Enlarge image
"Putin's Palace" on the Black Sea:
Of course, the luxury property guarded by the Russian secret service does not belong to
Vladimir Putin
, but to an oligarch friend
Photo:
Navalny Life / dpa
To find out something about the official possessions of
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
(69), a look at the election list for the 2018 presidential election helps. An apartment with 77 square meters and a garage with 18 square meters are listed there.
In addition, according to the Kremlin, the incumbent president has an annual salary of around 140,000 US dollars.
With this income, Putin is likely to have bought a car or two for his garage.
So much for the official figures that serve as the low end for estimates of Putin's wealth.
At the top end is the estimate by hedge fund founder and Russia expert
Bill Browder
, who was at times the largest foreign investor in Russia
with his company "
Hermitage Capital ".
At a US Senate hearing in 2017, Browder estimated Vladimir Putin's private wealth at $200 billion, making him one of the richest people in the world.
Values in the billions apart from land registers and accounts
Enlarge image
Likes it pompous:
Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin
Photo:
Mikhail Klimentyev / RIA-NOVOSTI / AFP / Getty Images
If you want to measure Putin's wealth, you don't need to look at land registers or look at account lists.
The ruler of the Kremlin is so powerful that he can easily use an army of oligarchs as straw men to disguise his true personal wealth.
"Everything that belongs to Russia, Putin considers his property," exiled oligarch
Sergei Putachev told
the Guardian.
"Any attempt to establish his personal possessions will therefore fail."
Especially after his re-election as president in 2012, Putin used a system of corruption and middlemen to steer ever-increasing fortunes into his own pockets.
A group of close confidants – most of whom Putin knows from the KGB days – serve as his walking personal wallet.
50 percent - of everything
Enlarge image
Khodorkovsky in a cage (archive, 2008):
warning to all oligarchs who do not track
Photo: ?
Tatyana Makeyeva / Reuters/ REUTERS
According to the US magazine "Fortune", Browder, during his hearing in the Senate, described Putin's special wealth-building strategy of amassing billions of dollars with the help of straw men: After the Kremlin critic
Michael Khodorkovsky
was sentenced to a long prison sentence, numerous Oligarchs auditioned for Putin.
The frightened oligarchs asked him what they could do to avoid one day being in the same cage as "enemy of the state" Khodorkovsky.
Putin replied: "50 percent".
Browder then clarifies the meaning of this sentence: "Putin didn't mean 50 percent of your money for the government or for the Russian treasury. He meant: 50 percent of the money for him personally."
Luxury watches and a palace on the Black Sea
Putin doesn't need a savings contract, a tax consultant or a notary to buy the property.
He just takes what he wants.
It is obvious that the 69-year-old Kremlin boss loves luxury: luxury watches by
Patek Philippe
or
A. Lange & Söhne
(up to $500,000 each) can often be seen on the President's wrist.
But you can go a few sizes bigger.
Enlarge image
Alexei Navalny:
The Kremlin critic, who narrowly survived a poison attack, was arrested on his return to Moscow in 2021
Photo: Maxim Shemetov / REUTERS
The best example to measure Putin's unofficial wealth is a roughly $1.4 billion palace on the Black Sea.
At around 80 square kilometers, the associated property is almost 40 times the size of the Principality of Monaco.
In January 2021, Kremlin critic Alexej Navalnyi published a nearly two-hour video about "Putin's Palace".
In the video, Navalnyi describes in detail how Putin enriched himself with the help of corrupt middlemen loyal to him.
Navalnyi constructed a 3D model of the palace from photos and the blueprints available to him.
The model and aerial photos of the palace show, among other things, an amphitheater, a huge swimming pool, a monstrous bar, an ice hockey field and a casino.
According to Navalnyi, the castle and the sea-view bar were designed and furnished by a luxury Italian designer.
There is also seating in the style of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Furnishing the dining room alone cost around 500,000 US dollars.
Putin is "obsessed with wealth and luxury," the video says.
Navalnyi, who narrowly survived a poison attack in 2020, returned to Moscow in January 2021 and was arrested at the airport.
Putin is only a guest in the palace
Host:
oligarch and judo friend
Arkadi Rotenberg
Photo: Alexander Kulebyakin/ AP/dpa
Naturally, the Kremlin denied that the palace shown belonged to Putin.
