{"id":23640,"date":"2022-06-20T20:56:26","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T20:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=23640"},"modified":"2022-06-20T20:56:26","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T20:56:26","slug":"russian-emails-appear-to-show-network-holding-4-5bn-assets-linked-to-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/06\/20\/russian-emails-appear-to-show-network-holding-4-5bn-assets-linked-to-putin\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian emails appear to show \u2018network\u2019 holding $4.5bn assets linked to Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Palaces, yachts and vineyards reportedly provided to\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0by friends and oligarchs can now be linked to what appears to be an informal network holding assets worth more than $4.5bn (\u00a33.7bn).<\/p>\n

A digital paper trail appears to suggest that an array of holiday homes and other assets reportedly used by the Russian president, which according to available records belong to or have been owned by separate individuals, companies and charities, are linked through a common email domain name, LLCInvest.ru.<\/p>\n

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A snapshot of leaked email exchanges from last September further suggests directors and administrators associated with some of the separate entities that hold and manage these assets have discussed day-to-day business problems as if they were part of a single organisation.<\/p>\n

An anti-corruption expert in Russia, who requested anonymity given the political situation in Moscow, said the findings raised questions as to whether there was a level of \u201ccommon management\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cLLCInvest looks most of all like a cooperative, or an association, in which its members can exchange benefits and property,\u201d they suggested.<\/p>\n

For nearly two decades, Putin has been accused of secretly accumulating vast wealth through proxies, fuelled by a series of disclosures in leaks such as the Pandora papers about the fortunes of those closest to him.<\/p>\n

Sergey Kolesnikov, a businessman, claimed 10 years ago that he had been behind a scheme that allowed a group of Russia\u2019s top oligarchs to pool billions of rubles into a type of \u201cinvestment fund\u201d for the benefit of Putin, who was then serving as prime minister. The claims were denied and Kolesnikov fled from Russia.<\/p>\n

Last month the UK government contrasted Putin\u2019s \u201clavish lifestyle\u201d with official Russian records which listed \u201cmodest assets\u201d including a small flat in St Petersburg, two Soviet-era cars from the 1950s, a trailer and a small garage.<\/p>\n

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\"House<\/div>
Alexei Navalny has claimed this \u00a31bn palace was built for Putin\u2019s personal use in Gelendzhik on the Black Sea.<\/span>\u00a0Photograph: AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a year-long investigation,\u00a0the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)\u00a0and\u00a0the Russian-language news site Meduza\u00a0have identified 86 companies and not-for-profit organisations whose representatives appear to use the common LLCinvest domain name, often alongside corporate email accounts.<\/p>\n

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Claims of a secret presidential fortune are denied and a chain of ownership leading to Putin has not been identified. A Kremlin spokesperson said: \u201cThe president of the Russian Federation is in no way connected or affiliated with the objects and organisations you named.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Villa<\/div>
Villa Sellgren is owned by Sergey Rudnov, the son of a childhood friend of Putin.<\/span>\u00a0Photograph: Navalny.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to OCCRP and Meduza, assets linked to organisations or the corporate structures around them in which the LLCinvest.ru email domain appears to have been in use, include:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • A \u00a31bn palace which Alexei Navalny has claimed was built for Putin\u2019s personal use in Gelendzhik on the Black Sea. The billionaire oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, who is under EU and US sanctions, has claimed ownership of the property. Corporate records held by the Spark database in Russia stated as of June that the property belongs to a firm called Kompleks whose parent company is Binom. The company director at Binom until July last year appears to have a registered LLCInvest.ru email domain. The LLCinvest.ru address remains cited on Spark, Russia\u2019s largest company database, as a contact.<\/li>\n
  • Acres of vineyards around the Gelendzhik palace. Navalny has claimed the wineries were a Putin \u201chobby\u201d that had got out of control. Vineyards surrounding the palace belong to a not-for-profit founded by two Putin associates, Gennady Timchenko and Vladimir Kolbin, both of whom are also under western sanctions. Kolbin and others associated with the vineyards appear to have LLCInvest.ru email accounts.<\/li>\n
  • The Igora ski resort in the Leningrad oblast where the wedding of Putin\u2019s daughter took place in 2013. According to land records, it is owned by Ozon, a company in which Putin\u2019s friend, Bank Rossiya\u2019s chairman and largest shareholder Yuri Kovalchuk, who is under western sanctions, has had a large stake. The LLCInvest.ru email account is a contact on the Spark records of Ozon\u2019s parent company, Relax. Ozon is not related in any way to the Nasdaq listed e-commerce giant of the same name.<\/li>\n
  • A villa north of St Petersburg, known by locals as \u201cPutin\u2019s Dacha\u201d. The Villa Sellgren was owned by Oleg Rudnov, a childhood friend of Putin\u2019s, and inherited by his son Sergey Rudnov, through a company called North. Rudnov appears to use LLCinvest.ru email addresses, according to the Spark records.<\/li>\n
  • A wood-clad building north of St Petersburg known as the Fisherman\u2019s Hut. Emails leaked from a construction firm suggest that three different companies using the domain name owned different parcels of land around the complex, while a fourth LLCInvest entity \u2013 a nonprofit organisation named Revival of Maritime Traditions \u2013 managed the construction. That same foundation, recently placed under western sanctions, owns two yachts, Shellest and Nega,\u00a0said by the US Treasury\u00a0to be linked to Putin.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    <\/figure>\n
    <\/div>\n

