it. The World Wildlife Fund won a tender to complete the needed research for the reserve and in early 2008 submitted a map showing the reserve's parameters to the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry. The ministry was to authorize and forward the project to Prime Minister Putin for his signature.
Reality, however, took a different route when the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry contacted the WWF and asked it to remove Dar’s zone from the reserve, making it vulnerable to development.
“The ministry asked us to redraw the boundaries after the project was already done,” WWF director Igor Chestin told The Moscow Times.
Subsequent meetings between the WWF and the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry were attended by an official from the Office of Presidential Affairs, Chestin said.
“It was clear there was interest on their part in the planned complex on the rented plot,” Chestin said of the Office of Presidential Affairs.
An altered plan for the nature reserve was unveiled last month when the Krasnodar administration held required public hearings both for the reserve and a road that would cut through it, connecting the posh resort with the main road to Anapa.
But attempts by protesters to denounce the plans during the hearings fell flat.
About 200 protesters gathered for a sanctioned rally on the day of the hearings in a square in Anapa only to learn that municipal authorities were installing a New Year's tree at the precise time and place of the protest and a squad of street cleaners were hosing down the square, making the gathering nearly impossible, said Krasnodar-based journalist Dmitry Shevchenko, who went to Anapa for the hearings.
He and about 100 people, including two television crews and WWF specialist Roman Mnatsekanov, one of the authors of the original reserve plan, tried to enter the hearings but were stopped "by men who physically blocked the doors," he said.
In subsequent weeks, protesters have staged a series of large and small rallies in two dozen cities, demanding that the initial plan for the nature reserve be left intact.
About 100 people participated in a demonstration in Krasnodar on Sunday, while on Monday, a small group of people picketed the Moscow offices of the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Atomic Inspection, which is reviewing the revised documents for the reserve before they are submitted to Putin.
Dar, meanwhile, has managed to maintain its obscurity despite the controversy. The foundation has no web site, and there is no Internet record of any projects that it has completed, despite the fact that it has eight regional offices from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg, according to publicly available registration records.
The only public statement that the foundation has ever made came through an independent news release distribution web site last October, when Dar denied building the resort for the Office of Presidential Affairs. "During the starting stages of the project, we wanted to seek assistance from several construction subsidiaries of the Office of Presidential Affairs," the statement said, without explaining who it was building the resort for. "However, the foundation had to later abandon this idea."
A Dar receptionist reached through a telephone number listed on the statement refused to talk with a reporter.
Dar boasts huge cash reserves, supported at least in part by a $463.5 million loan that its managing company secured from state-owned Gazprombank in 2007, Vedomosti reported in 2008. The amount of the loan equaled 1.9 percent of the bank's entire credit portfolio that year.
Dar also is well connected. Its managing company is registered under the same address and phone number as Svetlana Medvedeva's Foundation for Socio-Cultural Initiatives, according to the SPARK-Interfax database.
A receptionist at the Foundation for Socio-Cultural Initiatives declined to connect a reporter with director Olga Travina, who she said was "very busy."
Travina is also the head of Dar's managing company, according to SPARK-Interfax.
Dar also benefits from having Ilya Yeliseyev, deputy chairman of Gazprombank's management board, as head of its supervisory board. Yeliseyev has held the position with Dar since 2006, according to a copy of his biography published by Gazprombank in its financial reports.
Yeliseyev is a college friend of Medvedev, who served as Gazprom's chairman before being elected to the Kremlin. The two were law students at St. Petersburg State University and subsequently taught law together at the school.
Gazprombank declined immediate comment about its relationship with Dar on Thursday and asked that a request be submitted by e-mail.
Despite its obscurity, Dar's clout appears to be growing. A draft government decree that will amend a list of official projects for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics names Dar as the developer of two "official reception houses" called Achipse and Psekhako.
The draft decree, posted on the web site of the Regional Development Ministry, is currently being reviewed by various state agencies, a ministry representative said.
The Achipse River and Psekhako Ridge are landmarks at a ski resort being developed by Gazprom near Krasnaya Polyana.
A Gazprom spokesman said Thursday that his company was planning two reception houses called Achipse and Psekhako but denied that they would be built by Dar.
"Gazprom has no relationship with Dar," the spokesman said.
He said the reception houses were in the planning stages and currently undergoing environmental assessment. He declined to comment on the draft government decree.
Protests by environmentalists and local residents brought a halt to Dar's construction of the road between Anapa and the planned resort in January 2009, and environmentalists are hoping to uncover information about Dar that will assist their efforts to stop construction of the resort.
"We have no idea what this foundation is," said Maria Ruzina, coordinator of Save Utrish, a group formed in 2008 to protect the Bolshoi Utrish park from development.
Ruzina has spent most of the past year living in the park and keeping constant watch for signs of bulldozers returning to work on the road. About 150 people have taken shifts living in tents and dealing with curious, and sometimes aggressive, visitors near the incomplete road over the past year.
"It's hard to say what people will do if the amended boundaries for the reserve are legalized," Ruzina said. "Something that is so illegal in essence simply cannot become law."
