In the early 1990s, Vladimir Putin, an official of the St. Petersburg mayor's office, developed a scheme for exchanging strategically important resources for food for the starving city. However, Petersburg did not receive European products. With a detailed study of this story, the film about the coming to power in Russia of a union of former KGB officers begins. But this story is just one of many. The director's interlocutors are former employees of the mayor's office who knew Vladimir Putin well, an investigator who was involved in the case of large-scale corruption in St. Petersburg, experts and journalists who unraveled the complex tangle of relationships between officials and bandits in the 90s.