In August 2020, on the order of Vladimir Putin, Navalny was poisoned with “Novichok” chemical warfare agent
He survived, came back to Russia and was arrested right at the airport.
On August 18, 2021, the court unlawfully arrested Alexey Navalny and sent him to “Matrosskaya Tishina” prison
For many years, navalny has been fighting for our rights. Now it’s our time to fight for him.
January 23, 14:00. Central streets of your cities. Take to the streets. Don’t stand aside.
Hi, it’s Navalny.
We came up with this investigation when I was in intensive care, but we immediately agreed
that we would release it when I returned home, to Russia, to Moscow,
because we do not want the main character of this film to think
that we are afraid of him and that I will tell about his worst secret while abroad.
One of these viewers is the most devoted admirer of our work,
on whose orders I was poisoned, is Vladimir Putin.
He is definitely watching this now, and his heart is filling with nostalgia.
This is not only an investigation, but also, in a sense, a psychological portrait.
I really want to understand how an ordinary Soviet officer turned into a madman
who is obsessed with money and luxury and literally ready
to destroy the country and kill for the sake of his chests of gold.
That’s why this is a very symbolic place to start our film.
I am in Dresden, and this inconspicuous panel building is where first corruption schemes
were drawn by those who would later arrange the biggest robbery in the history of Russia.
They will simply steal all the national wealth.
Their leader, 33-year-old Volodya Putin, the future richest man in the world, lived here.
In those days, everything was simple and the level of his atrocities
roughly corresponded to the level of this building.
Vladimir Vladimirovich was occupied with how, using his official position,
to get hold of a good imported radio tape recorder.
But in principle, neither his methods nor his circle of proxies have changed.
It’s just that before, they were interested in radio tape recorders, and now - in huge state enterprises.
They sat at ceremonial events and read speeches.
It’s just that in those days, they praised grandfather Lenin
and swore allegiance to the ideals of communism,
but now they cross themselves in churches and teach us spirituality and conservatism.
Today we will see what is considered impossible to see up close.
We will go where no one is allowed. We will pay Putin a visit and see with our own eyes
that this man, in his craving for luxury and wealth, has gone completely mad.
We will find out how and with whose money this luxury is financed.
And how, over the past 15 years, the biggest bribe in history is being given
and the most expensive palace in the world is being built.
Palace for Putin
Putin, a petty KGB officer who now masquerades as a great spy, came to Dresden in 1985.
He wants us to think of him as a cool infiltrator.
But in fact, he was an ordinary employee not even of a secret residency,
but of the official representative office of the KGB in East Germany, a friend of the Soviet Union.
Today's court propagandists love to romanticize that period of Putin's life,
claiming that he infiltrated the enemy's lair.
In fact, this building was a warm place, where a bunch of idlers like Putin
sat at party meetings and awarded each other with mementos. Just like they do now.
November 21, 1987. Suited-up Putin, believe it or not, at the brothers-in-arms ball.
The event is dedicated to the friendship between the KGB and the Stasi,
the great October revolution, and the inevitable victory of socialism throughout the world.
On this day, Putin was presented with an award, a golden badge,
as a symbol of friendship between Germany and the Soviet Union.
Friendship with the Soviet Union became the need of the heart of every citizen of the GDR
Now this “valuable” can be purchased on the Internet for 3 euros.
Throughout the evening, Putin and his colleagues read long speeches, drank Soviet cognac,
watched slides and trembled with pride and loyalty to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism.
In less than two years, not a trace of all this will remain. The Berlin Wall will be destroyed.
East Germany, along with the Stasi and KGB offices, will cease to exist.
The system built on lies and repression collapsed,
but left behind one very important legacy: its archives.
Alas, despite his dreams and expectations, Putin failed to build a career or get rich in Dresden.
But on the other hand, he met with the people who would later become his main wallets.
I’ve now put on white gloves and am aided by David Schraven, head of Correctiv.
Here is Putin's case file, let’s study it.
We have already seen this photo. Vladimir Putin receives a golden badge.
But not everyone noticed this gentleman.
And this is none other than Sergei Viktorovich Chemezov,
now the head of the Rostec corporation. He served alongside Putin.
So, in this photo, we see two of the richest people in Russia.
Well, Putin is probably the richest man in the world,
and Chemezov is definitely one of the five richest people in our country.
After 30 years, he is still around, but already as a billionaire civil servant.
It's peculiar how carefully the Germans recorded everything. Typical Germans…
Here is the program of the evening, and it is written that at 6 pm
a special toast will be pronounced in honor of the representatives of the host country,
and everyone will be given ein Glas sowjetischen Kognaks, a glass of Soviet cognac.
Further on, they make all sorts of solemn speeches, praise Comrade Lenin, praise socialism,
give each other souvenirs and, according to the program, no later than 19:45,
Vladimir Vladimirovich begins to dance, because at 19:45 the dances start.
We have two booklets with photographs - this one has been shown repeatedly on TV,
you’ve seen it many times - this is a Stasi ID with the name Vladimir Putin on it.
There is a similar ID with a picture of a very nice person on it.
This is Nikolai Petrovich Tokarev. The man at the head of Transneft.
He, unlike Chemezov, never confirmed his work in the KGB, and in his official biography,
there is a 20-year gap and work in the “mining industry”. Well, we have filled this gap.
The numbers of these IDs differ by one digit.
Here’s another document, a Stasi phone book. It has a section "Comrades/Friends".
Let’s study it. Look, Major Tokarev and Major Chemezov have the same phone numbers.
That is, they literally sat in the same office, and their desks were obviously next to each other.
It was here, in Dresden, that Putin defined his main life principles,
which would later become the basis of the Russian state.
1. Always say one thing and do another.
Lying and hypocrisy are the most effective methods of work.
2. Corruption is the foundation of trust.
Your main friends are those who have been stealing and cheating with you for many years.
3. And the most important thing: There is never too much money.
St. Petersburg
Early 90s, Leningrad.
Think for yourselves how tough a spy Putin was in Dresden,
if, upon returning to Leningrad from the assignment,
he was sent to an unpromising job at Leningrad University.
His old university friend, Nikolai Egorov, also worked there.
This is one of the little-known, but key and most trusted people of Putin.
In the 70s, Egorov and Putin sat at the same desk and were friends.
Along with him, two other Putin’s classmates and closest friends of that time,
Ilgam Ragimov and Viktor Khmarin, were not deprived of his attention either.
Back then, they were united by their passion for martial arts. Let's remember them.
In 1991, the same Yegorov did Putin a favour that changed the life of the future president forever.
He recommended Putin to work in the mayor's office of St. Petersburg
in the committee for external relations.
It is terribly entertaining to recall these pages of Putin's biography now.
After all, he loves to remember how he experienced the collapse of the USSR.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century
He condemns the 90s, Yeltsinism, democrats and calls everyone around him foreign agents.
I won’t tell you the people that were in charge in the 90s a gang,
but i will note that since then, our social sector and defense industry have completely collapsed.
We’ve lost the defense industry. We’ve practically destroyed the military,
led the country to a civil war, to the bloodbath in Caucasus.
And in those days, Putin took off like greased lightning
to work for one of the main democrats of those times,
the radical critic of the USSR, Anatoly Sobchak.
And so it happened. A man who has dreamed of money all his life has finally got a grasp on this money.
He found himself in a position where there is something to steal. Where bribes are given.
And here, our Vladimir Vladimirovich really showed himself.
The most famous and well researched topic are the export licenses.
Putin was engaged in issuing such licenses to companies that were allowed to sell oil products,
timber, aluminum, copper, cotton (any raw materials) abroad, in exchange for food.
Literally: oil in exchange for sugar and potatoes. Timber in exchange for baby food.
Anatoly Alexandrovich has just told me that 2500 tons of sugar
have just been purchased in Ukraine and prepared for shipment to St. Petersburg.
- So, are we coming through now?
Well, let’s not cross the bridge till we come to it
Putin personally distributed licenses. And as it turned out later,
he gave them to shell companies, including those associated with himself and his friends.
The scheme was elementary. The raw materials went abroad,
the bogus companies received money for it, and the products never arrived.
This is our Motherland, the most valuable thing we have.
One of the main places of income for Putin was the seaport.
This place is legendary, it’s one of the symbols of the bandit Petersburg.
In the early 90s, this strategic facility turned into a criminalized territory,
where people got shot, killed, and were constantly dividing something.
The port was controlled by one of the most famous crime bosses of that time -
Ilya Traber, nicknamed Antiquarian.
Bandits be bandits, but all sorts of papers and permits still needed to be signed and executed.
This is what Putin the official was doing. Formally, he represented the interests of the state,
but in fact, he was helping the bandits working in the port.
He served their interests and was a helpful assistant in the mayor's office
who could help real tough guys solve their problems.
Here’s an example. The oil terminal in the port.
Traber was the chairman of the board of directors, another share was controlled
by the head of the Tambov gang, Gennady Petrov.
And Putin, as said by none other than the head of Gazprom Neft, Alexander Dyukov,
who was then the general director of the terminal,
provided the project with "serious help and support."
It is very easy to see who else Putin provided serious support -
oil products were supplied abroad through the terminal by Gennady Timchenko,
the future billionaire, the main trader of Russian oil and one of the most famous “Putin’s friends”.
Their surnames are kind of strange. Timchen-ko. Typical Russkies.
I think I should keep my distance from them
It was then that the story of his super-profitable business, oil trading company Gunvor, began.
When Putin became president, 4 out of 5 of our country's major oil companies
did not sell their oil abroad directly, but through the Swiss intermediary Gunvor.
Thus, Timchenko, without doing anything, earned incredible money.
Throughout the entire existence of Gunvor, it was believed that Putin had a secret share there,
even the US Treasury officially claimed that Putin had access to Gunvor's money.
But it was not clear to whom this share was registered for many years.
And then it was found out. All this time there was a secret shareholder in Gunvor, Pyotr Kolbin.
No one understood where this amazing shareholder came from
and how a person who says himself that he is not engaged in business
could have millions of dollars to invest in Gunvor.
Until 2016, when journalists discovered that Pyotr Kolbin was Putin's childhood crony,
they grew up in the same village, went to discos together, and had a friendship as families.
