At the beginning of June the Bavarian newspaper Abendzeitung featured a headline “Russians Are Coming!” With a mixed feeling of horror and rapture the German journalists came to a conclusion: never before have seen their idyllic quiet parts such a big quantity of Russian tourists, investors and even frauds.   

A tip of one thousand

According to a German agency responsible for registering the travel by foreigners, the number of Russians visiting the south of the country has increased for more than one third only during the period from January-March. In Munich alone the rooms in hotels were booked by 40,488 people from Moscow, St Petersburg and other Russian cities.  

“Your President has made an excellent advertisement of our place!” the manager of a luxury Bayrischer Hof, Innegrit Volkhardt smiles with content. The Hotel was opened in 1841 and it received emperors and crown princes. Something like 40 years ago the Conference On the Politics and Safety Issues began to hold its meetings there. The last year “hawk” speech by Putin not only resounded all over the world, it also made the Bayrischer Hof an obligatory place to be visited by our state persons and patriots.  

This spring, the Bavarian paparazzi managed to shoot a visit by another visitor from Moscow with a pensive face of Faberge eggs collector. The oligarch arrived in a white Lamborghini. He took apartment in the Promenadenplatz, made in colonial style, with a price starting from 1,500 euro per night, and then he made for Viktualienmarkt, an ancient market which is the measure of the financial wealth of the local dwellers. There is a byword there - “rich enough to feed his dog from Viktual”.         

Another visitor from Moscow, a female who is used to exorbitant prices in the Russian capital, shocked Christian Stempfuber, the manager of a new branch of D&G in the center of Munich, which is the most expensive city in FRG. “The lady specified whether the figures on the price labels were correct and then she bought up half of the shop at once”.       

Zepp Kratz, one of the organizers of the famous Oktoberfest still cannot forget how a few years ago his huge marquee “Hippodrome” was visited by Roman Abramovich. He was so content with drinks, foods and service that he gave a top tip, unprecedented in the whole history of the festival.  

“I guess he did not care which banknote he would find in his pocket” recalls Herr Kratz. “That was two 500 euro ones. It seems that you in Russia just do not have smaller money”.   

Don’t hurt them with cheapness

Everyday talk by conservative Bavarians is featured now with a Russian expression “Njet, ya ne khotchu prodavat svoi dom!” (No, I don’t want to sell my home!).

However, Russian tourists are getting to offer more insistently and more frequently to buy the houses attractive for them. The experts say that customers from Russia now buy the most prestigious and expensive German property ten times as often as before.   

The beginning of this buy-up fever was made at the turn of the century. It’s then that a well known Munich firm Kristall-Lenchten sent about half a dozen of luxury chandeliers to a small town of Garmisch-Partenkirkhen at Wilhelm von Muller Street, 10. The box “recipient” said   “An Frau Tatjana Elzin”. Building 10 turned out to be a medieval castle Leitenschlossel. According to German media, this architectural masterpiece was allegedly gifted to the daughter of the first Russian President by Roman Abramovich.       

The inflow of rich Russians into these blessed near Alpine valleys has increased by a factor of ten since then. 8-10 years ago the ski resort of Garmisch was visited by no more than a thousand Russians per year. The figure now is 10-15 thousands.  

“At least once a month I am asked by some of your people whether I am selling my estate” complains Martha Winkdorf. The former teacher is astonished with the fact that those asking this question add at once “The price does not matter at all”.    

Our people are interested not only in castles and real estates, but also in “modest” property. I’ve been shown recently a new housing complex of two-level design in the most prestigious district of the Bavarian capital. In Munich standards, the price is just exorbitant – up to one and a half million euro! And a local broker, who preferred to stay anonymous, informed me that 5 apartments having been sold during one week, three of them were bought by Russians.  

The world-scale ‘laundry’

An old acquaintance of mine, Rolf (let’s call him so) who works in Stuttgart’s criminal police has been performing with his colleagues an operative watching on a certain Alexander L., 59, a former high ranking official from Russian justice system. Also watched and tapped has been a former Moscow dweller Oleg R., 47, who settled in Germany long ago.    

It’s exactly through those people, who are on the dock now, that another involved person, Alexander Afanasyev, executed a large-scale buying-up of plots in most attractive lands of FRG.       

The sentence has not delivered yet on this dragging case. So now it’s only possible to consider as a hypothesis the assumption by German journalists who insist that it is not only “Izmailovskaya” criminal organized group, but also Oleg Deripaska (the richest Russian, according to Forbes magazine) to stand behind the acquiring of 50 big plots in FRG.  

German media and prosecution bodies still have many questions about the situation regarding a firm Darmstadt named St. Petersburg Immobilien und Beteiligungs- AG (SPAG). Not only local newspapers but also the book by Yurgen Rot (Die Gangster aus dem Osten — Neue Wege der Kriminalitаt) relate this joint-stock company to Rudolf Ritter, who was involved in a criminal laundering case of drug barons but was acquitted in Lichtenstein. Incidentally, as it had been previously advertised by the firms’ representatives, Vladimir Putin used to be a member of advisory board of this joint-stock company at the time when he was deputy mayor of St Petersburg.  

“One small Germany cannot fit such big money” noted once the detective Rolf. “It’s impossible to arrange so much of black capital in your country either. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russians adjusted the globe for their laundering purposes.”  

Well, the detective from Stuttgart was right. Russians have already adjusted the planet. More and more Germans, mostly they are former soviet expatriates, become victims to a new fraud getting strength as far as Paraguay is!  

Most Russian-speaking media in Germany are crammed at the moment with alluring ads like “you invest 30 thousand today and you get a million tomorrow”. The scheme of the fraud is very simple.  

“First, I was described on the phone a place for my farm-to-be as a heaven on Earth” sighs regretfully a former peasant expatriate from Kustanai (that’s in Russia), Ivan Schleppel (the name was changed under request of the grieved person – S.Z.). They said $300 a month would be enough to feed my family. And the 12 hectares I was going to buy were promised to bring me up to $372,000 of net profit out of growing cucumbers only, because the hired work force in Paraguay cost no more than $150 per month.  

Ivan, who has burnt his fingers repeatedly in this life, is living in Stuttgart. Working as a driver of refuse collector he still yearned for living on his own land. So finally he determined to fly to Asuncion where he was met kindly and brought to an office of a firm, decorated with photos of some Kostya and Vadik standing together with a local minister of agriculture. Those former Moscow dwellers showed to the guest a bundle of deeds of purchase for lands in Germany and got him acquainted with a couple of exampling farming families.    

However after the deal was confirmed by a notary and Ivan, who had got indebted, was going to leave Germany for good, it turned out that the acquired by him land “suddenly became waterlogged” and now it was absolutely unfit for growing any crops.   

The court examination that followed after that did not clear much. Ivan only learnt that his former compatriots had tried to hold similar fraud in Germany and nearly got to prison. 

As for Paraguay, the signed there contract was made in such an intricate way that the plots acquired by Ivan and other gudgeons really turned out to be useless for agricultural activities, while the “prosperous” farmers introduced were front, and the hectares, shown as examples, had been sold hundreds (!) times. 

A most conservative estimate indicates that this kind of fraud alone has allowed the profits of over $2 bn for the shifty Russians and corrupted local officials.