Commendations from the President and Government of the Russian Federation
Vladimir Gruzdev was born on February 6, 1967 in the village of Bolshevo, Moscow region. In 1984 he graduated from the Moscow Suvorov Military School and entered the Military Red Banner Institute.
While studying at the Military Red Banner Institute, Vladimir Gruzdev was sent to work as a military interpreter in Angola and Mozambique. In 1989, for the courage shown in fulfilling his military duty, he was awarded the medal "For Battle Merit", the diploma of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "Warrior-Internationalist".
From 1991 to 1993 he served in the Foreign Intelligence Service.
In 2000 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, majoring in Legal studies.
In 2001, Vladimir Gruzdev won the election to the Moscow City Duma in the 27th district, gaining 53.17% of the vote.
In 2003, Gruzdev defended his thesis on "Legal status of civil servants of the Russian Federation and organizational and legal bases for the functioning of the system of training, retraining and advanced training" at the Department of Administrative Law of the Moscow University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 2013, the Dissernet community found that the whole content of the work was plagiarism: 168 of 182 pages were entirely copied from the original work of Pavel Vostrikov "Organizational and legal problems of training, retraining and upgrading of civil servants", defended in 1998. Despite this, the academic degree of Vladimir Gruzdev was confirmed, as more than three years had passed since the defense of the thesis before the discovery of plagiarism.>.
Gruzdev has been regularly included in the rating of the magazine Forbes since 2005, with the exception of 2008. He took positions from 36 (2009) to 135 (2017). The biggest fortune was reached in 2010 - 950 million dollars.
In the summer of 2007, Vladimir Gruzdev acted as a participant (and, according to some sources, a sponsor) of the expedition of the scientific vessel Akademik Fyodorov to the North Pole. During the expedition Gruzdev dived at the North Pole point on the Mir-1 bathyscaphe and installed a titanium flag of Russia and a capsule with a "message to Future generations" at the seabed.
From the declaration which Gruzdev submitted in 2011 as an official, it is known that he had deposits in banks amounting to 9.4 billion rubles. He also owned shares in OJSC Bank Saint Petersburg, OJSC VTB Bank and Gazprom..
During his Service as a governor Gruzdev donated money for the restoration of one of the bells for the bell tower of the Assumption Cathedral of the Tula Kremlin, he also personally spent 250 million rubles on charity annually in the Tula region, and transferred his entire salary to Yasnaya Polyana children's home. Since December 2012 the governor's salary in the amount of 48,115 rubles was transferred to the fund of the Tula Kremlin and for the organization of disabled people. The press department of the governor announced the transfer of his entire salary to charity throughout 2013.
In his work as head of the region, Vladimir Gruzdev mostly relied on loyal but inexperienced staff from Moscow. He was famous for rough and aggressive style of management. For Example, in the presence of many people, he suggested that the mayor of the city of Bogoroditsk shot himself. On August 13, 2014, Vladimir Gruzdev appointed the former State Duma member of the fifth convocation and ex-leader of the Young Russia movement Maksim Mishchenko to the post of deputy head of the government office of the Tula region under the Government of the Russian Federation and deputy minister of internal policy and local government development of the Tula region. At the end of 2015, based on materials received from the Government of the Tula region, Mishchenko and the chairman of the Union for the Protection of Disabled People and Participants in the Elimination of the Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Novomoskovsk, Gennady Yefimov, were charged with transferring to coverup firms the budget funds that were supposed to be grants for the rehabilitation of "Chernobyl victims". On March 17, 2017 Novomoskovsk city court of the Tula region found Mishchenko guilty of fraud and sentenced to 2.5 years of imprisonment.
In November 2016, a villa in Sardinia estimated at 25 million euros was purchased in the name of Gruzdev's wife of Gruzdev..
On April 21, 2017, Vladimir Gruzdev joined the government commission on legislative drafting activities.