And it became obvious that Kolbin was the holder of Putin's share all this time.
You’re probably thinking now: “Wait, does mean that Putin was directly paid bribes? In envelopes?”
Yes! One of the participants of the Petersburg crime scene in the 90s, Maxim Freidzon,
told in an interview how the scheme of interaction with the mayor's office worked.
If it was necessary to formalize something,
they needed to come to the Foreign Relations Committee,
listen to a ceremonial speech about the importance of economic partnership,
and then Putin simply wrote on a piece of paper the required amount of kickback
(a small one 10 or 20 thousand dollars) and added that the money
needed to be “registered” with (that is, brought to) his assistant, Alex Miller.
Now Alex Miller needs no introduction, for almost 20 years
he has been heading our “national treasure” Gazprom.
He is clearly better at registering bribes than running a state-owned company.
In 2008, Miller boasted that in 7-8 years Gazprom would become
the most valuable company in the world with a capitalization of a trillion dollars.
At that moment Gazprom was worth 360 billion.
12 years have passed, and the capitalization of Gazprom is about 70 billion.
That is, it did not grow, but decreased by 5 times.
A perfect example of how Putin's team worked.
I’m not ashamed of my friends
And now, the most important thing.
The story of Putin the official cannot be told without the story of Rossiya Bank.
Putin as we know him wouldn’t exist without it.
This bank was created by the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU.
But in 1991, when both the CPSU and the regional committees ceased to exist,
the mayor of St. Petersburg Sobchak ordered to reorganize this bank.
To put the assets in order, and create a normal commercial structure on their basis
that would help the economy of poverty-stricken St. Petersburg.
And he instructed this to Putin. Putin succeeded.
But most shareholders of the new bank were his, Putin's, friends.
First of all, of course, Yuri Kovalchuk.
He became (and still is) the main shareholder and manager.
In the early 90s, Rossiya was just a small bank controlled by the mayor's office,
and now it is a giant banking monster that serves the country's main corrupt officials
and keeps Putin's personal money.
I ordered the Property Management Department to transfer my salary there.
Everything that was illegally acquired, donated to and stolen by Putin's gang is safe here.
The bank has an imposing and symbolic name - Rossiya.
Despite the fact that 3 decades have passed since Putin worked the St. Petersburg City Hall,
many of you were not even born then, you know very well all the participants in those legendary events.
Look at the honor roll of just one committee that was led by Putin.
It shows the whole team of bribe-takers, who once divided the money from the envelopes that Alex Miller took.
Medvedev became prime minister and president, Miller was put in charge of Gazprom,
Zubkov also was prime minister and is now at Gazprom.
Sechin started as the secretary and porter of Putin’s briefcase,
then he was a minister of Putin’s government, and now he’s the head of Rosneft.
It’s like an unofficial Forbes list.
And here’s Churov. He was assigned to falsify elections
so that unwanted candidates would not be elected and would not interfere with stealing.
Marina Entaltseva became the head of Putin's protocol.
In the neighboring offices sat German Gref, now the head of Sberbank,
Kudrin, Head of the Accounts Chamber,
Kozak, former minister who is now in the presidential administration, and many others.
For more than 30 years they have been officials and in power,
and they like to tell us how they are against the damned 90s.
They are the personification of all the worst that happened in the 90s.
Moscow
All these are old, well-known stories described by journalists.
Not even many years later, but right during Putin's service in the Sobchak mayor's office,
there were scandals, parliamentary investigations and reports on corruption around him.
The newspapers wrote about Putin's machinations.
To be frank, Putin should have been put in jail already back then, in 1996,
when he and Sobchak lost power after losing the elections.
By the way, Putin was then actively working in Sobchak's election headquarters,
and from that moment he realized that fair elections are a terrible thing,
because they can be lost.
But then two guardian angels appeared who saved our Vladimir Vladimirovich.
Those of you who are younger may ask people who remember the 90s well -
who were then the embodiments of corruption? I guarantee you that two names will be said:
Pavel Pavlovich Borodin, Yeltsin's property manager.
All the newspapers of those times wrote about kickbacks at his construction sites.
In the USA and Switzerland, where they operate trillions of dollars,
there must be at least the same amount of thieves, probably much more.
But nobody writes about them.
And Anatoly Borisovich Chubais, he needs no introduction.
It is these two wonderful people that we must thank for the fact
that Putin has settled in the Kremlin since 1996.
First, in the Presidential Property Management Department, under Borodin.
As you know, the Presidential Property Management Department
deals with the logistical and financial services of all central authorities.
I will be in charge of contractual and legal activities, since I am a lawyer by training.
And then, I quote, Anatoly Chubais offered a “strong candidate with whom he worked in St. Petersburg”
for a job in the presidential administration.
So Putin became the head of the control department of the Yeltsin administration.
What an irony, the main corrupt officials of those times
pondered who should be appointed to the position of the inspector in the administration.
Who will check, but diligently ignore corruption? And they chose Putin.
This is my profession, and I find it interesting.
Putin was given a state dacha in Arkhangelskoye, an official car,
but actually very little is known about his lifestyle.
We found a good witness of those times though, a direct participant in all those events.
It’s the ex-wife of Putin - Lyudmila.
In the mid-90s, Lyudmila Putina, during her trip to Hamburg, met a German woman, Irene,
and the two became penfriends.
For several years they sent each other handwritten letters
in which Lyudmila told in detail about her life.
Here are these letters. From 1996, 1997, 1998 - then they stopped communicating.
Lyudmila’s former friend even wrote a book about this called "Spicy Friendship".
It was published in Russian in 2002, but unfortunately it quickly disappeared from the shelves.
It contains excellent photographs of Putin's already very recognizable daughters,
or “these women,” as he himself calls them.
You mentioned one woman, then another one…
We have carefully studied every word - both in the book and in the letters themselves.
They mostly contain completely uninteresting stories about personal things -
about the weather, children and horoscopes.
But there is still something important there. Firstly, where these letters were sent from.
At the top of the page, you can see a phone number.
Lyudmila Putina sent them either from home or from the “office” as she herself writes -
and this office was the St. Petersburg seaport, the very one that,
thanks to the help of Putin the official, became the property of the crime boss Ilya Traber.
What was the official's wife doing there?
Or, here, an office called “Interkommerz Warnig”.
This is Matthias Warnig, a banker and a former Stasi employee who worked with Putin back in Germany,
and then moved to St. Petersburg to head the Dresdner Bank.
Lyudmila’s German friend was very surprised at how close Putin and Warnig were.
Warnig paid for the treatment of Lyudmila Putin abroad, took upon himself
the costs and organization of the Putin family vacations - hotels were booked in his name.
This is called a bribe in specie: Putin works in the presidential administration,
and a German banker and former intelligence officer pays for his family's expenses.
It seems to me that this is exactly what should be called by Putin's favorite term “foreign agent”.
It wasn’t us who came up with the term “foreign agent”.
Such a law has existed in the USA since the 30s.
I think it was adopted in 1938 or 1939, and it works perfectly
Warnig's expenses on the Putin family were more than reimbursed.
Today this person is the managing director of Nord Stream,
as well as a member of the boards of directors of Rosneft, Transneft, Bank of Russia, RUSAL,
a member of the supervisory board of VTB and the administrative council of Swiss Gazprom.
In addition to the vacations, to which we will return,
the absolute obsession of the Putin family with real estate is immediately evident.
By that time, they had already received one service apartment in St. Petersburg.
But with the move to Moscow, all that worried the Putins
was whether they would get a new apartment from the city and have the old one taken away.
Lyudmila says with annoyance that their friends Chemezovs
have already received a two-story apartment and thoroughly describes every square meter of it.
By the way, there was a very similar story with Sechin,
but we learned it not from letters, but from a recent book about Putin.
In it, a common acquaintance of Putin and Sechin
tells how they were resettled in service apartments after moving to Moscow.
When Vladimir Vladimirovich came to visit Igor Ivanovich,
he asked how large his apartment was. Sechin's apartment was 317 m2, Putin's was 286 m2.
Sechin told his friend that Putin only said “congratulations”,
but the feeling was as if he wanted to shoot him with a well-aimed shot in the head.
For several weeks after that, they did not talk.
From Lyudmila's letters, we learn a lot about Putin's life already at the end of those wild 90s.
Who they communicated with, where they went.
Lyudmila describes in detail each vacation - in 1996 they spend 6 weeks in Davos,
together with the Shamalov family, with whom they will become related in 15 years.
Several times a year the family of the official travels to France -
in the summer to have a rest on the sea, and in the winter to ski.
And here is my favorite piece. Lyudmila Putina exposes a typical Putin lie.
She describes how in the summer of 1998 we went on vacation to Cannes for 6 weeks.
But on July 22, Putin had to abruptly interrupt his vacation and return to Moscow -
he was appointed director of the FSB.
We chose Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin for a reason.
He’s a professional with experience in the entire range of tasks the FSB faces
This episode is also described in the only official biography of Putin.
Only according to their version, the vacation was not in Cannes, but on the Baltic Sea.
And there wasn’t the entire Putin family there, but only Lyudmila.
We get surprised at the current degradation of special services and rampant corruption.
But why should we be surprised if, already in 98, an official
whose family has been living for a month and a half in a hotel on the French Riviera
was appointed head of the main special service?
With what money? It’s clear that this money was dirty.
It’s clear that thieves like him made him the director of the FSB
so that he could solve their problems.
Look at these shots, tanned Putin, having flown in from France,
sits next to Kiriienko on the day of his appointment, rejoicing at his "return to his home."
For me, returning to work at the security apparatus is like returning to my home
After becoming the head of the FSB, Putin did exactly what he was supposed to do:
helped corrupt officials evade responsibility.
The then general prosecutor Skuratov was gunning for the Yeltsin family,
accusing them of theft and bribes. To neutralize Skuratov, the FSB organized a whole operation,
the result of which was the showing on federal television
of the famous tape with a “man similar to the Prosecutor General”.
You will now see a man very similar to the Prosecutor General of Russian Federation
in the company of some call girls.
We must warn you: this shouldn’t be watched by people under 18
After the publication, Putin also spoke personally
and said that this was not “a person who looked like Skuratov”,
but Skuratov himself, and he must resign.
