Property and income

According to official data, Slutsky's income in 2011 was 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, seaside villa at Bodrum on the southwestern Turkish coast, non-residential premises, and several cars, including a Bentley Continental Flying Spur, a Bentley Bentayga and a Mercedes-Maybach S500.^[36][37][38]

On 8 March 2018 Alexei Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) published 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 is unlikely to afford the cars, with the two Bentleys costing about 30 million rubles).^[37]

In the same investigation, it is pointed out that Slutsky has been renting an area of one hectare next to the dacha in Rublevka, and has never declared it. FBK sent a request to the State Duma's profile committee and asked to renounce the deputy power of Slutsky after the investigation.^[37][39]

Traffic code violations

The investigation of Alexei Navalny and his the FBK states that in the period from June 2017 and March 2018, a Mercedes-Maybach S500 owned by Slutsky violated traffic rules 825 times (including driving on the oncoming lane). The fines amounted to 1.4 million rubles, which makes about 40% of his official income.^[38]

Previously, Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported that on 1 June 2013, officers of the Chief Directorate of Internal Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs detained two inspectors of the GIBDD (General Administration for Traffic Safety), who were taking Leonid Slutsky to the airport in a car with the siren light on. Slutsky refused to explain why he was in the car of the traffic police. According to the publication, the deputy was going to fly from the government airport "Vnukovo-3" to Athos together with Patriarch Kirill.^[40]

Accusations of bribery

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".^[41]

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

In 2022, Slutsky became a member of the Russian negotiating team following the invasion of Ukraine. His role included peace talks and negotiations on the wounded Ukrainian soldiers in the Azovstal steelworks following the end of the Siege of Mariupol. He stated that members of the Azov regiment among the captured soldiers should be executed, and that they do not deserve to live.^[42] This would involve a change in Russian law, which has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 1996, and would potentially break the Geneva Convention.^[43]

Russian Peace Foundation

On April 27, 1960, the Soviet Peace Fund was founded. The founders were the Soviet Peace Committee, the Committee of Youth Organisations of the USSR, the Committee of Soviet Women, the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. The headquarters was located in Moscow. The foundation paid for the education of students from Asian and African countries in the USSR, financed the Soviet Peace Committee and the World Peace Council, erected monuments to fallen Soviet soldiers in Europe, and helped countries in which there were military conflicts and those affected by the Chernobyl accident. It was transformed into the "Russian Peace Fund" in 2003. A partner of the foundation is the German far-right organization Alternative für Deutschland.^[44]

Russia commissioned Slutsky's organization, the "Russian Peace Foundation", and the Polish association European Council on Democracy and Human Rights, which in the past had brought election observers from right-wing populist and right-wing extremist circles to Crimea, to organize their trips. Paid relationships are established and maintained with pro-Moscow Western politicians for Russian own interests and influence. In such an influence operation, the Russian government often responds to the opinions and feelings that already exist among a person or a group in a Western country. The target – usually a politician (i.e Aleksandar Vučić, Viktor Orbán, Marie Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, Geert Wilders, Herbert Kickl), journalist, academic or an other prominent figure – usually already has a milder view of Putin and Russia than is common in the West. By approaching such a person sympathetically and, if necessary, throwing parties, offering nice trips, money or deals, the Kremlin tries to influence the person's pro-Moscow opinion.^{[45][46][47][48]}

The "Russian Peace Foundation" passed information about foreigners who were invited to visit Russia at the behest of the Slutsky's organization to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU).^[49]

The "Russian Peace Foundation" does not hesitate to ask for grants from American senators at a time when Russian authorities brand harmless public organizations and individuals with the "foreign agent" label for donations from abroad.^[50][51]

On March 17, 2022 the first deputy chairman Elena Sutormina of the "Russian Peace Foundation" sent a letter to the UN Security Council with a demand to assemble an expert council to study "dangerous and dubious" laboratories on the territory of Ukraine.^[52] This disinformation was debunked as the Ukraine bioweapons conspiracy theory.

Leonid Slutsky is the political curator of Shor's party. In 2024 Pro-Russian politicians from Moldova visited Russia: fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor, representatives of the Socialist Party, socialist leader himself, ex-president Igor Dodon, two politicians of the "Renaissance" party, close to fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor.

Connections with the Russian Orthodox Church

Slutsky has close relations with the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. On 11 June 2011, the day of Orthodox holiday of Pentecost, Slutsky landed on the territory of Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius on a helicopter, without having warned anyone in advance. It "caused a great deal of surprise which turned into indignation among parishioners and workers of the church".^[56] According to the deputy, he hurried to meet with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, but because of traffic jams on the Yaroslavl highway he had to use the services of a helicopter company.^[57]

The investigation of TV Rain channel indicates that Slutsky is the chairman of the board of the charity foundation "Kronstadt Naval Cathedral", which contributed 1.3 billion rubles to restore the Naval cathedral of Saint Nicholas in the town of Kronstadt, which is a hometown of Svetlana Medvedeva. One of its board members is Vladimir Resin, who is involved in construction works for the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2013 alone, more than one billion rubles of donations were spent on building churches through the fund's accounts.^[58]

Andrei Kononov, the general director of the fund, is an assistant to Slutsky on a voluntary basis. The investigation assumes that the fund financed the rebels of the Donetsk People's Republic. Kononov also met with the leadership of the unrecognized republic, bringing priests and icons with him.^[58]

Another non-transparent fund of Slutsky's, the "Russian Peace Foundation", is mentioned in the investigation. Its Saratov department was involved in fraud with land and, among other things, it got a lease on a pond, where, according to the documents, it planned to build a children's car-racing track.^[58]