    The $4.5bn in assets held by LLCInvest entities includes large cash deposits. Two not-for-profit foundations, co-founded by Timchenko and Kolbin, which according to Spark corporate records appear to use the domain name, have significant funds at their disposal.<\/p>\n

    The Development of Agrarian Initiatives had 17bn rubles (\u00a3248m) in its deposit account at the end of 2020 while the Development of an Effective Investment Market held more than 20bn rubles (\u00a3292m) in long-term deposits and almost 5bn rubles (\u00a373m) in short-term deposits at the end of 2020, according to publicly available accounts.<\/p>\n

    \n
    \"Shellest<\/div>
    The yacht Shellest is owned by the nonprofit organisation Revival of Maritime Traditions.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    LLCinvest is not a standard email provider open to the public such as Yahoo but a domain on a server owned by Moskomsvyaz, a telecoms company which has close links to Bank Rossiya. The St Petersburg bank is under western sanctions and described by the US Treasury as \u201cthe personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation\u201d.<\/p>\n

    Rossiya has also been described as \u2018Putin\u2019s bank\u2019 for its role in allegedly carrying out the Russian leader\u2019s bidding. The Kremlin has denied any such links or influence.<\/p>\n

    The discovery of the common email domain was made through analysis of leaked metadata from Moskomsvyaz servers, which appears to show the names of senders and recipients of LLCinvest.ru emails, the subject matter and time of correspondence. This was cross checked with open source records and a separate leak of the content of some full messages.<\/p>\n

    <\/div>\n

    Moskomsvyaz and all but one of the individuals who appear to have used LLCInvest.ru email addresses, did not reply to requests for comment. It is unclear as to the purpose of the common email service, or the motivation for the apparent cooperation on staffing and logistical issues.<\/p>\n

    There is no suggestion that all the users of the LLCInvest.ru are involved in managing assets that have been linked in reports to Putin. Only one man who uses a LLCinvest.ru email account in his role as a director of multiple companies, spoke on the phone when called. He claimed ignorance of the nature of his work.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI\u2019m a humble employee and mind my own business,\u201d he said when questioned. \u201cI only sign papers. You know how sometimes homeless people are registered as directors of a company. I\u2019m not homeless but I sign the papers like they do without going into the details.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cIf my company was part of a big holding, I wouldn\u2019t know,\u201d he added. The man\u2019s identity is being withheld for his own safety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Palaces, yachts and vineyards reportedly provided to\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0by friends and oligarchs can now be linked to what appears to be an informal network holding assets worth more than $4.5bn (\u00a33.7bn). A digital paper trail appears to suggest that an array of holiday homes and other assets reportedly used by the Russian president, which according to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":20989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11261,12934,7358,5717,6573,1451,5520,7331,7893,7489,4024,1384,2808,11538,159,6225,9643,2264,1971,3259,10598,2702,10197,9343,5205,1152,8029,9765,10742,5340,8968,7964,8890,9266,5344,11973,7039,3805,11377,3174,6544,71,3457,5217,5713,9786,10921,12605,10412,6348,694,3076,5781,10415,594],"class_list":["post-23640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accused","tag-alexei-navalny","tag-bank","tag-billionaire","tag-black","tag-businessman","tag-cars","tag-cash","tag-chain","tag-chairman","tag-common","tag-corruption","tag-daughter","tag-digital","tag-eu","tag-friends","tag-fund","tag-government","tag-holiday","tag-homeless","tag-homes","tag-identity","tag-investigation","tag-investment","tag-july","tag-kremlin","tag-land","tag-leaked","tag-market","tag-moscow","tag-nasdaq","tag-north","tag-oblast","tag-oligarch","tag-oligarchs","tag-one","tag-phone","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-prime-minister","tag-property","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-sanctions","tag-ski","tag-ski-resort","tag-uk","tag-uk-government","tag-us","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-vladmir-putin","tag-wedding","tag-work","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}