D he Russian musician Sergey Roldugin is a mystery. He has a decent artist biography is a trained cellist, apparently a pretty good even: Trained at the Conservatory of Leningrad, he played later in St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, the first cello and gave concerts in many countries, also in Germany. Then he directed the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He received awards in 1980 as the third prize at the International Prague Spring Festival. Today he leads the House Music he founded in St. Petersburg, an elite school for Russian soloist. Just a decent, but not a very exciting artistic life
Would Sergei Roldugin not, as he told in an interview to the New York Times, occasionally provide interesting private concerts:.. With Vladimir Putin at home
If he were not a close friend of Russian President
he would not probably.. Putin’s best friend
even without the connection of the cellist to Putin would be the Fund in the data the Panama Papers at least amazing. A businessman Roldugin once said, is not he. And yet his name appears in the documents again and again in connection with the same number of companies. It is named as the owner, you will find a copy of his passport in the documents, multiple documents bear obvious Roldugins signature
the data also show that obviously many millions of dollars to Roldugins letterbox companies have flowed in the center of a network of offshore companies are sitting. The companies in this network therefore had stock options for some of the major corporations of Russia, about her flowed manifestly loans worth hundreds of millions, and there were strange business is conducted. Within a few years have been, the data show, about two billion dollars through this offshore braid funneled
The artist, the head of state and the hidden money. What it’s all about, is probably the most spectacular history , can find itself in the 2.6 terabytes of data of the offshore provider Mossack Fonseca (Mossfon).
for years, it is speculated that Putin could have a secret fortune. But never led the money trail so close to Putin zoom as through the Panama Papers.
Photo: ST / private
The recording is black and white and slightly pixelated, so somehow touching. The family photo from 1985 shows a baptism scene of a church in St Petersburg, then still called Leningrad. Russia was still part of the Soviet Union and was ruled by Mikhail Gorbachev. Sergej Roldugin, black suit, striped tie, full hair and stare, posing for the camera with two women and a gaunt man looking a bit suspicious and a child holding in arm. This other man was a petty KGB officer at that time. His name: Vladimir Putin. The photo shows the baptism of his first daughter Maria.
The musician Roldugin is godfather of Mary. He is a close friend of Putin, for nearly forty years and probably until now – according to Newsweek even his “best friend”.
The enigmatic cellist – no oligarch, not a politician – is at the heart of a stunning story that the internal documents of the offshore service Mossack Fonseca, the Panama Papers, hidden away. They suggest that a large fortune flowed into a network of secret offshore companies, and that millions of this pot went not only to Vladimir Putin’s closest circle, but apparently also benefited the family thereof. So there is much evidence that a portion of that money to the property was financed, in to have taken place, the pompous wedding of Putin’s second daughter Katerina in February, 2013.
The Putin clique
the beginnings of this story but are in 1985. the young family father Vladimir Putin is added shortly after the baptism of Mary from the Soviet KGB as an agent in East Germany, in Dresden. There Katerina is born. . Only after the fall of the Soviet Union versa Putin returned to Saint Petersburg, namely, if one is to believe his Western biographers, traumatized by the inaction, with the new Russia accepted its loss of significanceIn St. Petersburg begins his ascent: From the KGB man is the assistant to the mayor, then his deputy, the head of the domestic intelligence service FSB, then the Premier. In 2000, Putin became president. 16 years later he rules more powerful than ever.
In January, Adam Szubin has jurisdiction in the US Finanzminsterium for terrorism and financial intelligence, Putin referred in an interview with the BBC as “corrupt”. In fact, already went Putin’s political rise accompanied by similar accusations. When Putin was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg beginning of the 1990s, gave him a committee of the City Council prior to export licenses issued friends and acquaintances – had been rendered without agreed consideration. Because a company that he is said to have established a friendly oligarchs, it allegedly came to such violent confrontations with criminal gangs that Putin brought his daughters Maria and Katerina in safety, to Germany.
against several employees of a agency in turn, Putin sat in the council to 2000, was found later by German and Liechtenstein authorities. As the levels reported in 2003, allegedly funneled through foreign accounts, trusts and shell companies to assess the German investigators gains from extortion, human trafficking and car jacking. As the full extent flew, Putin was president. The last German investigation however was adjusted because of lapse of 2009.