My views are well known. They are the same as those of the President
and the Prime Minister. Skuratov must resign.
Which is what happened. Skuratov was removed from office.
The corrupt Yeltsin family was saved. And literally four months later,
realizing that they could not find a more reliable and appropriate person in spirit,
it was Yeltsin's family, “Tanya and Valya”, who made Putin the successor:
first the Prime Minister, and then the President of Russia.
[25:55] The Palace
As soon as Putin established himself in power -
that is, after he subjugated television and the courts
and established a system of electoral fraud -
the largest operation to seize and milk Russia began (and continues to this day).
Every Putin’s friend gets a piece. One sits on the streams of Gazprom,
the second begins to milk Rosneft, the third takes over the largest construction projects.
A gang of bribe-takers and crooks from the St. Petersburg mayor's office
seized all key posts and declared themselves brilliant managers and saviors of Russia.
But despite the fact that our heroes got suited up
and surrounded themselves with hundreds of guards,
the key principle on which everything has been held
since the wild 90s in St. Petersburg stayed the same.
You want to steal from the budget and milk state property? Share with Putin.
Alright, I agree, it’s a deal
And if before Putin wrote relatively small amounts in dollars on a piece of paper,
and Alex Miller collected them for him, then this time they wrote a word on the piece of paper.
And that word was “palace”.
It’s the world’s largest construction project
The most secret and guarded facility in Russia, without exaggeration.
This is not a country house, not a dacha, not a residence -
this is a whole city, or rather a kingdom.
It has impregnable fences, its own port, its own guards, a church,
its own access control, a no-fly zone and even its own border checkpoint.
It is an actual separate state within Russia.
And in this state, there is a single and irreplaceable king: Putin.
Wait, you’ll say, we heard about this palace, we know that it was once built for Putin,
but then, when the whole story was revealed, the construction was frozen,
and some businessman bought the palace, right? You are telling us some old story.
You are wrong. This story is unknown to anyone.
Firstly, you cannot imagine the true size of this palace. Secondly, there was no sale.
This is a legal illusion created through several bogus deals and an active media campaign.
The only real owner of this famous place from the very beginning to the present day
is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
And finally, looking inside, you will understand that the president of Russia is mentally ill.
He is obsessed with wealth and luxury.
Can you imagine the Principality of Monaco? It is small, but still a separate country.
Well, this is a property the size of 39 principalities of Monaco.
It was built so that it would not be possible to get to it by land, sea or air.
Thousands of people working there are forbidden to bring even a simple mobile phone with a camera.
Arriving cars are inspected at several checkpoints, with the help of mirrors
and pits with video cameras, trunks and glove compartments get searched.
But we'll come in anyway.
What is this, have you gone mad?
For many years we have shown you the property of corrupt officials from the air, from the outside.
But today, we’ll show you the palace of the MOST corrupt official from the inside.
In addition to a tour of the royal chambers, I am sure you are looking forward to it,
you will find out that the real Putin's palace is not just this house,
but another 7800 hectares of land, almost 300 hectares of vineyards in four different places,
a chateau, wineries, oyster farms and endless luxury.
I will tell you where this palace came from, whose money it was built on
and whose money it continues to be constructed on right now.
Let’s go.
Hello everyone, this is Georgy Alburov.
As you may have noticed, we are in a slightly unusual environment for us.
You see, we are in Krasnodar Krai, on the Black Sea coast,
literally 3 kilometers from the famous Putin's Palace. We came here in a very strange way.
We changed tickets, got off at the wrong stops, exchanged SIM cards and phones.
We carried out a whole special operation to get here.
All this was done so that we don’t get pursued by the police, FSB officers
and employees of the “E” center, who always do this when we come to Krasnodar Krai.
And we managed to do it. Right now, we are a few hundred meters from the shore,
and not a single policeman tens of kilometers around knows what we are doing here.
This is great because right now we are going to launch a drone
and take for you the legendary footage of Putin's palace,
which has never been seen from a drone.
It is so classified that it is guarded by the Federal Security Service.
Everyone said that it was impossible to film it.
Yes, we thought so ourselves, and then we went ahead and tried it.
It didn't work, so we tried it again. We tried four times, but only succeeded once.
We present to you the most secret palace in Russia - Putin's palace near Gelendzhik.
Here it is, right in front of you. This is the largest private residential building in Russia,
its officially confirmed area according to documents is 17,691 m2.
And there is not even much to compare it with.
The most luxurious houses on Rublyovka are several times smaller.
This is the new Versailles, or the new Winter Palace - a truly royal place.
For now, we only admire it from the outside. Let's get close enough to see everything in detail.
Huh, what's going on here? Some kind of blue tarp, the windows are caulked,
the pool is closed, building materials are lying on the ground,
workers, barely noticeable against the background of the palace, scurry about.
What is happening, why is there a construction site
if 6-year-old satellite images showed that the palace was completely ready?
The builders explained it to us. Everything was really ready a long time ago,
but then a disaster struck. Its name is mold. And sloppiness.
The palace was designed with mistakes - ventilation did not work, the ceiling leaked,
high humidity - in general, they decided to redo everything. Absolutely everything.
They stripped the walls, stripped off the marble, took out everything of value,
literally threw billions into the trash and started all over.
But what’s a waste and a headache for Putin is a chance for us to learn more about his palace.
After all, a lot of people were involved in the reconstruction,
and they were happy to tell us about literally every square meter of this grandiose object.
For example, the arboretum. Rare and unique trees are gathered there.
And for those plants that are uncomfortable in such a climate
a 2500 m2 greenhouse was built in the open air.
These trees and plants in general on the territory
are constantly monitored by a total of about forty gardeners.
We fly further and see a wall of greenery, and inside it there are sculptures.
It's a pity you can't see who they are of.
Maybe a monument to the patron saint Yeltsin, maybe Lesha Miller with an envelope,
maybe a bust of the goddess of theft or a sculptural composition “These women”.
Next is another important object - a church.
It’s not the temple of the Ministry of Defense, of course, and in general it does not look very Orthodox.
A bunch of some kind of construction trailers, obviously workers live there.
We see a giant 80-meter bridge. In any Russian region,
its opening would be a whole event, but here it is simply needed to get to the teahouse.
On the right we see 2 helipads. Strange, there were three of them before.
One was removed and a mound was made in its place.
It’s a very strange mound though, it has several entrances.
For a long time we tried to understand what was inside
and at some point we saw the insides of this mountain on satellite images.
Rectangle with rounded corners measuring 56 by 26 meters. It's a hockey rink!
Indeed, who needs a palace in which you cannot play hockey?
This is the first time we see the underground hockey complex though.
The owner's bunkering style is recognized - he likes to sit underground.
He probably imagines himself a gnome from the Lord of the Rings movie, guarding his gold.
The contractors confirmed to us that they indeed buried an ice palace underground,
which is actually the height of a five-story building.
A little shocked, we fly further to that part of the palace, which is responsible for its sustainment.
We see a 200 m2 building with a tower and air conditioning.
It was not labelled in the documents, but an oil product pipeline was laid to it,
and heat supply networks go from it. So, this must be the boiler room.
The huge mast further away is responsible for communications.
There are both base stations of cellular operators and government communications antennas there.
In the distance is an own gas station. We see several residential buildings and a garage complex.
On the right is a dormitory for personnel, where personnel of not the highest categories live -
security guards and construction workers.
And next to it is the brain of the whole complex - the headquarters building.
The main managers work in this building.
Let's turn around a bit and just admire the view that opens from here. Very nice.
Previously, this could only be seen by Putin from a helicopter, but now you can see it too.
Let's fly to the back of the palace to look at a couple more objects.
Here is a grandiose fence, through which no outside thief can get through.
On the right is the very building for which the 80-meter bridge was built.
This is a guest house aka Tea House with an area of ​​2,500 m2.
And here is the long-suffering amphitheater.
This simple object is being built and rebuilt continuously over the years.
The owner of the palace is clearly dissatisfied with the result.
Maybe it should be more suitable for gladiatorial battles between Sechin and Chemezov.
Maybe cellist Roldugin criticizes its acoustics. We can only guess.
But the workers are constantly swarming there. Let's fly off again.
So, how do you get to the beach?
You put on his swimming trunks, take your flippers, but how do you get down? It’s a mountain.
Here is the entrance to a special tunnel,
which was built by the same people who are building the metro.
This is a unique structure that allows not only convenient access to the sea,
but also shelter in case of war or attack from the residents of Gelendzhik.
And this tunnel has a small secret that one of the builders of the palace revealed to us.
Do you see some kind of a door here? Look at this photo - you can see it a little better.
And this is the place on the tunnel scheme.
This, my friends, is the tasting room disguised like a part of the mountain.
In fact, it is a huge window that offers the best possible sea view.
Here you can enjoy a glass of wine, and, what’s most important for our national leader,
it’s not some kind of balcony where you are constantly in danger,
but a very safe underground place where nothing threatens you.
And now for something that’s impossible to show with a drone - the scale.
We flew here, this is the huge palace complex, the land plot around it is 68 hectares.
But in fact, the territory of the palace is about 100 times larger.
This land plot - forests and mountains, with an area of ​​7,000 hectares,
70 million (!!!) square meters, belongs to the FSB.
And in September 2020, it was fully leased until 2068 to the company that owns the palace.
Do you know why? To carry out research and educational activities.
In fact, the only purpose of renting this really gigantic piece of land,
which is 3.5 times larger than neighboring Gelendzhik,
is to create something like a buffer around Putin's palace.
So that no one can, while accidentally walking through beautiful places,
come too close to the fence of the secret object. And not only on the ground.
Usually, in order to go to sea on any boat - be it an inflatable boat or even on a yacht,
you need to follow a simple procedure - call the local border department of the FSB
and notify it about your plans by phone.
A pure formality - you can fish and swim pretty much anywhere. But not here.
- Good day, yes
- Happy New Year!
- Happy New Year to you
- Do you want to go past Krinitsa or just go fishing here in the Praskoveevka area?
- Well, we want to go from Dzhankhot to Krinitsa, around that area
- Well then, there will be a big request to you. Do you know Cape Idokopas?
- Sort of, is it after the Parus rock?