Immediately thereafter, oligarch
Arkady Rotenberg dutifully revealed
himself as the owner of the palace.
He is a former judo partner and Putin's confidante.
Rotenberg said he wanted to use the palace on the Black Sea as an "apart hotel".
The fact that a prospective aparthotel owned by a wealthy Russian businessman is under constant surveillance by the Russian secret service FSB and that a no-fly zone has been set up over the palace is one of the mysteries of Putin's and Rotenberg's wealth accumulation.
According to "Fortune", the palace was built by the Italian star architect
Lanfranco Cirillo
.
According to analysts, the money for the construction was laundered through a national health program.
Presumably the Russian government billed medical devices for excessive prices and transferred the difference to the price actually paid to Cirillo.
The Kremlin disagrees with this assessment.
The statement that a team of 40 employees and gardeners permanently takes care of the palace and the grounds is unchallenged.
Super yacht, planes, helicopters, luxury cars
Visible status symbols attributed to Vladimir Putin also include the 82-meter yacht "
Graceful
".
Two weeks ago, the yacht was in the dock of the Blohm + Voss shipyard in the Port of Hamburg.
A few days before the attack on Ukraine, the ship, which has a helipad, a swimming pool and luxury cabins over two floors, hastily left Hamburg and set course for Kaliningrad.
Russian billionaire
Alisher Usmanov 's superyachts "
Dilbar ",
Farchad Akhmedov
's "
Luna
" and
Suleiman Kerimov
's "
Solandge
"
remained in port
: The responsible Hamburg Senator for Economic Affairs announced that no yachts are currently allowed to leave the port.
The official owner of "Graceful" is a company called "Argument", which, according to Navalny, can be directly attributed to the Kremlin boss.
At least the crew, when they left Hamburg in a hurry, were apparently better informed about Putin's plans than the owners of the other yachts.
According to the British "Sun", Putin's fleet of vehicles on land, on water and in the air is significantly larger.
Putin's private plane, dubbed the "Flying Kremlin," is said to be worth around $700 million and is said to have gold leaf on the interior.
According to the tabloid, a few helicopters and up to 500 luxury cars can still be attributed to the Kremlin boss.
This information cannot be proven – Putin offers a lot of room for speculation.
Gazprom and Surgutneftegaz: Putin probably earns some money
The statements of the Kremlin critic
Stanislav Belkowsky
, who estimated Putin's fortune at more than 70 billion US dollars ten years ago, are more reliable.
He assumes that Putin
controls a significant stake in the commodities
group Surgutneftyegas .
In addition, there would be almost 5 percent in the state-controlled
Gazprom group
, the largest energy supplier in the world.
Swedish economist
Anders Aslund
estimates Putin's wealth at up to $150 billion.
In his book Capitalism in Russia: The Road from Market Economy to Kleptocracy, Aslund applies a simple kleptocrat principle.
If the assets of Putin's inner circle, the oligarchs loyal to him, are valued at $500 billion, then Putin is likely to control at least a third of those assets.
Against this background, 150 billion dollars seems rather tight.
As the latest revelations from the "Panama Papers" and "Pandora Papers" show, the fortunes that individual Russian oligarchs are hiding in tax havens have recently grown significantly.
Of course, Putin has nothing to do with this, because according to the Kremlin, Russian government officials do not in principle have any foreign accounts.
Corruption, Fear and Terror
But is it really realistic that Putin's wealth is as high as $200 billion, as hedge fund founder
Bill Browder
claimed at his Senate hearing four years ago?
Since the early 2000s, when Putin first became president, Russia has experienced a strong economic boom with growth rates of 7 to 8 percent per year.
A lot of money that wasn't invested in building schools, roads or hospitals ended up in private accounts, Browder said, according to CNBC.
Putin has thousands of helpers in the government and police apparatus who, with the president's blessing, are allowed to rob, dispossess, kidnap, torture or kill people.
Browder was expelled from the country in 2005 as a "national security threat".
The assets of his company in Russia were confiscated.
Browder's lawyer in Russia died some time later in custody in unclear circumstances.
And Putin himself?
In a TV interview, he described himself as the “richest man in the world”.
He collects namely "emotions".
The fact that the citizens of Russia put so much trust in him is "his greatest treasure."