In the wake of Putin’s steep rise in Russian politics multiplied also the wealth of a small group hitherto somewhat insignificant people: comrades who had served in the KGB with him, political companions from the administration of Saint Petersburg, distant family members – but especially those seven men with whom he center 1990s had established a cooperative to build a holiday village at the gates of Saint Petersburg: the dacha cooperative Ozero. There they shared a checkout and an account. Something welded together.
The Ozero members of yesteryear are today the most powerful clique of Russia. Most of them are billionaires.
The US economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman described Russia under Putin once called “extreme variant of capitalism of cronies”. The country is “a kleptocracy in which loyal supporters gigantic sums skim” could. The Moscow economist Vladislav Inosemzew says, Russia has become a neofeudalistischen system: At the top stand Putin, including his friends, who amassed riches since the beginning of his long reign, at the expense of the state. And down the people. The US political scientist Karen Dawisha named their 2014 published book on the subject, a detailed study, “Putin kleptocracy”. The US State Department said internally even by a “mafia state”, as is apparent from diplomatic cables, which the Wikileaks has released in 2010.
The Panama Papers reflect all these descriptions. In the documents to find the letterbox of many men who have risen with Putin to the Russian power elite. The billionaire Gennady Timchenko about, which was parallel to Putin’s career as one of the world’s largest commodities trader and financed the Judo Club Yawara-Neva, whose honorary president is Putin. was founded the Judo Club of Arkady Rotenberg, who is like his brother Boris is a close Putin friend. The two have made a couple of St. Petersburg stations a multi-billion dollar construction and industrial group.
dive in the Panama Papers in conjunction with several offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and Cyprus. Other shell companies are therefore linked to former KGB colleague of Putin, the wife of his press officer to one of his cousins to him related oligarchs.
All of this, although the Russian president has the offshore system publicly castigated since 2011 on several occasions as “unpatriotic”.
assets
the rumors about Putin’s personal wealth circulating, since he went to St. Petersburg in the policy. 2014 earned the Russian head of state officially 7.65 million rubles a year – then the equivalent of almost 143 000 euro. At least, it was in his public statement of income.
journalists, historians and economists who deal intensively with the question of Putin’s wealth, however, believe that the president will one day leave the Kremlin as multiple billionaire. The estimates seem absurdly high: Are there $ 40 billion 70 billion or even 200 billion? This highest number comes from Bill Browder. The American was manager of Hermitage Capital Management, a fund that was once known as the largest foreign investor in Russia. He lived ten years in the country. At the latest, since his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison in 2009, Browder is a sharp Putin critic. 2014 he wrote a book about his relationship with Putin, claiming that the president is the richest man in the world. The US broadcaster CNN said Browder: “. It is the biggest oligarch of all”
The search for circumstantial evidence is operated meticulously. According to research by the British Bureau of Investigative Journalism as Putin has been photographed with watches worth a total of EUR 200 000; Some anti-corruption activists even speak of more than EUR 600 000. On official occasions he wears about a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar, which alone cost around EUR 60 000. Whether the watches really belong to the President whether it provides him the Kremlin available if he has borrowed – that is not publicly known.
The guesses as Putin’s alleged wealth could be composed, are similar: Usually it is, it should have through middlemen shares in major Russian companies and allow filling of oligarchs and state banks regularly slush funds. Some time ago it was reported that near Sochi on the Black Sea was an estate, which is known as “Putin’s Palace” today. A pretentious building in Italianate architecture. It was financed according to a research by Reuters from Putin friend Nikolai Schamalow, one of his Datschenfreunde.
Until now denies the Kremlin that it is the property is Putin’s possession. But when tried environmentalists to penetrate the estate, because they assumed that regulations have been ignored in the construction of the palace, they were stopped by its own statements by officials of the Federal Naja Sluzhba ochrany Rossijskoj Federazii (FSO): the security service of the government.