- Yes, there will be a a large cape after Parus Rock, you will have to go around it by a mile
- By a mile?
- Yes
- Got it, was there an accident there?
- No, well, it's just our request to you that you go around this particular section by a mile…
Please keep this distance when you go there
- And tell me, please, is it always like this with Idokopas or just on some days?
- Always
- Got you. Do we need to get a permission from other departments then? From the FSO?
- Yes of course.
- Should we do it in writing somehow or by phone through the person on duty?
- Don’t ask me this, we don’t issue such permissions at all.
So, because of Putin's dacha, all fishermen
are simply sent around it to the open sea 2 kilometers from the coast.
And all this is so that no one accidentally sees up close what is built there on this Idokopas cape.
And you can't get close to the dacha from the air either.
Above it is the official no-fly zone URP116.
Just like over nuclear power plants or secret military facilities.
The order of the Ministry of Transport includes the address
and telephone number of those responsible for this zone.
Let’s google the address: It’s either the SHUSTRIK online store responsible for the no-fly zone
above Putin's palace, or the Border Directorate of the FSB for Krasnodar Krai.
Why would the FSB establish a no-fly zone over a private palace?
There can be only one answer - this is the palace of the very person
for whose safety the FSB is responsible.
It’s very important for me. I already said that I can’t work without it.
How could this have been built in secret from the whole country? -
any normal person is shouting now.
Underground hockey stadiums, tunnels inside the mountain.
This is colossal work and no less colossal money.
Someone must have paid it, right? Quite right.
We have found out everything and will tell you now.
We go back to the past again, just about to the point where we stopped.
The year 2005. Putin just started his second term.
Where the palace now stands is an open field, or rather a mountain.
The head of the presidential administration and Putin's friend
from the time of the St. Petersburg mayor's office, Vladimir Kozhin, signs an investment agreement
for the construction of a "Children's sports and recreation camp for year-round action" here.
According to the agreement, the construction will be carried out together
by the presidential administration and the investor, “Lirus” company.
Naturally, they were not going to build any camp. I keep repeating that Putin is always lying.
And in 2005, under the guise of a camp, they were going to build a dacha straight away.
We say one thing and do another.
There were three shareholders in “Lirus”. Nikolai Shamalov, the same family friend
(and in the future an affiancer) with whom the Putins spent 6 weeks in Davos in 1996.
And two more - retired KGB colonel Dmitry Gorelov and businessman Sergei Kolesnikov.
Why did these people suddenly decide to build a children's camp near Gelendzhik?
One of them told everyone about it.
Around 2005 or 2006, an idea arose: Why not build a small house at the Black Sea coast?
The presidential term isn’t infinite, it will end soon, he’ll need to step down,
and he wanted to have something left after retirement.
Everything was discussed with Shamalov and Kozhin, head of the Department for Presidential Affairs.
Kozhin showed him the land plot, the agreement on its allocation.
And then, this small house started turning into some sort of a huge palace.
In 2010, Sergei Kolesnikov published an open letter
calling on President Medvedev to end Putin's corruption.
Kolesnikov, as a person involved in the palace construction project, told literally everything:
where is what is being built, on whose money, in whose name it is registered,
all the machinations - with offshore companies, with bearer shares - everything.
He published documents - postings, contracts, audio recordings
of negotiations between builders and sponsors. It all happened 10 years ago, and to be honest,
there have probably been no leaks of this magnitude and reliability since that moment.
The essence is as follows. Kolesnikov, together with Gorelov,
founded the “Petromed” company in the early 90s.
The St. Petersburg mayor's office also had a stake in this company,
and as you remember, the interests of the city in such companies
were represented by the deputy mayor Vladimir Putin.
So, Putin, Kolesnikov and Gorelov had known each other for many years.
At the beginning of 2000 Nikolay Shamalov came to “Petromed”
with a personal offer from newly elected president Putin, who was looking to earn some money.
The proposal, like everything that Putin comes up with, was openly corrupt.
And it is especially funny given the fact that after becoming president,
Putin publicly announced that he was starting a fight against the oligarchs.
In our country, oligarchs were representatives of large business
who try to influence political decisions from the shadows, from behind the society’s backs.
This group of people must cease to exist.
This was a struggle of life and death, see for yourselves.
They agreed that oligarchs, such as Abramovich and Mordashov,
would donate money to “Petromed”, and “Petromed” would spend it on medicine -
modernizing hospitals, purchasing equipment, and so on.
But! Part of the agreement was that 35% of the donated amount
will go to a special offshore company, with bearer shares.
That is, the owner’s surname is not indicated anywhere,
the company will belong to whoever brings the document.
He offered these oligarchs to participate in some sort of charity programs.
For example, supplying medical equipment.
Shamalov set the condition that 35% of these shipments will need to be kept, so to say.
And then, this is very important, when we were making this decision at the very beginning,
there were no talks at all about this palace, any sort of cash, and so on.
This money was to be spent on investment projects
for the production of medical equipment in Russia.
Shamalov, Gorelov and Kolesnikov himself got 2% of the offshore shares,
and 94% of the shares were given to Putin.
Or “Mikhail Ivanovich”, as the project participants called him for conspiracy purposes.
What’s the origin of this whole “Mikhail Ivanovich” thing? What does it mean?
It was so that we could talk in a company and not say his surname, since it attracts attention.
If people stand nearby and hear you say “Putin”,
they will immediately cock their ears and listen for your every word.
Putin was “Mikhail Ivanovich”, who else was there… Timchenko was…
Timchenko was “Gangrene”
And Kozhin?
Shuvalov was “Professor Preobrazhensky”...
This is actually called a kickback. But Putin called it Rosinvest.
He apparently does not know how to do projects without the prefix ROS.
Initially, it was assumed that Rosinvest would become
something like the president's personal investment fund.
He will take these kickbacks from all these Mordashevs and Abramovichs,
but patriotically invest them in Russian enterprises that are in decline.
And then take credit for it and earn political points.
Oh, I almost forgot! They also agreed that a palace would be built with this money.
There were really some investment projects. But not for long.
After some time, Shamalov, who was the main liaison from Putin,
and the person in whose name the object in Gelendzhik was registered,
ordered to shut down all projects ... except for the palace.
And then they tell us: “We need to shut everything down”. It was during the 2008 crisis.
“We need to shut everything down, because there’s not enough money for the palace”
Well, I said that I won’t be a constructor of the palace.
All Rosinvest's money was to be sent to the construction site of the century in Gelendzhik.
Kolesnikov, who had no plans to devote his life and business to Putin's palace,
writes that very letter and tells the details of what happened.
By that time, several hundred million dollars
had already been spent on the still unfinished palace.
And the total planned estimate was no less than a billion dollars.
A few years later, the story told by Kolesnikov was confirmed by the famous "Panama Papers"
and other investigations, for example, the Reuters agency made a good one.
Do you remember the national project “Health”?
The journalists discovered that our state bought expensive medical equipment
at a price much higher than the market price.
The difference between prices remained with the intermediaries,
who, having passed the money through several companies,
eventually transferred it to the accounts of Lanfranco Cirillo, the Italian architect of Putin's palace.
With the wording “for the construction of an object on the Black Sea”.
So, we literally paid taxes in order to treat those who fell ill with this money.
But they took this money and spent it on Putin's palace.
Thank you very much
On the Internet, you can find several photos of the palace itself.
They’re impressive, of course, and remove all questions about who the owner is.
By the way, here is a detail that struck me personally to the core.
Take a look at this photograph of the gateway of the residence taken by one of the workers.
Something here must seem vaguely familiar to you. You've already seen this somewhere. That's where.
The classic, familiar to everyone, scene of the storming of the Winter Palace from the film by Sergei Eisenstein.
You can still see this eagle now if you visit St. Petersburg and approach the Hermitage.
And the fact that Putin put an exact copy of the Tsar's eagle with a crown from the Winter Palace
on the gate of his personal dacha tells us a lot about who this man thinks he is.
But neither this leak, nor the Kolesnikov story, confirmed by dozens of documents,
could stop the construction of the century on the Black Sea coast.
If Putin wants a palace, Putin will get a palace.
To cool down the scandal and distract public attention, they came up with a scheme.
The palace was “bought” by businessman Alexander Ponomarenko.
He is a long-time partner of Putin's judo friends Rotenbergs -
he deals with real estate and co-owns Sheremetyevo airport with them.
Ponomarenko gave several interviews, where he said “yes, I bought it for myself.
I will build a hotel here" And he even confirmed to reporters
that he bought the palace from Shamalov for about $ 350 million.
He also mentioned that he registered the purchase to his Cypriot offshore company.
We open the financial statements of this offshore company to verify.
We find the required 2011 and see that there was indeed a purchase.
But the palace was bought not for 350 million dollars,
but for 350 thousand dollars, or 10 million rubles at that rate.
That’s the price of a two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Moscow.
So, this is an absolutely fictitious deal, they did not even bother to transfer real money,
they simply appointed a special rich man who will be considered the owner of the palace near Gelendzhik.
From the moment Ponomarenko took over the honorary position of the nominal owner,
nothing has changed in terms of management of the palace.
It’s just that before, Shamalov was the owner of the palace, and now he became its manager.
After Shamalov, some kind of company called "Investstroy" began to manage the palace.
To an uninitiated person, this should have indicated that there was no connection with Putin at all.
Its director is a certain Bolat Zakaryanov, and the owners are Tatyana Kuznetsova and Inna Kolpakova.
The offshore company to which the palace was registered was represented by a man named Ivan Serditov.
Who are all these people... We look at their biographies and everything becomes crystal clear.
Bolat Zakaryanov was the director of the palace's management company,
and now, by Putin's decree, he was appointed head of the main public catering department
of the Presidential Property Management Department.
Tatyana Kuznetsova is the wife of Oleg Kuznetsov, then the current chief
of military unit 1473 of the federal security service,
which participated in the construction of the palace as a “customer-developer”.
Now this military unit has been renamed into a more understandable
"Department for the Operation of Property of the State Security Bodies".
Inna Kolpakova is the wife of Alexander Kolpakov,
then the head of the “V” department of the Russian President's Security Service.
The tasks of this unit include the construction and management of the residences of the head of state.
