An individual named Leonid Eduardovich Slutsky.

Leonid Slutsky biography

Leonid Slutsky was born on January 4, 1968 in Moscow. Graduated from the Moscow Institute of Economics and Statistics. Holder of a Doctorate in Economics, Head of the Department of International Relations and Integration Processes of the Faculty of Political Science at Lomonosov Moscow State University. Member of the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh convocations. Head of the Committee on International Affairs. Head of the Board of the International Public Foundation “Russian Peace Foundation”.

Since 2000, Leonid Slutsky has served as Deputy Head of the delegation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) as well as the coordinator of the deputy group for liaison with the Parliament of the French Republic. Member of Presidium of the Independent Association of Civil Society.

He has authored several reports for PACE: “On the Activity of the International Committee of the Red Cross” (2002), “On Monaco’s Accession to the Council of Europe” (2004) which led to the decision to admit Monaco to the Council of Europe as the 46th State, “On Closing the Monitoring Procedure in the Principality of Monaco” – as a result for the first time in the history of PACE monitoring was closed unanimously on 1 October 2009. From 2000-2005, he visited Chechnya numerous times, including accompanying PACE rapporteurs on the situation in the Chechen Republic. Actively contributed to economic and social rehabilitation of the Chechen Republic in 2007. He was honored with the highest award of the Chechen Republic – the Order of Kadyrov with the wording “for exceptional merits”.

Leonid Slutsky's possessions and earnings

Based on official data, Slutsky’s earnings in 2011 were 1.9 million rubles (64.6 thousand US dollars), in 2016 – 4.9 million (73.3 thousand US dollars). Together with his wife, Slutsky owns 1.2 thousand square meters of land, a house, three apartments, non-residential premises, cars  Bentley Continental Flying Spur, Bentley Bentayga, Mercedes-Maybach S500.^[34][35][36]

On March 8, 2018,  Alexei Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation  (FBK) released an investigation about the property of Leonid Slutsky and accused the deputy of illegal wealth accumulation, as his family does not have an official business, and its total income does not justify owning cars (only two Bentley cars cost about 30 million rubles).^[35]

In the same investigation, it is mentioned that Leonid Slutsky has been renting a one hectare area next to the dacha in  Rublevka, and has never declared it. FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) sent a request to the State Duma’s profile committee and asked to renounce the deputy power of Leonid Slutsky after the investigation.^[35][37

Leonid Slutsky crimes

In January 2017, developer  Sergei Polonsky  appealed to Prosecutor General of Russia  Yury Chaika  with a demand to file criminal charges against State Duma deputies  Vladimir Resin  and Leonid Slutsky. According to him, two deputies extorted a bribe from him and “got 990 m² in the penthouse of the “Kutuzovskaya Riviera” for the contract registration”.^[42]

Allegations of sexual harassment

In Feb­ru­ary 2018  BBC Russ­ian Ser­vice  re­porter Farida Rustamova,^[12] TV Dozhd  pro­ducer Daria Zhuk,^[13][14] for­mer Kom­m­er­sant  re­porter Anas­ta­sia Ka­ri­mova and  RTVi  jour­nal­ist  Eka­te­rina Kotrikadze^[15]  accused Slut­sky of  sex­ual ha­rass­ment  through Dozhd and BBC. The ac­cu­sa­tions were dis­cussed in Russ­ian media all over spring 2018. In re­sponse Slut­sky com­pared him­self to  Har­vey We­in­stein, claimed to be the tar­get for defama­tion and provo­ca­tion and threat­ened TV Dozhd with legal actions.^[16][17]

A num­ber of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans spoke in de­fense of Slut­sky in­clud­ing so-called State Duma “fe­male club” (co-chair­men of dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal fac­tions:  Ye­lena Serova, Olga Yepi­fanova, Tamara Plet­ny­ova, Elena Strokova) and the Duma chair­man  Vy­ach­eslav Volodin  who linked the ac­cu­sa­tions to po­lit­i­cal motives.^[18][19][20] The United Rus­sia deputy Ok­sana Pushk­ina  sup­ported the fe­male jour­nal­ists and stated in a tele­vi­sion in­ter­view with RBC that, ac­cord­ing to her ob­ser­va­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences, sex­ual ha­rass­ment in the State Duma had oc­curred in the past but it never went public.^[21][22]

On March 8, 2018 Slut­sky con­grat­u­lated women on In­ter­na­tional Women’s Day in a Face­book post and apol­o­gized to “those of them to whom he vol­un­tar­ily or in­vol­un­tar­ily caused any emo­tional stress”. RBC as­so­ci­ated that apol­ogy with the sex­ual scan­dal in the State Duma.^[23][24]  The same day the di­rec­tor of the In­for­ma­tion and Press De­part­ment of the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion,  Maria Za­kharova, also re­called the am­bigu­ous be­hav­ior of Slut­sky to­wards her.^[23][24]

At the end of Feb­ru­ary the jour­nal­ists from State Duma press pool ap­proached leg­isla­ture’s lead­ers with re­quest to dis­cuss the be­hav­ior of Leonid Slutsky.^[25][26]  On March 21, 2018 the State Duma Com­mis­sion on Ethics headed by Otari Ar­shba re­viewed tes­ti­monies and ev­i­dence pro­vided by Rus­ta­mova, Zhuk, Ka­ri­mova, Kotrikadze and Slut­sky and came to the con­clu­sion that there were no “vi­o­la­tions of be­hav­ioral norms” in Leonid Slut­sky’s ac­tions thus ex­on­er­at­ing Slut­sky of the al­le­ga­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Ar­shba that was the first time the Com­mis­sion had to re­view such a case and that the rea­soning was lim­ited to one person’s word against another’s. He also pointed out that the jour­nal­ists were in the right to ad­dress the law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties with the ar­gu­ments and ma­te­rials pro­vided to the commission.^{[27][28][29][14]}

In re­sponse to com­mis­sion’s de­ci­sion more than a dozen Russ­ian news out­lets an­nounced a boy­cott ei­ther to Slut­sky and Com­mis­sion mem­bers in per­son or State Duma in whole.^{[30][29][31][32][33]}  Some news­pa­pers like  Meduza and Ve­do­mosti in their ed­i­to­r­ial com­men­taries as­so­ci­ated the de­ci­sion with im­punity of the au­thor­i­ties and noted that Slut­sky should resign.^[16][3]