The Palace also mentioned the Russian activist Leonid Martynyuk and murdered in 2015 opposition Boris Nemtsov in a report from 2012 Design. It is entitled “The Life of a Galley Slave” and alludes to an earlier statement Putin he villains as a slave on a galley. In reality, the conclusion of Martynyuk and Nemtsov, Putin but live in abundance. He has some dozens villas, airplanes and ships. But the toilet in an airplane cost reportedly about half as much as Putin officially earned in a year.
And then there also the Olympics, the “Diamond of Kremlin fleet”, one with fine mahogany wood equipped yacht with Jacuzzi and marble bathroom. You should have been given to Putin after media reports of oligarchs to Roman Abramovich – as a gesture of loyalty.
Abramovich has this always denied. According to research by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the Olympia is also guarded by the FSO.
reports on his alleged fortune does Putin regularly as chatter. A detailed request for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists to Panama Papers he did not answer. Instead occurred shortly after the receipt of the questions his spokesman Dmitry Peskov last Monday against Russian journalists and declared “in a questioning manner written requests” get to have. These are part of an “information attack”. An attempt was made “to meet each other information” the president’s family would. From a lot of offshore companies mentioned will be, by entrepreneurs who have never seen Putin personally. Peskov guessed not only journalists would be behind the “attack”, but also “representatives of special services and other organizations”. If “fictitious facts” published would, claims and lawsuits are not excluded for defamation.
Also, because such reactions avoid many Russian media the topic. Among Russian journalists is known that you can barter for trouble if you write about Putin’s money. It threatens unpleasant tax audits, burglaries and the like. The Guardian journalist Luke Harding, who has included in the search and in this story, his expulsion from Russia returns on research in this area in 2011th
Should Putin actually have amassed such a fabulous wealth, it will be hardly attached his name tag. Officially likely the money people are who are not in public, inconspicuous middlemen, which he absolutely familiar. Sergej Roldugin would such a man. This pattern is known financial experts and investigators already at high-ranking politicians. Also immersed in the Panama Papers of the name Putin in connection with the mentioned companies not to.
The Cellist
Roldugin and Putin first met, as can be read in several books, know the mid to late 70s. Roldugin said in an interview published in 2000 book about Putin, be a year younger friend was like a brother to him. At night they were pulled through Saint Petersburg, had sung and fought with other young people. According to Putin biographer Brenda Lange and Charles J. Shields Roldugin made his friend Putin with his later wife Lyudmila announced is divorced from Putin now. An Aeroflot stewardess, have met with the Roldugin to have brought a blonde colleague who Roldugin in the car at Volodya – have placed – diminutive for Vladimir. Putin married Lyudmila 1983. Two years later, Maria was born, Roldugin Putin his wife and child had picked up from the hospital.
The friendship between the two men seems to have survived to this day. Roldugin is the only one of Russian President allows obviously to tell journalists Private him. He made in an interview not only the back pain Putin publicly who presents himself as brawny Daredevil usually, but told also that Putin is now a grandfather. this has not been confirmed officially
Putin familiar Roldugin obviously very -.? so much so that he would behind its inconspicuous artist biography even hide a possible asset
The New York Times declared Sergei Roldugin in September 2014 he was certainly “not a businessman,” he possessed “not millions”. At least the latter is unlikely to agree, the place the data from the Panama Papers close.
As Sergei Roldugin accordingly in May 2014. opened an account with the Swiss Gazprombank in Zurich on behalf of one of its offshore companies, the bank asks in a form and how much money the new customer own. The answer: more than ten million Swiss francs. . For this purpose an annual income of more than one million Swiss francs, the resultiere primarily from dividends, interest and loans
Part of the paperwork, an anti-money laundering questionnaire – whether as “in a relationship with a VIP “stand, or to” a politically exposed person “? Banks must provide by default such questions now. Because the experience of the past decades has shown that many politicians their delicate accounts just do not run on their own behalf, but on a family member or friend.