Now Alexander Kolpakov is the Chief Executive Officer
of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Ivan Serditov is a young lawyer who at that time worked for Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev & Partners.
Hmm... Egorov ... do you remember him? This is the same Nikolai Egorov, Putin's classmate,
who later got him a place at the mayor's office under Sobchak.
Now Serditov is the head of the legal department of the Presidential Property Management Department.
And a little bonus, just so you understand how beneficial it is to keep Putin's secrets.
Here, on the embankment in Gelendzhik, in 2015, four 1000 m2 houses were built side by side.
One was received by the manager Tatyana Kuznetsova,
the second - by Kolpakov's father-in-law,
the third - by the architect of the palace Lanfranco Cirillo,
and the fourth and largest belongs to the son of Bolat Zakaryanov.
So no matter how much we get told that this object belongs to a certain businessman, this is a blatant lie.
Houses of businessmen don’t have no-fly zones over them,
they are not built by FSO officers and not guarded by FSB officers.
The sea is not closed in front of the houses of businessmen, even for fishing boats.
No one can have the slightest doubt that this is Putin's palace. Let's move on to the interiors!
This is certainly not just a building, it is a symbol of the 20 years of Putin's rule:
how it looks, how it is hidden, who pays for it, and even the fact
that it has been under construction for 15 years and they still cannot finish it.
Just imagine, you have an unlimited amount of money, all the power and any resources.
How do you use it? We know many different examples.
The richest people in the world often donate their fortune to charity.
Or build a university. Or a huge hospital that will be named after them.
What dream is Putin realizing? What for did he arrange all this -
20 years in power, repressive laws, robbed poor people,
complete destruction of politics, rewritten constitution, people in prison?
We will now see the answer. For gold and marble, for sofas and couches in the Louis XIV style,
for mosaics, frescoes, stained glass windows, a home theater and even an aquadiskotheque.
I promised you that we will visit Vladimir Putin.
And we will do so, despite the fact that no one invited us there.
One of the important contractors who worked on the arrangement of the palace will help us.
He was so stunned and enraged by the luxury of the decoration
and the insane prices of furniture that he sent us a detailed architectural plan of this object.
It has everything - from a drawing of floor patterns
to the SKUs of all pieces of furniture and the placement of outlets.
So, you and I will literally see what kind of sofas Vladimir Putin sits on,
what beds he lies on, at what tables he eats.
Look at the basement floor, there is a huge swimming pool, a spa area, a massage room,
a beauty salon, some kind of spa capsule. Saunas, hamams, plunge tubs and bathing bowls.
From the pool you can get to the street - to the place that is indicated on the plan
as an aquadiskotheque. I honestly didn't know such things existed.
This is the place on the plan, and here is its photograph.
Something like a fountain where you can sit and order drinks from the bar.
And believe me, this is not yet the biggest surprise that awaits us at Putin's dacha.
There are dozens of outbuildings here, you can't do without them when you live the life of a real monarch.
Rooms for staff - doctors, managers, cooks. Dressing rooms for waiters,
meat and fish workshop, vegetable workshop, bakery workshop, egg processing workshop.
This one’s good - an 18 m2 "mud warehouse".
Obviously, President Putin needs a lot of dirt for a comfortable life.
Well, from more traditional things, there is a “cocktail lounge” from which you can enter
either the home cinema or the tasting room and wine cellar. Wonderful.
On the ground floor, there is a gym with tatami mats.
Nearby there are a lot of interesting rooms such as a reading room or a musical parlor.
Do you think Putin learned to play the piano in vain?
No, after a hard presidential day,having taken care of the people,
he plans to come to the musical parlor and play something for the soul…
It is absolutely fair to argue now: you invented all this,
you drew the plans yourself and are showing them to us.
And at his next press conference, Putin himself will declare as usual:
This isn’t an investigation, it’s a legalization of the materials of American secret services
Therefore, before the tour, I must verify everything and prove to you the authenticity of the documents.
I have already said that in 2011, several pictures of the palace interiors,
taken by workers, appeared on the Internet.
When the plans were sent to us, we took them ourselves and began to compare them
with the existing photographs to make sure that this was not a fake.
I already showed you the aquadiskotheque. Here is a photo, here it is on the plan.
But okay, it can be seen from the outside and redrawn. Let's look for something inside.
Here is a photo, it’s clearly from the dining room.
Here you can clearly see tables, chairs and sideboards with monograms.
We easily find this room on the plan. This is the "small dining room",
we look at the name of the furniture indicated in the plan, it says Citterio Atena.
It is, like all the rest of the palace furniture suppliers, a super exclusive Italian furniture house,
selling piece goods strictly on order. It is impossible to google such a set.
So we wrote a letter to Citterio's factory and just asked to send us a catalog. And voila.
The furniture set in the catalog looks like this.
Table, chairs, sideboard - everything is the same as in the photo.
And just to be sure, here's a photo of a worker next to a nightstand.
The pattern is visible on the floor. We are looking for the same one on our plans and find it in the bedroom.
Let's see what kind of nightstand it is. Here is the company name, Pozzolli, and the item number.
We order a catalog from this factory, which is again super exclusive,
they don't even have this furniture on their own website, and again find success.
The nightstand indicated in the plans exactly matches the nightstand in the photo.
Funny thing with this Italian furniture.
We asked to send us photographs of 20 or 30 pieces of furniture that we found on the plans,
and the representatives of the factory were at some point very surprised -
they asked if we had ordered exactly the same set
for the construction of a palace on the Black Sea. We said yes, we ordered it.
And here is another Italian family furniture factory, there is also a lot of their items in Putin’s palace,
they casually posted photos of Putin's palace interiors on their website,
as well as a video that says that their clients deserve the most extraordinary interiors,
and then, apparently, shows these clients.
These factories really make super exclusive furniture in such small quantities
that they remember all their customers for decades.
The prices are corresponding, here are a couple of real pieces of furniture from Putin's interiors.
Such a leather sofa costs 2 million rubles. This dressing table is also worth 2 million.
The sofas that stand in the corridors, apparently for guests, are cheaper,
for example, this one is 1.5 million.
There is also this cool table with a built-in bar worth 4 million corrupt rubles.
Anyway. After making sure that our architectural plans are absolutely accurate and reliable,
we ordered a 3D visualization and recreated all the interiors.
Wherever there are photos, the reconstruction is 100% true to the original.
And where there are none, minor details may differ,
such as the color scheme or the pattern on the wallpaper.
We go into the palace from the main entrance.
Vladimir Putin fancies himself the Russian emperor and behaves accordingly.
An Italian architect built him a palace in the Italian style. A classic palazzo.
The courtyard with a fountain in the center is surrounded by galleries,
as if we are not near Gelendzhik but in Bologna or Florence.
From the courtyard we go into the atheneum, that’s the name of this room.
Here we will see how similar our reconstruction is to the original.
Photos of this room are available on the Internet, so we can compare.
Look, the columns, stucco moldings, chandeliers and frescoes completely match, one hundred percent.
And here are the golden eagles. There are never too many of them.
Vladimir Putin, reading Komsomolskaya Pravda in this room,
must remember that he is the master of Russia.
And here’s where one of the most famous photographs from inside the palace was taken.
A carefree worker lay down on the sofa on which the most august body would later lie.
He should be careful, this sofa is more expensive than his apartment.
We leave the atheneum, we still have many places to visit.
The doors on the right swing open and we find ourselves in a chic marble foyer with a bar.
These are usually found in front of a theater or concert hall. And our guess is right.
Rich people love to have small movie theaters in their homes.
And the President of Russia built a REAL theater at home,
with a huge stage, backstage, dressing rooms and luxury boxes.
I'm not kidding, inside Putin's palace there is a full-fledged theater.
The auditorium is two-story. The three boxes below can be covered with velvet curtains
in case the owner wants a more intimate setting.
On the second floor there are balconies with sofas.
This shows Vladimir Putin's loyalty to traditions.
In tsarist Russia, landowners built serf theaters for themselves, so our president also built one.
Singer Natalia Vetlitskaya spoke about his craving for costume parties and dressing up back in 2011.
Together with other artists, she was invited to a private performance at Putin's residence on lake Valdai,
and to her surprise, she had to perform in front of Putin and 5 of his guests,
who were dressed in tailcoats and costumes from Catherine's times.
The performers were paid with the titles of People's Artists, expensive watches, diamonds
and the most valuable thing - an icon with the president's personal autograph.
What did Putin write on the icon?
“Best regards, Vladimir Putin”
While ordinary Russians make themselves comfortable to enjoy “Wheel of Fortune”,
the lights go out in the theater of the Black Sea palace, the curtain opens
and the national leader enjoys more exquisite pleasures.
Speaking of exquisite pleasures. You know what our president is a fan of?
Believe it or not, he loves hookah. We go to the room
that’s labelled as a hookah bar on the house plan.
Indeed, it looks like the best, most expensive hookah lounge in the city of Makhachkala.
Sofas, tables, dim lights. The perfect atmosphere to discuss budget issues.
Lying among soft pillows, the President and his guests can also enjoy a show.
This hall is also equipped with a small stage, and surprisingly
there is a special elevation with a pole on the stage.
We just can't even imagine why a pole is needed on the stage.
Maybe for a Christmas tree? Or a giant shawarma?
Or maybe for performances in support of the constitution?
If the hookah bar surprised you, you’ll like this even more.
In his letter to Medvedev, Sergei Kolesnikov said that there is a casino inside the palace,
but no one paid attention to these words back then, because it was impossible to imagine
that the President of Russia would build a casino in his personal house.
He must have overexaggerated. But no, the huge private casino really exists.
The project included a casino. But this casino wasn’t for people from the street.
It was just for passing time.
We enter the personal casino of Vladimir Putin.
They are prohibited throughout the rest of the country, but everything is possible here.
Two card tables and, of course, roulette. I wonder what they play for.
They are definitely not interested in simply betting money.
They most likely play for state companies, so don’t be surprised
that all the country's national treasures belong to Putin's friends. He probably just lost them.
From the casino, through the billiard room, we get to the game room.
The first thing that impresses us is that our president is no stranger to simple entertainment.
He loves to dance. A dance machine with a huge screen is installed here.
