In the family photo from 1985 they look festive and serious. Vladimir Putin holds a baby in her arms – his elder daughter Maria was just baptized. To his left is his former wife Lyudmila with a bouquet. In addition to Putin are the godparents of the child, the musician Sergey Roldugin and his wife. The future Russian president was still an inconspicuous KGB officer. Since that time he developed a close friendship with cellist Roldugin.
It is that Sergei Roldugin who shows up now in the Panama documents via letterbox companies. About those leaders, businessmen, criminals, sports stars and other celebrities seem to have hidden for years money, reported the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” and more than 100 other media, citing a massive data leak at a law firm in Panama. It also includes references to Putin’s tightest environment on Roldugin.
So learned Putin Sergei Roldugin know
After the birth of Mary, the two couples moved to the dacha of Roldugins laws in St. Petersburg, the musician told later. “We have Masha birth celebrated,” he said. “In the evening we danced so much.” Putin studied together with the brother of Roldugin, so the two men met. Since then, they played football together, attracted by the city at night in Putin’s car, celebrated, sang songs and survived street brawls. “He’s like my brother,” Roldugin later told Putin. “If I previously did not know where to go, I went to him, I slept and ate with him.” It was just the cellist who Putin introduced his future wife Lyudmila.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the men made different careers. Putin came back from Germany and began to work in the City of St. Petersburg. The road led him later in the Kremlin.
Roldugin made a music career. He was in Russia as one of the famous cellist, played in the Mariinsky Theatre. Early 2000s he became the director of the conservatory in St. Petersburg. Later he founded the House of Music, which he still heads now in the same city. He travels the world, he is also private concerts for the Russian president. The old friendship between him and Putin remained. Roldugin is one of the few people in Russia who are allowed to speak publicly about the private life of the president.
He did not seem in contrast to the other friends of Putin as someone wealth interested much. “The life of luxury does not irritate him,” said one of the friends of Roldugin the Russian newspaper “Novaya Gazeta”. “In our circle we called him Prince Myshkin.” So was the protagonist of the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky “The Idiot”, a poor idealist. Roldugin himself said in 2014 in an interview with the “New York Times”: “I do not have millions.” It was just not a businessman. This was already a lie, because it was known that the musicians three percent belonged to the Rossiya Bank, considered the Bank of Putin’s friends.
And now show documents that have been leaked to the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” that the cellist was open several offshore companies, flowed through the approximately two billion dollars from Russia. His companies are connected to the most important men of the inner circle of the Russian president. Perhaps he is even only one confidant, acting in the interests of Putin.
Putin have always relied on the county entrepreneurs who he had known since his youth in St. Petersburg, told Roldugins friend of “Novaya Gazeta”, the participated on the Russian side of the search. “But many have lost their trust because of their greed. The president needed a man he could trust no doubt, to control the situation on its shares.” For this role of musicians Roldugin have fitted. Another friend described him as “guardians”.
For years were made via letterbox companies shady dealings in secret. The data leakage from the firm Mossack Fonseca who managed these companies in Panama showed that the truth comes to light sooner or later. For months, hundreds of journalists have evaluated from several countries, 11.5 million documents. In the documents, many politicians such as the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko or the Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson emerge. And by the company as the cellist Roldugin it is journalists succeeded in the puzzle to get to the assets of the Kremlin chief as close as ever.
The letterbox of Sergei Roldugin
the offshore companies of modest musician got millions of dollars of company of Russian big business transferred. They could one day earn hundreds of thousands of dollars and received loans of hundreds of millions of the Bank RCB, the Cypriot subsidiary of Russian state bank VTB. About the company he controlled the major Russian truck manufacturer Kamaz and the media company Video International.
Roldugin was the owner of the mailbox company Sonett Overseas in the British Virgin Islands and International Media Overseas to Panama. He also controlled through representatives two other companies in the British Virgin Islands with the name Sunbarn Limited and Sandalwood Continental. The companies were managed by the infamous Rossiya Bank. They were established after 2006, part of which was closed, 2015.
These companies earned their miraculously. The deals were documented in the “Panama Papers”. So one of the companies was able to conclude a contract for the purchase of shares of the Russian energy group Rosneft. Shortly after the agreement was terminated, and Roldugins firm received $ 750,000 in compensation. Or they bought shares in Russian large companies and sold them the next day at the same company, of which they received the shares, but always with a big win because of the price changes. But that is not explained by the ingenious feel for the market, but the fact that the deals were concluded retroactively.
Part of the money flowed in a ski resort near St. Petersburg
one of the companies was according to documents in 2007 a loan of six million dollars from a company of Russian steel magnate Alexei Mordashov. Two months later, the debt for a compensation of one dollars were adopted. Another company of Roldugin bought also for one dollar, the right to debts in the millions and got from the state-owned Russian telecommunications company Rostelecom paid $ 130 million. The funds were distributed to the network of other shell companies. Some of the money was returned to Russia, as in the ski resort Igora at St. Petersburg, where in 2013 the wedding of the younger daughter Putin, Katerina, was celebrated.
the Panama documents prove in detail that from which Russian anti-corruption activist talking for years: the Russian elite enriched itself in a big way and led billions of dollars out of the country. Corruption and self-interest are the main principles of the Russian political system, the patriotic rhetoric is just a distraction. Legal consequences, however, has no fear of the cellist.
During the unveiling around the world caused a riot, it was largely ignored by Russian state media. Last week Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov vorwarnend explains that an “information attack” was the Russian president in preparation. The Kremlin got Journalists, which were written in “interrogation manner”. He was confident that after the revelation not only journalists, but also “other services” are.
The publication of the papers was accompanied by the silence in Russia, however , The state television mentioned only briefly, that there was a “scandal Offshores in Panama”, in which the football star Lionel Messi and Uefa chief Michel Platini were involved. Moreover, the scandal “around 20 other known football players and football officials’ concerns. Not a word about Putin and his friend, the cellist Roldugin.
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