The questionnaire of Roldugin comes with two crosses with “No” back to the bank. The perhaps best friend of Vladimir Putin, the godfather of his daughter, should have no relation to a politically exposed person?
The network
cellist Sergei Roldugin was of the Panamanian offshore service Mossack Fonseca – which occupy some documents in the Panama Papers – as the owner or co-owner of three shell companies out:
– founded in the British Virgin Islands in 2007 sonnets Overseas Inc,
– the registered in 2008 in Panama International Media Overseas SA and
– 2012 in the British Virgin Islands placed Raytar Limited.
On an inquiry by the British newspaper Guardian explained Mossack Fonseca, not to have known that Roldugin was owner of sonnets Overseas and the International Media Overseas.
About the Raytar Limited according to the documents produced not much. The Company International Media Overseas and Overseas sonnets but are in the data that has been leaked to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, to find dozens emails, also contracts, documents relating to share deals and various documents that carry obvious Roldugins signature.
So there is a release of liability from May 2008, which is related to his company sonnets Overseas, as an authorization granted in March 2011 authorization for two Mossfon-staff. Even a passport of the musician, issued on 5 November 2002 in St. Petersburg, is included
When Russian journalists who are involved in this research, after a concert in the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow responded Roldugin last week it he replied that he had with such dealings before the perestroika had to do, but could hardly remember and asked for written questions. Before perestroika? That would have been before 1986th The companies from the Panama Papers incurred more than twenty years later. . Any written questions of SZ to Roldugin remained unanswered
Roldugins Companies International Media Overseas and sonnets Overseas are according to the Panama Papers closely linked with two other registered in the British Virgin Islands shell companies: the Sandalwood Continental Ltd. and Sunbarn Limited. So had the sonnets of Overseas Roldugin and Sunbarn Limited temporarily same owner, a businessman from St. Petersburg. The owner of Sandalwood Continental, however, gained according to the Panama papers a proxy with which he for Roldugin transactions and sign documents could have. In this man there also is a St. Petersburg businessman. In one dated July 2009 form states that he worked until 2003 when a law enforcement agency.
These four offshore companies might be called the “Roldugin network”.
on the Gazprombank account of Roldugins International Media Overseas to loud documents from the Panama Papers million dividend another letterbox company have flowed, which in turn owns shares of major Russian media company called video International. To open an account, the charge calculated as input payment with 268.4 million rubles – the equivalent of about 5.6 million euros -, later was more to come. Video International wanted to request not comment on that.
The company was founded in the 1990s by Mikhail Lessin. Lessin, who appears as the owner of a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands shell company in Panama Papers, was 2004-2009 Putin media consultant. On November 5, 2015, it is has been found dead in a Washington hotel room.
The companies in the network, which is clear from the leaked data, negotiated with purchase options of other companies, which in turn hold shares in the Russian Lada-maker Avtovaz and the Laster- and tanks manufacturer Kamaz. Sergej Roldugins company sonnets Overseas could, according to the documents, without shares to own in Kamaz, a say through a complex corporate construct in important decisions of the company.
Kamaz is Russia’s war machine almost irreplaceable. Meanwhile lorries were often in Ukraine-war aid, for example as white trucks transported the alleged aid during the Crimean annexation of the peninsula. Also in Syria, where Russian ground forces support the army of dictator Bashar Assad, Kamaz truck
Putin-critical journalists and analysts have been spotted.
believe that the president leave to allot shares of Russia’s major companies regularly , So argued the controversial political scientist Stanislaw Belkowskij 2007 that Putin 37 percent of the oil and gas company Surgutneftegaz controlling, hold to 4.5 percent of Gazprom. verify Closer settled so far nothingLeonid Berschidskij, founding editor of the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti wrote in a column for the agency Bloomberg on Putin. “He has the whole country on demand.” Putin take simply what he wanted, says Russia expert Karen Daisha
“Putin Bank”
with the exception of the most Raytar Limited company all the Roldugin network as evidenced by the Panama Papers by members of the St. Petersburg Rossiya Bank were controlled. It applies under US experts as “Putin’s Bank”, as a bank of his closest circle. It was so in 2014, after the Crimean annexation by the United States sanctioned. Its headquarters, a yellow building in the Soviet style, situated on one of the most beautiful places of the city, the Rastrelli square next to the river Neva. In 1990 she founded with money of the Communist Party, as at that time, when Vladimir Putin returned from the GDR.