The rest of the room is filled with slot machines. An own Black Sea Las Vegas for a true patriot.
This room is called “hall of entertaining games”.
Here, one-armed bandits stand next to gilded chairs worth 700,000 rubles each.
And here is probably the most favorite room of the President of Russia.
The place where Putin outplays everyone.
There are no globes and maps of military operations here, but there are toy racing cars.
For his little electric friends, there is a special room the size of a one-room apartment.
Here, on a special track, the main geopolitical strategist of our time performs amazing tricks,
overtakes his rivals at turns and invariably becomes the winner of the big race.
A little embarrassed, we go to the second floor, to the inner sanctum -
the bedroom of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief
and President of Russia Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Although, the word "suite" is more appropriate.
Everything here follows the best aristocratic rules.
You don’t just open the door and see the bed.
First comes the first living room with sofas and armchairs, apparently for resting before resting.
And only from here can you get into the boudoir, so we tiptoe inside.
“Crazed emperor” are the words that come to mind when you see this.
Gold, velvet, canopies, but also an obligatory TV opposite the bed,
so as not to miss important news on Channel One.
It was here, in Putin's bedroom, near this nightstand that this photo was taken.
We’re not the only ones who are so indelicate.
From the royal bedchamber you can get into another, extremely private living room,
probably even Sechin has never been here.
There’s one more door, behind it is a wardrobe,and through it you can get into the bathroom,
where there are marble columns around the jacuzzi.
I don’t know how many square meters you need to sleep,
but in the Gelendzhik palace, 260 m2 was allocated for the master's bedroom.
It seems that the moment has come when it's time to say:
“We showed you Putin's palace, his bedroom, casino, aquadiskotheque and toy cars.
Subscribe to our channel and share this video.”
But the thing is that, in fact, his possessions on the Black Sea
are not limited to this palace complex.
“Putin's Palace” is much more than what we have seen and imagined.
Vineyards
Here, in the village of Divnomorskoye, there are 186 hectares of land.
We see only 23 that are used for vineyards, but they’re so beautiful!
The company "Lazurnaya Yagoda" received them in 2010,
and another 150 hectares around them leased by it.
This is a fairly well-known winery, they have a website,
you can see these exact landscapes beautifully shot for advertising brochures.
There is also a photograph of the winery itself, a small factory, very nice,
here it is right before our eyes, its area is 5244 m2.
The building is completely wooden, and classical music plays inside around the clock
for the maturing wine. It is believed that this makes the wine better.
It also has its own helipad measuring 60 by 60 meters. What winery can do without it?
By the way, the site is connected to a secure government line.
I don't know why, but I can imagine that it can be very convenient
when someone on the other end of the line urgently needs a bottle or two.
We fly from the winery and see the fence and the checkpoint inside the facility.
This, as we have already seen from the example of Putin's palace, is a common practice.
It allows to isolate the winery staff from the cottage staff and protect secret objects from prying eyes.
We fly over the vineyards and understand that there is indeed something to hide.
A huge dacha, or "Chateau" as it is called in the documents.
The building has a quirky shape with many balconies and open areas.
The area is 2,389 m2, near it the 3,201 m2 spa complex with a large veranda,
as well as an artificial pond. There are small houses for birds on the pond.
Why does Putin need another dacha 10 km from the huge palace?
One of the project's developers described it to us like this:
"You sit with a glass of red wine and admire the sea views at sunset."
Apparently in the neighboring Praskoveevka,
where a tasting room was specially cut down in the rock, the sunsets are different.
Together with the palace, these vineyards were sold to Ponomarenko in 2011.
But then came an interesting turn of events. Just 4 months later,
Ponomarenko himself sold them too, to none other than the chairman of the Party of Growth,
business ombudsman, Boris Titov. For the next 6 years, he formally owned these vineyards,
launched wine production, and then returned the chateau and vineyards to Putin's friends in 2018.
It is interesting that all the while Titov was the owner, treated the journalists with “his” wine,
and in general actively pretended that this was his new long-term project,
legally this enterprise continued to be controlled by the management companies known to us
owned by Putin's friend and affiancer Nikolai Shamalov, Tatyana Kuznetsova, Inna Kolpakova and Ivan Serditov.
And what about Titov?
And what about Titov? Titov, too, received some benefit for himself
from participating in this cover operation.
Just a year after his Abrau Durso became the owner of “Lazurnaya Yagoda”,
Vladimir Putin appointed Boris Titov as the business ombudsman by his decree.
Even this position was specially invented for him, so that (Putin’s) business would be protected.
Sure, the business likes to whine sometimes, but still…
To tell our story further, we need to take a close look at this bottle of wine.
It is bottled in this very winery. The label says "exclusive wine, “Usadba Divnomorskoe”,
made according to the best European technologies from grapes grown on the terroir
near the city of Gelendzhik, on rocky slopes descending to the Black Sea coast,
surrounded by a relict pine forest." And here is the manufacturer.
But for some reason it’s not OOO “Lazurnaya Yagoda”,
but another company - AO “Divnomorye”.
And here we find another Putin’s scheme worth many billions of rubles.
The wine is actually not produced by “Lazurnaya Yagoda”, but by this company, “Divnomorye”.
It rents a production building, a 2000-meter warehouse from “Lazurnaya Yagoda”,
grows grapes and sells them under the brand name "Usadba Divnomorskoe".
The business is small, about 150,000 bottles a year
(for comparison, Abrau Durso produces 39 million bottles).
But despite this, in 2018, someone issued an interest-free loan to “Divnomorye” - 7.5 billion rubles.
Someone donated 2.5 annual budgets of Gelendzhik to a tiny winery.
This benefactor, and concurrently the only owner of AO “Divnomorye” was 42-year-old Vladimir Kolbin.
There is nothing remarkable in the biography of this person.
He works as a hired director of the Gelendzhik seaport.
The man is certainly not poor, but he does not look like an oligarch.
Here is his 337 m2 in Gelendzhik, half a kilometer from the sea,
the house was bought a year ago, in December 2019, it’s certainly not a billionaire's palace.
His 214 m2 house in the Leningrad region is even more modest.
Where could he have gotten 7.5 billion from? From his dad.
Vladimir Kolbin is the son of Peter Kolbin, the very childhood friend of Putin,
with whom they went to the village disco together and who later became one of Putin's wallets.
In 2018, Kolbin Sr. died, but it is obvious that his position
as the holder of Putin's money was inherited by his son.
And one more interesting detail. "Usadba Divnomorskoe", a wine from this absolutely unknown, small winery,
in the complete absence of any serious advertising, has a very special status.
I think hardly any of you have tried and seen it.
This is because you, dear spectators, do not go to receptions in the Kremlin.
We found some photos of the menu from the last Kremlin receptions.
Victory Day 2019 - Kamchatka crab salad, scallop and “Usadba Divnomoskoe” chardonnay are served.
Or National Unity Day, look at the menu - the same set.
Putin personally treats his friends and comrade Xi Jin Ping from China with this wine
and discusses "deeper integration" with Lukashenka while drinking the same chardonnay.
At first, winemaking was just a status thing for Putin. A chic hobby that emphasizes his status.
But the desire of others to curry his favor and an unlimited amount of money
led to the inevitable - the hobby got out of control. Second vineyards were set up,
which turned out to be even larger and even more expensive
than those that we have just shown you. And in middle of them, we found a whole super winery.
The new vineyards are located in the opposite direction from the palace,
just 9 km away, in the village of Krinitsa.
In the 19th century, a group of members of “Narodnaya Volya”
and Tolstoyans with their families moved here and organized a community.
In 1886, they founded the first vineyards here.
130 years later, this gentleman from St. Petersburg came to replace the Tolstoyans.
Nikolai Egorov, who sat at the same desk with Putin at the institute.
His company, Axis Investments, rented 140 hectares of land right here in 2015.
Now look at these nasty pictures. Who is this man beaten to a pulp?
Maybe the leader of a terrorist cell who was detained somewhere in the woods?
A dangerous bandit? No, this is the famous Krasnodar ecologist Andrei Rudomakha.
The photo was taken after he was beaten up by unknown people -
Rudomakha had his skull and nose broken,
he had chemical burns to his eyes and other injuries.
This happened after he and his colleagues went to Krinitsa with an environmental inspection.
Environmentalists went there to film whoever was illegally cutting down the forest there.
And they found a giant construction site, fences, 6 security posts and a Byzantine-style church there.
After the attack on Rudomakha, Novaya Gazeta journalists discovered
that this unusual church was imported from Greece, and this was done
by the manager of Putin's palace and other vineyards, the wife of the head of the FSO military unit,
Tatyana Arnoldovna Kuznetsova, whom we have already mentioned many times.
Journalists even wrote a request to "Axis" demanding a comment
on what Kuznetsova was doing with them. And they were directly told that Kuznetsova
was the technical customer of the entire project.
That is, the person who manages the construction on behalf of the property owner.
I can repeat this story like a parrot for the third time,
these vineyards are actually part of Putin's property - the palace was registered for one person,
the vineyards in Divnomorsk for the second, these ones for the third.
They’re still managed by the same people.
Let's rather see from the air what is hidden behind the high fences
and what new construction of the century is unfolding right now.
We fly from the Black Sea to the other vineyards of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in the village of Krinitsa.
The three fields in front of you are just a small part of them, only 18 hectares.
To the right there are two times more.
All the land around the vineyards is also Putin's, 140 hectares.
Over there in front we see a huge construction site and fly to see.
Hundreds of workers are building a super modern huge winery here.
Some of the builders live in these prefabricated structures, some are brought in by buses every day.
3 billion rubles are spent annually on this project.
An incredibly expensive hobby at others’ expense.
We fly on. The building on the right is one of the two checkpoints, with an area of ​​830 m2.
The huge gate allows you to drive any trucks through this building.
A little more to the right is the administrative building.
We turn around and see the 1208 m2 building of the energy center.
It is from this building that the entire winery will be supplied with electricity and heat.
And we find ourselves exactly above the garage for agricultural machinery. 1149 m2.
We turn a little over the already completely refined territory and see the winery itself.
According to the documents, its area is 13,762 m2, which is only 4,000 m2 less than Putin's palace.
