Putin's secret wealth: palaces, jets, yachts - everything the Kremlin ruler allows himself
Created: 06/22/2022Updated: 06/22/2022, 16:50
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
There are only estimates about Vladimir Putin's real wealth.
(Archive image) © MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/afp
There are only estimates about Vladimir Putin's real wealth.
Reporters may now have been able to link palaces, resorts, yachts, jets and bank accounts.
Moscow – Russian President Vladimir Putin is reluctant to be looked at.
After he was hit with numerous sanctions by the West in the course of his invasion of Ukraine, the debate about his assets boiled up again.
Network has probably exposed Putin's obfuscation system
On paper, Putin lives quite modestly for being the president of the world's largest country.
However, since the Panama Papers at the latest, it has been an open secret that the Russian president's confidants act as front men and women for his assets.
Now reporters have apparently managed to expose Putin's cover-up system.
The journalist network Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP for short, and the online medium Meduza with media partners such as WDR succeeded in doing this using an e-mail domain that is not visible to the public - LLCInvest.ru.
Above it, the reporters found dozens of related companies and non-profit organizations associated with Bank Rossiya.
This bank is also called "Putin's Bank" because it belongs to his closest associates, including billionaire Yury Kovalchuk.
Putin's Net Worth: Palaces, Resorts, Jets and Yachts?
The companies and organizations have assets worth at least US$4.5 billion.
Many of these assets, including a massive Black Sea palace, are associated with Putin.
The reporters also found a villa north of Saint Petersburg, popularly known as "Putin's dacha," as well as a winter sports resort where Putin's daughter got married.
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Even an airline and a yacht could be discovered via the LLCInvest.ru mail domain.
The reports also found a non-profit organization called Development of Agricultural Initiatives, founded in part by oligarch and Putin friend Gennady Timchenko, which held accounts worth the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Spicy: Without exception, the companies and non-profit organizations that use the LLC-Invest structure belong to oligarchs who are close to Putin and their children.
A secret lover of Putin is also said to be there.
Expert: "It's hard to find an innocuous explanation for all this"
The leaked emails show that the companies' employees - although they work in different areas - discuss joint business as if they were part of a single system.
"The group looks most like a cooperative or association where members can exchange benefits and property," an expert on corruption in Russia, who wished to remain anonymous, told the network.
A former expert at the American sanctions authority OFAC, who also wants to remain anonymous, told the network that the construct around the e-mail domain looks very suspicious.
"It's hard to find an innocuous explanation for all of this," he said.
The expert also sees a risk of sanctions being circumvented.