Several of Putin’s closest confidants own or had shares in the bank alone, almost half belonged to at least temporarily Yuri Kovalchuk and Nikolai Schamalow that are both founding members of Putin’s dacha cooperative Ozero. But Sergei Roldugin included at least until recently, more than three percent of the shares. The 2010 was publicly, though without attracting much attention. As the Panama Papers now show for the first time, also included a company from the Roldugin network – the Sandalwood – temporarily shares the money home. At the same time, the bank is considered reservoirs for important investments. Thus, the financial house held a majority stake in Russia’s second biggest insurance group Sogaz, which in turn controls the Gazprom-Media Group. To latter include the television station NTV and TNT, as well as the radio station Ekho Moskvy
On the sanctioning of Rossiya Bank Putin reacted promptly. He ordered that the Russian central bank should support the Institute. Putin opened demonstratively a ruble account with Rossiya
show the months of POI search that two employees of the Bank to play a special role. They had therefore in some cases the right documents for Roldugins company International Media to sign Overseas – also because Roldugin often was not tangible, as is apparent from an email
This is not surprising for a musician who is much on tour.. From 2014 sent Bank Rossiya staff e-mails regarding companies from Roldugin network, partly Tarnadressen. This should possibly be concealed that the bankers working for a sanctioned company. An email from Roldugin itself is not to be found in the data.
So is the power over the entire Roldugin network at Bank Rossiya. The real decisions but fall probably elsewhere. Maybe even in the Kremlin? A request answered the Rossiya Bank to Sunday not.
Writing
As a contact and unobtrusive first stop upon contact with Mossack Fonseca employees of Sankt serves Petersburg bank intermediaries, Swiss law firm. Also in the Rossiya Bank seems clear that a Russian bank with dubious reputation abroad is not a good place for international business. With sharp controls of all deals were expected. Quite different is the Swiss law firm not far from Zurich’s Paradeplatz, where the big banks sit. They seem to be ideal: renowned enough to compete internationally can, and small enough to arouse any interest.
Anyone who inquires in Zurich to this firm, hears mostly first by the many Russians, to which they look after themselves. Some of them are not only very rich but also very influential. In fact, several years ago show leaked documents that about the former top manager of the petroleum company Yukos, the oligarch Alexei Golubowitsch, was in business contact with the firm.
One of the partners of the firm, which did not respond to request, travels regularly to Russia supposedly. We hear that he then likes to tell of the Walkabout and brings expensive vodka home. He was particularly proud of his good contacts to Moscow, so it is told. He was there relations with people from the secret service, he should have toned internally, only to add:. Way up to Vladimir Putin
The Tricks
The meaning of Roldugin network seems not only is to made to hold shares and stock options. Apparently it also quite specifically about creating on the offshore companies millions sums aside. It is important to specify inconspicuous uses in monetary transactions. There are, according to Panama Papers several tricks
Trick I:. Backdated share transactions
An example of the Mossfon documents:. A Rossiya staff asks 5 July 2011 Mossack Fonseca therefore that the directors of two of companies more share transactions emerge – in the offshore world average per se approach. Only that the share transactions to have taken place five months earlier, in January 2011. The directors should therefore approve retroactively
The principle behind this apparently works:. The companies concerned retroactively seek data between the sale and repurchase of shares with prices according were the documents fell between those two dates. Indeed traded shares were obviously never, but in the balance sheet results in a profit.
This pattern is about a dozen times to see in the data, a total win two companies that Sandalwood and the International Media Overseas, on thus within three years, several million dollars. The Rossiya Bank, whose employees after SZ-search pulled the strings in the background, did not respond to a request
Animation II: Alleged compensation
one of the offshore companies agreed on the network with a different – obviously privy – company is a Stock Market..
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