The new wine complex, although not completed, already has an official name -
"Old Provence'' wine-making compound.
And if at the plant in Divnomorskoye, recordings of classical music are played around the clock for Putin's wine,
here there is enough room for a whole symphony orchestra, to the envy of the finest Tuscan wines.
Impressive, right? But now I will impress you even more.
We found the company that supplies equipment for this winery.
In their customs declarations, they indicated
that the items they brought in from abroad were for the Krinitsa winery.
In total, we found 58 declarations - a drop in the sea of ​​purchases
during the construction of the plant, but they are striking to the core.
Conus-shaped tempered glass vase - 30 thousand euros or 2.6 million rubles.
Pendant chandelier “Gold Moon” with a system of decorative leaves - 2.7 million.
Fabric sofa with twenty pillows - over 3 million.
Coffee table with melted metal finish - 4.3 million rubles.
A coffee table for the price of a two-room flat in Balashikha.
I am the richest person not only in Europe, but in the whole world.
And a few more special items, not so expensive, but perfectly showing us the world in which Putin lives.
This is an Italian toilet brush for 700 euros or 62 thousand rubles
and a toilet paper holder for 1038 euros or 92 thousand rubles.
150 thousand for a brush and a toilet paper holder in one bathroom only.
And there are, of course, dozens of them.
And this is not a residential building, not a dacha, this is a factory.
Putin will not live here, he will sometimes drop in here, walk between the vineyards,
praise the terroir and say “what a delight”. But in case something happens,
a brush and a paper holder for 150 thousand rubles will be waiting for him in the toilet.
The annual pension of the average Russian pensioner
is in one of Putin's latrines, which he may never enter.
We will be able to annually increase the old-age pensions
for non-working pensioners by an average of 1000 rubles
But the winery is not limited to this.
The company Axis Investments has a twin - “Apex Yug” and we discovered
that it owns another 150 hectares of vineyards two kilometers west of Divnomorskoe.
Thus, the total area of ​​Putin's hobby has grown to 530 hectares.
And one more thing before we go to far from Krinitsa.
This section, which we saw during our flight, is leased by a company called “Yuzhnaya Citadel”.
It is also part of Putin's Black Sea empire. The defense part.
This company is engaged in the cultivation of oysters and mussels.
We do not understand why they rent this small plot in Krinitsa with household buildings.
But we do understand why they are renting this huge offshore plot. And this one. And this one.
The water area was transferred to the company
under the obligation to breed oysters and mussels there,
but not a single mollusk, judging by their annual report, went on sale.
However, under the pretext of this oyster farm,
people can be prohibited from approaching the palace by water.
And just for the mention of this oyster farm, the oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov
dispersed the leadership of the RBK Media, which he owned.
The Owners
So. You and I saw a huge bribe that was given to Putin.
Now there is very little left - to figure out who paid it
and how our president for life formalizes his secret assets.
We have thousands of bank transactions, contracts, powers of attorney, registration documents,
and stories from those who worked at this construction site.
This is more than enough for us to a) prove that the palace and vineyards
are a single legal and financial system - the same people pay for everything.
And b) to demonstrate how Putin's slush fund works - people pool some money,
it goes to special firms, gets mixed, and then is spent on entertaining the national leader. We will see how.
We'll start with who owns it all. More precisely, to whom it is registered.
Respect where it’s due, given that the local people refer to this place only as Putin's palace,
the level of secrecy is impressive.
Here is the winery in Divnomorskoye, here are the vineyards in Krinitsa,
here are some more vineyards not far from Divnomorsk, the oyster farm, and the palace.
All of them are registered to specially created joint stock companies, into which money is pumped.
These joint-stock companies hide their owners and all 5 formally unrelated companies
have chosen one registrar - TsUR - Center for Accounting and Registration in St. Petersburg.
This company is a specially created pocket registar controlled by Putin's friend Kovalchuk.
It keeps information about the real shareholders of all our Gelendzhik companies,
as well as all other well-known assets of the Kovalchuks - Rossiya Bank, National Media Group, etc.
This Kovalchuk’s registrar was created specifically
so that it was impossible to say exactly what belongs to whom.
Therefore, we need to prove it in other ways - using accounting reports,
annual reports, powers of attorney, and so on.
We expand our scheme further. Vineyards.
We have already established that AO “Divnomorye” belongs to Kolbin.
“Lazurnaya Yagoda”, which owns the vineyards and the Chateau,
belongs to the non-profit partnership “Development of Agrarian Initiatives”.
This is a special fund owned by the same Kolbin and our old friend Gennady Timchenko.
Well, not OUR friend, but Putin's old friend from the 90s.
“Axis” and “Apex”, along with their toilet brushes
were also sold to them in 2019 by Putin’s classmate Yegorov.
For 300 hectares of land, an almost completely built super plant and set up vineyards,
“Agrarian Initiatives” paid only 60 million rubles to the previous owner Yegorov.
Here we need to stop for a while
and explain the meaning of the scheme with this non-profit partnership.
I hope you remember our film "Don't Call Him Dimon" about Medvedev,
who also had all his secret dachas registered to non-profit funds.
Putin uses exactly the same scheme, only he has much more money.
The point is it’s easier to transfer money to such funds,
since they are non-commercial and there is no need to pay taxes.
So, it is actually a wallet, or rather a chest for fundraising,
and they don't even pretend to be engaged in some kind of activity.
Let's see. Here is the annual reporting that NPOs are required to submit to the Ministry of Justice.
This is the report of Kolbin and Timchenko’s “Development of Agrarian Initiatives”.
As you can see, judging by these figures,
their agrarian initiatives are unimpressive, or rather nonexistent.
But if you open the annual financial statements, the picture is completely different.
Tens of billions in accounts.
And as we see, they come in the form of “donations'' and “assignments” -
not only money is donated to the fund, but also shares of companies,
they receive rights of claim under loan agreements.
So much money has accumulated on the fund's accounts
that just interest on deposits brings them 650 million rubles a year. Interest only.
Timchenko and Kolbin have another such fund that finances the same projects -
“Development of an efficient investment market”. It's the same story.
On the accounts of an unknown company with one full-time employee are 21 billion rubles.
We still have oysters and the palace left. According to the official version, both are owned by Ponomarenko.
The palace was last re-registered in 2017, when the offshore company Savoyan
was replaced by the Russian company AO “Binom”.
The old owner is represented by a certain Natalya Tikhomirova by proxy.
And the new owner is also represented by Natalya Tikhomirova, she is the director of “Binom”.
She’s also the director of “Yuzhnaya Citadel”, which is responsible for oysters and defense.
It's amazing - as if they are selling to themselves.
In general, there are a lot of amazing things about “Binom”.
How do you imagine a company that owns the most expensive real estate in the world?
A company that owns the presidential palace, albeit illegally and fraudulently? Not like this, I bet.
We are in St. Petersburg, in an ordinary residential area somewhere near the outskirts of the city.
It is here, in a very modest business center, that “Binom” rents the premises.
It's right there. Here, behind this window, tens of billions of rubles are spinning.
Here the company rents a space of less than 10 m2. This is not enough even for one employee.
They hide the real owner from us, but we can at least look
who represents his interests at meetings of shareholders. That is, the main person in “Binom”,
under whose signature all decisions are made. This is a certain Alexander Samosyuk.
We can also study the powers of attorney to see which lawyers work for “Binom”,
who can sign its documents. We get a few more names.
In total, we have compiled a list of 5 managers of “Binom” company,
director Tikhomirova, a representative of a shareholder, and three lawyers.
Do you know what unites them all? They are all staff members of another company,“Accept”,
which belongs to Mikhail Lvovich Shelomov.
Who is this new character who seems the most important in the scheme of ownership of the palace?
The hint can be found directly on the official website of Vladimir Putin:
"Vladimir Putin's mother - Maria Ivanovna Shelomova - was a very gentle and benevolent person."
Putin's mother, Maria Ivanovna, had a brother, Ivan Ivanovich.
And Mikhail Shelomov is his grandson, that is, Putin's first cousin once removed.
Mikhail Shelomov was born in 1968, in the late 80s and 90s he worked on construction sites,
then got a job as a photographer in a photo studio.
Shelomov's career was so unsuccessful that he was literally arranged for any job by an acquaintance.
In 2002, Shelomov was appointed to the state shipping company Sovcomflot.
Let's listen to the person who directly hired him:
First of all, tell me: you used to be the head of Sovcomflot, right?
That’s right, from 2000 to 2004.
And Shelomov was an employee of Sovcomflot. So, you’ve seen him yourself, right?
Yes, I was the one who hired him, it was between 2000 and 2001, I don’t remember exactly.
Alright, since this is a very extraordinary man, please tell me how he ended up there.
Well, part of my job was solving staff issues.
Almost every member of the board was taking up somebody’s case in one way or another.
This included Igor Ivanovich Sechin. He wasn’t on our board, but I met with him,
And he once asked me to give a job to a man in St. Petersburg.
I asked if he worked on land or on the ship to know where to appoint him.
He told me to see for myself and gave me a file with data on this guy.
I looked through this file and decided to forward it to the head of our St. Petersburg office.
Let him meet the guy, talk to him and see who it is, maybe he’ll refuse.
He met him, talked to him, and I received a call from Sechin,
who asked me whether I gave the guy a job or not.
We were constructing tankers at the Admiralty Shipyards,
So he was used in accordance with his professional skills, mostly for photography.
So, he simply took photos of the ships?
Not the ships, but the construction process. Plus, he did some minor office work.
I later thought that I should ask Mikhail why there was such an interest in his person.
First the minister personally asks me about him, then Kozhin…
So I asked Shelomov: “Mikhail, I need to know for the future what to expect and how to react,
so please give me some explanation who you are”
He then told me in secret that he is a close relative of Putin.
And at the same time, at the very beginning of the 2000s, during Putin’s first term,
Shelomov, who lived very modestly, began to grow fabulously rich.
The very same “Accept” company was given shares in Putin's pocket bank Rossiya bank
and the largest Russian insurance company Sogaz.
Even back then, it was hundreds of millions of dollars.
Shelomov was to be considered one of the richest people in the country.
But all this time he continued to work as an ordinary hired employee in Sovcomflot,
worked in the office and lived in a modest townhouse on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.
