The palaces, yachts and vineyards allegedly provided to Vladimir Putin by friends and oligarchs may now be linked to what appears to be an informal network with assets worth more than $ 4.5 billion (3.7 billion British pounds).
A digital paper trail appears to suggest that a number of holiday homes and other assets reportedly used by the Russian president that are said to belong to or be owned by individuals, companies and charities are linked by a common name. email domain, LLCInvest.ru.
Putin’s chart
A snapshot of an expired e-mail exchange from last September further suggests that directors and administrators associated with some of the individual entities that hold and manage these assets have discussed day-to-day business issues as if they were part of an organization.
An anti-corruption expert in Russia, speaking on condition of anonymity given Moscow’s political situation, said the findings raised questions about whether there was a level of “general governance”.
“LLCInvest looks mostly like a cooperative or association where its members can exchange benefits and assets,” they suggest.
For nearly two decades, Putin has been accused of secretly amassing huge fortunes through undercover agents, fueled by a series of leaks such as Pandora’s documents on the wealth of those closest to him.
Sergei Kolesnikov, a businessman, claimed 10 years ago that he was behind a scheme that allowed a group of top Russian oligarchs to pool billions of rubles into a kind of “investment fund” in favor of Putin, then prime minister. Minister. The allegations were denied and Kolesnikov fled Russia.
Last month, the UK government contrasted Putin’s “lavish lifestyle” with official Russian records listing “modest assets”, including a small apartment in St. Petersburg, two Soviet-era cars from the 1950s, trailer and small garage.
Alexei Navalny claims that the £ 1 billion palace was built for Putin’s personal use in Gelendzhik on the Black Sea. Photo: AP
After a year of investigation, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Russian-language news site Meduza have identified 86 non-profit companies and organizations whose representatives appear to use the common domain name LLCinvest, often along with corporate email accounts.
Claims of secret presidential status have been rejected and the chain of ownership leading to Putin has not been identified. A Kremlin spokesman said: “The President of the Russian Federation is in no way affiliated with or associated with the facilities and organizations you have identified.”
Villa Selgren is owned by Sergei Rudnov, the son of a childhood friend of Putin’s. Photo: Navalny.com
According to OCCRP and Meduza, assets related to organizations or corporate structures around them, in which the email domain LLCinvest.ru seems to have been used, include:
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A £ 1 billion palace that Alexei Navalny claims was built for Putin’s personal use in Gelendzhik on the Black Sea. Billionaire oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, who is under EU and US sanctions, has claimed ownership of the property. Corporate records kept by the Spark database in Russia show in June that the property belonged to a company called Kompleks, whose parent company is Binom. The director of the company in Binom until July last year seems to have a registered email domain LLCInvest.ru. The address of LLCinvest.ru remains quoted in Spark, the largest Russian database of companies as a contact.
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Decari vineyards around Gelendzhik Palace. Navalny claims the wineries were Putin’s “hobby”, which has spiraled out of control. The vineyards around the palace belong to a non-profit organization founded by two of Putin’s aides, Gennady Timchenko and Vladimir Kolbin, both under Western sanctions. Colbin and others related to the vineyards seem to have email accounts at LLCInvest.ru.
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The Igor ski resort in the Leningrad region, where Putin’s daughter’s wedding took place in 2013. According to land documents, it is owned by Ozon, a company in which Putin’s friend, the chairman of Bank Rossiya and the largest shareholder Yuri Kovalchuk, who is under Western sanctions, there is a big bet. The email account of LLCInvest.ru is a contact in the records of Spark of the parent company of Ozon, Relax. Ozon has nothing to do with the Nasdaq-registered e-commerce giant of the same name.
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Villa north of St. Petersburg, known locally as Putin’s Dacha. Villa Selgren was owned by Oleg Rudnov, a childhood friend of Putin’s, and inherited from his son Sergei Rudnov through a company called North. Rudnov appears to be using LLCinvest.ru email addresses, according to Spark records.
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A wooden building north of St. Petersburg, known as the Fisherman’s Hut. Emails leaked by a construction company suggest that three different companies using the domain name own different plots of land around the complex, while a fourth, LLCInvest, a non-profit organization called Revival of Maritime Traditions, manages the construction. The same foundation, recently placed under Western sanctions, owns two yachts, the Shellest and the Nega, which the US Treasury Department claims are linked to Putin.
Map of Russia’s assets
The $ 4.5 billion assets held by LLC LLC include large cash deposits. Two non-profit foundations, co-founders of Timchenko and Kolbin, which according to Spark’s corporate records appear to use the domain name, have significant funds.
The Development of Agrarian Initiatives had 17 billion rubles (£ 248 million) in its deposit account at the end of 2020, while the Development of an efficient investment market held over 20 billion rubles (£ 292 million) in long-term deposits and almost 5 billion rubles 73 million) in short-term deposits at the end of 2020, according to publicly available accounts.
The Shellest yacht is owned by the non-profit organization Revival of Maritime Traditions.
LLCinvest is not a standard e-mail provider open to the public, such as Yahoo, but a domain server owned by Moskomsvyaz, a telecommunications company with close ties to Bank Rossiya. The St. Petersburg bank is under Western sanctions and is described by the US Treasury Department as “the personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation.”
Russia has also been described as “Putin’s bank” for its role in the alleged bid of the Russian leader. The Kremlin has denied such connections or influence.
The discovery of the common email domain was done by analyzing leaked metadata from Moskomsvyaz servers, which seems to show the names of senders and recipients of emails on LLCinvest.ru, the topic and time of correspondence. This was cross-checked with open source records and a separate leak of the content of some complete messages.
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Moskomsvyaz and all but one of the individuals who appear to have used LLCInvest.ru email addresses did not respond to requests for comment. It is not clear what the purpose of the common email service is or the motivation for the obvious cooperation on staffing and logistics issues.
It is not assumed that all users of LLCInvest.ru are involved in the management of assets that are related in reports with Putin. Only one person, who uses the LLCinvest.ru email account in his role of director of many companies, speaks on the phone when he calls. He claims he does not know the nature of his work.
“I am a modest employee and I look after my work,” he said when asked. “I only sign documents. You know how sometimes the homeless register as company directors. I’m not homeless, but I sign the documents as they do, without going into details. “
“If my company was part of a large holding company, I wouldn’t know,” he added. The man’s identity is hidden for his own safety.
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