Workers at Yury Didenko's fishing company Dalmoreprodukt have been waiting months for wages. Didenko owns a three-story country home outside Vladivostok. From the Vladivostok In their acquisition for wealth and luxury goods, Russia's nouveau riche are building a new world for themselves. Signs of success made possible by high-risk ventures include jeeps, yachts, evenings at pricey night clubs, and country mansions -- luxurious versions of the traditional Russian country home, or dacha. And now, rising alongside the mansions of the nouveau riche are mansions of high-ranking officials and directors of companies on the brink of bankruptcy. This is raising a few eyebrows in a society where public sector workers and some business employees go without salaries. The average Russian, who has it hard, can't help but ask himself: "Where did they get the money for that?" At work, First Vice Gov. Nikolai Sadomsky struggles to keep Primorye's debt-ridden economy afloat. Sadomsky spends weekends at a $645,000 cottage in Sputnik, just outside Vladivostok. Primorye First Vice Gov. Nikolai Sadomsky's country house was made famous by the largest national weekly, Argumenti i Fakti, and the national TV show "Man and Law." Real estate experts say Sadomsky's grandiose country mansion cost him 4 million rubles ($645,000). He built it when he was chief of the Federal Treasury's Primorye office. His wife is co-director of Primorye Charitable Children's Fund. Viktor Kondratov, presidential representative to Primorye and chief of the local Federal Security Bureau, is building a dacha. Usually, the FSB doesn't condone personal luxuries for its officers, but Kondratov obtained permission from the former FSB director. Local Federal Safety Bureau Chief and Presidential Representative Viktor Kondratov plans to spend plenty of time puttering around the vegetable garden of his three-story dacha, which he received special permission from the FSB to build. Kondratov's house looks Spartan and crude but is not without its tricks: From one side, it has a single story, from the other side, three. The middle story will be the living area, the bottom floor a garage, the top floor a loft. Kondratov admitted that his salary does not provide him the means to erect such a house, so all 11 family members are pitching in. They have had to borrow from banks. A daughter in Odessa, Ukraine, will sell her apartment and move to Vladivostok. A roof will be placed on the house this fall, by which time the general expects to be puttering about his vegetable garden. On July 8, the day the story appeared in the Vladivostok newspaper, Primorye Gov. Yevgeny Nazdratenko tightened control over the incomes of executive officials, issuing a decree on new measures for overseeing submission of income statements. In the decree, the governor rebuked Sadomsky and Vladimir Kolesnichenko, director of the Department for Social and Economic Development of Primorye, for failure to submit income and property statements to the Tax Inspectorate and the Primorye Administration Personnel and Public Service Department. He ordered them to comply within a week. The requirement for public officials to report on personal income and property was introduced by President Boris Yeltsin last year. © copyright 1998 the Vladivostok News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed in any form. [Back to News page]  [Back to Front page]  [Write to us]