Millionaire vs. buskers: Chief of St. Petersburg Police cracking down on street musicians owns $6.2 million worth of real estate

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General Roman Plugin has headed the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region for the past six years. He began his career as an operative in the criminal investigation department of Ryazan, the hometown of his father, Yuri Plugin (who himself served as an official representative of Vladimir Putin in the 2024 elections and has been a United Russia deputy to the Ryazan Regional Duma since 2025).

Having built his career thanks to his father — also a general — the younger Plugin moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg, reportedly plunging local businesses “into a panic” over the Moscow-level rates of extortion his department demanded. Beyond business, Plugin also kept active in politics. For example, he publicly claimed that people attending protest rallies had “rewired brains” and “empty heads,” and justified police brutality when a citizen suspected of “ballot tampering” was dragged out of a voting booth during elections. Today, the general has set his sights on young men and women singing undesirable songs on the streets.

In addition to cracking down on public dissent, The Insider found, Plugin has not forgotten to stuff his own pockets — while prudently registering the bulk of his assets under his wife’s name.

Public sources list 47-year-old Diana Plugina as the wife of St. Petersburg's police chief. However, as The Insider was able to establish, the general has long been in a relationship with 41-year-old Daria Plugina. The two made a trip to the U.S. as early as 2017, according to leaks from the Russian border service. They have two sons together: Kirill and Mikhail. Moreover, in older tax declarations (before such documents were classified), the police chief listed information about his wife’s cars and property. Notably, these entries match the inventory of Daria’s previous assets.

Roman Plugin also has a 25-year-old son, Alexander, most likely from a previous marriage. According to leaked personal data, Alexander receives deliveries at an apartment in St. Petersburg’s Smolny Park residential complex.

According to data obtained by The Insider, the 170.3 m² apartment was purchased under the name of Daria Plugina in 2020 — shortly after the family moved to St. Petersburg. Its estimated value is around 120 million rubles ($1.5 million).

In the same year, Daria purchased a small 58 m² apartment in Moscow on Novgorodskaya Street, and in 2022, she acquired two commercial units totaling 238 m² in Moscow’s Zilart residential complex. The market value of Plugina’s Moscow properties is estimated at 185 million rubles ($2.3 million).

In addition, Daria Plugina is the listed owner of two houses in the village of Murmino near Ryazan and three houses in the Moscow suburb of Veshki — country properties with an aggregate value of 150 million rubles (almost $1.9 million).

Thus, the total value of the real estate registered under Daria Plugina’s name amounts to nearly half a billion rubles ($6.2 million). The sources of funds for these expensive purchases cannot be explained by her own income, let alone by the official salary of her police chief husband.

The general’s wife previously owned the limited liability company Imhotep, which was liquidated in 2025. Its last financial statement — for 2019 — showed revenue of just 17,000 rubles. Plugina is now registered as the sole proprietor of a microenterprise selling shoes and bags in a store on Altufyevskoye Highway.

The Insider was unable to obtain a comment from the civil servant or his millionaire relatives.