The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Putin's fortune exposed? Researchers have allegedly unmasked the network - and give a number

2022-07-06T03:41:40.901Z


Putin's fortune exposed? Researchers have allegedly unmasked the network - and give a number Created: 06/07/2022 05:31 By: Bettina Menzel Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. The Kremlin boss is said to be one of the richest people in the world, but this has not been proven directly - until now. © picture alliance / Sergei Ilnitsky / POOL EPA / AP / dpa | Sergei Ilnitsky How rich i


Putin's fortune exposed?

Researchers have allegedly unmasked the network - and give a number

Created: 06/07/2022 05:31

By: Bettina Menzel

Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

The Kremlin boss is said to be one of the richest people in the world, but this has not been proven directly - until now.

© picture alliance / Sergei Ilnitsky / POOL EPA / AP / dpa |

Sergei Ilnitsky

How rich is Vladimir Putin really?

A research network followed a tip - and can apparently connect several billion euros to the Kremlin chief.

Maryland, USA - Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly cultivates the image of the "humble patriot" - his annual salary statement is surprisingly low.

But behind the scenes he is said to be one of the richest people in the world.

So far there have been indications of this, but no proof.

Now the research network Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has taken a big step forward.

The journalists want to have discovered a network of companies that is connected to Bank Rossiya on the one hand and Putin on the other.

The obvious link is an email domain.

Vladimir Putin denies wealth: wealth supposedly belongs to the Kremlin chief's friends

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny explained in a video in 2021 that Putin owns a luxury palace on the Black Sea coast.

Rumored cost of the property: over a billion euros.

The Kremlin denied this.

Arkady Rotenberg, a former judo sparring partner of Putin, promptly announced that he owned the palace.

This has happened time and again in the past with other assets attributed to the Russian President.

The vineyards around the Black Sea Palace, for example, appear to be shared by two other colleagues of the Kremlin boss: the son of one of his childhood friends and a well-known oligarch, Gennady Timchenko.

A villa north of St. Petersburg was claimed by Sergei Rudnov, son of another old Putin friend who died in 2015.

The Panama Papers showed that an offshore company owned by musician Sergei Roldugin, who is close to Putin, is worth two billion euros.

The assumption is that there is not much money to be made by playing the cello and that Roldugin manages black money for the Russian President.

However, Putin's name was not found in the documents.

Visits to Ukraine during the war: Politics show solidarity

View photo gallery

The Russian president is said to have accumulated the alleged incredible wealth through corruption.

The anti-corruption activist Navalny once gave a striking example.

A road built for the Olympic Games in Russia cost as much "as if it had been paved with French foie gras".

The research network OCCRP has now been able to link the scattered assets that appear to be owned by different people: they belong to dozens of companies and non-profit organizations that are connected via a technical infrastructure.

This connection is visible via a non-public domain: LLCInvest.ru.

Domain first discovered in 2017: reporters followed the trail and exposed the corporate network of Putin's friends

According to the data, the companies have a variety of owners, including wealthy bankers and oligarchs from Russia, but also the children of Putin's friends and even his alleged lover.

"The group looks most like a cooperative or association where members can exchange benefits and property," said an expert on corruption in Russia, as reported by the OCCRP.

also read

NATO counters Putin's nuclear threat: Agreed in Elmau, nervous in the Kremlin

Ukraine diplomacy: Turkey halts Russian grain ship – Putin affront to Biden

The Russian bank Rossiya, which began to build a business empire after Putin's election as president in 2000, is said to play an important role.

The US has imposed sanctions on “Putin’s Bank” since 2014, and the EU followed suit after the start of the Ukraine war.

Reporters first came across the LLCInvest.ru domain in 2017, when research by the weekly

Sobesednik

revealed that a network of organizations belonging to Putin's friends were using LLCInvest.ru addresses.

The journalists followed this trail and discovered numerous other companies using email addresses under this domain.

The address itself is owned by an IT company called Moskomsvyaz, which in turn is closely associated with Bank Rossiya.

An internal source apparently gave OCCRP journalists email metadata that officially showed non-existent links between the companies.

According to the OCCRP research, the employees of the 86 companies communicated in a way that is only customary within the same company.

Much is still in the dark.

What is clear, however, is that almost every property that has ever been linked to Putin belongs to one of the LLCInvest companies.

According to the report, these include the Black Sea Palace, the Igora ski resort, several holiday homes and a property near Moscow.

Is Vladimir Putin actually the richest person in the world?

The LLCInvest.ru organizations are therefore worth at least 4.5 billion US dollars (about 4.4 billion euros).

This is only a fraction of the purported fortune of Putin.

Kremlin opponent and investor Bill Browder put the Russian president's "worth" before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 at $200 billion.

That would have made the Kremlin boss the richest person in the world five years ago.

At that time, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos were almost equal in first and second place with assets of about 90 billion US dollars each. Today Elon Musk is officially the richest person in the world, in May 2022 his assets amounted

to about 201 billion according to

Bloomberg

- but even Putin's secret wealth may have increased in the meantime.

(

bm

)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-07-06

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-15T10:12:04.983Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.