He still lives there. After all, his wealth does not belong to him;
he’s just a nominal owner of what Putin stole or received in the form of bribes.
Remember the recent news before the new year? A Kyrgyz boy wrote a letter to Putin,
like Santa Claus, and asked for Gazprom shares as a gift.
Putin noticed this letter, they made a whole news feed out of it, everyone laughed touchingly,
and unfortunately they gave the boy not shares, but Tula gingerbread and a portrait of Putin.
A New Year’s gift for Rustam from the President of Russia Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin!
A Tula gingerbread and a thermocup.
Father Frost presented the gift from the Presidential Administration,
As well as the president’s portrait with his autograph and the wish to study well.
He could, in principle, give the boy a share or two,
since he has an abundance of these shares in his family.
We found out that Putin's cousin Shelomov, through the same “Accept” company,
owns 39 million shares of Gazprom (this is about 0.2% of all its shares),
the market value of which exceeds 8 billion rubles,
and just this already brings Shelomov about half a billion rubles a year.
In 2018, he received 650 million from the company. And a Tula gingerbread, I hope.
I don't wanna be a millionaire, I don't wanna be a billionaire, I wanna be a shareholder of OAO Gazprom
Having studied this object's 15-year history
we understand that it does not matter to whom the palace is registered.
Lots of people have been its owners, but what matters is who manages it.
And if earlier, until 2017, these were people associated with the FSO
and the presidential administration, now, the palace is managed by the company of Putin's cousin.
A close blood relative, to whom Putin's most secret assets have been registered for years.
The Sponsors
Now we get to the most interesting part. Who’s paying for all this?
Remember where we started?
The main rule of Putin's corruption is to keep money with those you know for a long time.
We have analyzed more than 100,000 bank transactions of companies and people
involved in the palace financing scheme and are ready to reveal the names of Putin's main wallets.
Throughout this video, talking about Putin, I mentioned a bunch of people,
completely different, who seemingly have nothing to do with each other,
and now you will understand why they’re all here.
They all met on the Black Sea coast to pay the world's biggest bribe.
Here are our companies, already familiar, to which the vineyards and the palace are registered.
Let's start with vineyards and chateau in Divnomorskoye.
The company AO “Divnomorye”, which produces wine "Usadba Divnomorskoe"
received over 8 million rubles from Vladimir Kolbin,
the son of a childhood friend of Vladimir Putin, Peter Kolbin.
The company “Lazurnaya Yagoda”, which owns the vineyards and the chateau,
received the most money from the Russian company “Aratron”, more than 2 billion rubles.
“Aratron” belongs to the Petersburg businessman Alexander Plekhov.
This is a very interesting and not at all random character.
Remember the billions of dollars that were found in the accounts
of Putin's childhood friend, cellist Roldugin, in the Panama Papers?
He’s spent almost all the money he’s earned on purchasing musical instruments abroad,
and he brought them to Russia
These billions, for some reason, were transferred by state-owned companies and oligarchs,
and the cellist himself, apparently, had no idea what he owned.
That is, these are literally Putin's personal billions, his offshore wallets.
Alexander Plekhov was the manager of these offshore companies, by proxy.
And another offshore company, which received money
from the oligarch Mordashov and the Rotenbergs, was registered to Plekhov personally.
Plekhov’s “Aratron”, by the way, gave money not only to”Lazurnaya Yagoda”,
but also to “Divnomorye” and “Yuzhnaya Citadel”,
which was supposed to breed oysters and mussels.
Plekhov runs his business in St. Petersburg
together with another Putin’s friend and dacha neighbor, Yuri Kovalchuk.
Kovalchuk appears in our diagram along with a whole cloud of offshore companies.
This is a whole web of companies controlled by him that transfers money back and forth.
These offshore companies are also used to finance personal assets of the Kovalchuk brothers,
such as houses in Gelendzhik and the Leningrad region,
planes, helicopters, and many other assets that are attributed to both Kovalchuk and Putin.
The offshore company “Forstis” stands out here:
it also gave money to both “DIvnomorye” and oysters, but most of it, 1.5 billion,
went to “Lazurnaya Yagoda”. It was also mentioned in the Panama Papers.
With its help, Roldugin's firms transfered money from offshore companies back to Russia,
to the Russian account of this company.
But this is not all the money at the expense of which “Lazurnaya Yagoda” exists and grows grapes.
They are also maintained by the state corporation Rosneft and Putin’s main protégé,
who once carried his briefcase during his days at the St. Petersburg mayor's office,
and now for some reason is considered great and terrible - Igor Ivanovich Sechin.
A lease agreement has been signed between “Lazurnaya Yagoda” and a subsidiary of Rosneft,
according to which the state corporation pays the winery 40 million rubles per month
for the rent of God knows what.
“Lazurnaya Yagoda” simply has nothing that could be worth that kind of money.
Right now you can rent an office with an area of ​​13742 m2 for this money,
several upper floors in a skyscraper in Moscow City.
In total, “Lazurnaya Yagoda” received almost 2 billion rubles
from state company Rosneft with such fictitious lease payments.
We stop here because this is the most important part of the scheme that needs to be processed.
There are companies owned by two billionaires - Timchenko and Kolbin,
they themselves have already put so much money into these companies
that they cannot spend it anymore and simply put it on a deposit in a bank.
And still, billionaire Kovalchuk, cellist Roldugin and the state company Rosneft
are throwing even more money there. Why?
Because before us is the legendary Putin’s slush fund.
It’s just like in the books you read about thieves in law.
Putin's businessmen pay tribute to their boss, who spends this money at his own discretion.
Moving on. The other vineyards and plant, in Krinitsa.
They are being built with the money of several people.
First of all, Gennady Timchenko, Putin's business partner from the 90s, gave 3.3 billion.
And another 3 billion was given by Putin’s school friend Nikolai Yegorov.
I have already mentioned him many times in this video,
you might get the impression that Yegorov is some kind of big oligarch.
No, Egorov is a lawyer, he is a partner in a law firm.
Considering that Egorov's entire fortune is estimated at 5 billion,
it turns out that he spent more than half of what he’s earned in his entire life
on a winery in Krinitsa. And then he sold it for 50 million rubles.
But having given money for the vineyards personally on his own, Yegorov did not stop there.
Remember the story about Putin’s university friends?
Along with Yegorov, there were Ilgam Ragimov and Viktor Khmarin.
In 2015, these three created the company "Investment Solutions" in St. Petersburg.
And this company also gave another 2 billion loan for a super plant in Krinitsa.
But this is not the biggest expense of the company of Putin's university friends.
In 2019, “Investment Solutions” gave 2.4 billion rubles to “Binom”, the owner of the palace.
And then in 2020, another 2.6 billion, so, 5 billion in total.
Alas, this money was not enough for the reconstruction and the new underground hockey complex.
“Binom” also received almost as much, 4.3 billion, from our first hero,
Putin's colleague in the Dresden KGB, Nikolai Tokarev.
Or rather, not from Tokarev himself, but from the state company Transneft that he heads.
The same scheme as for Rosneft and “Lazurnaya Yagoda”.
A fictitious lease, but on a much larger scale.
Transneft subsidiaries transfer 120 million a month
to the account of the palace in Praskoveevka. 120 million.
Since Transneft is still completely state-owned, they have to make excuses
for spending such huge sums of money to rent an amphitheater in the village of Praskoveevka.
Therefore, the head of the company, Nikolai Tokarev, comes here once a year
to take a photo and pretend that he is holding some kind of working meetings here.
Only these meetings are not held in the atheneum or in a musical parlor,
but here - in a specially built camp for staff. Or here, Tokarev gets filmed on the helipad.
Sure, this is a non-trivial approach to organization of work, which is what we do.
Many processes had to be run parallely…
He arrives, poses for the camera, pays the money and leaves.
In total, 4.3 billion rubles were transferred from the structures of Transneft
to the account of the company that owns the palace over 3 years.
Thus, state-owned Transneft is one of the largest sponsors of the construction of Putin's palace.
Over the past 3 years, only according to the most conservative estimates
and very incomplete data that we have at our disposal, 35 billion rubles
have been transferred to the accounts of the palace and vineyards.
This is the money that is being spent right now on reconstruction,
on the construction of the winery and on the daily maintenance of this huge economy.
And we’re not counting the billion dollars that had already been invested in construction by 2017.
Thus, if you ask for the total price of Putin's palace near Gelendzhik,
the answer to this question will not be easy to give, because such objects -
with tunnels carved into the rocks and underground hockey rinks - are simply not for sale.
But we can estimate the minimum cost - how much money was spent on it.
In total, it’s already 100 billion rubles. That is why we call it the world's biggest bribe.
Putin's friends, who received from him the right to steal whatever they wanted in Russia,
thanked him a lot, but in particular, they chipped in, collected 100 billion rubles
and built a palace for their boss with this money.
The Women
Take another look at this diagram. Sure, it looks complicated
even for such a difficult undertaking as the secret construction
of the world's most expensive palace with vineyards.
But what if I told you that this is just a small part of what really exists?
Several dozen more companies, offshore and not, that pay for other secret assets
of Putin and his family using the same money and the same people can be added to the scheme.
After all, the needs of our humble president are not at all limited to the Black Sea palace.
What about the relatives? You do not expect that they,
like some ordinary people, will live on a salary? Everyone needs a place to live.
Everyone needs a plane. Everyone needs a yacht. All this must be paid for.
This means that we need a financial scheme and people who will fill this scheme with money.
This slush fund, the basis of which we have described to you,
is used by Putin in order to cover the expenses of family members.
The larger the family, the more the expenses, and Putin -
as befits a person who imagines himself a monarch - has a rich and eventful personal life.
Just recently, Proekt Media told us a wonderful story from the life of this deeply religious person,
the guardian of millennial conservative values.
It turns out that a certain Svetlana Krivonogikh lives in St. Petersburg.
Once she was just a pretty young girl, but now she has turned into an incredibly rich woman,
a shareholder of Rossiya Bank. And no one can understand
how such happiness fell on Krivonogikh, who once worked as a cleaner.
Here’s the answer.
Krivonogikh met Putin in the late 90s, and in 2003, according to Proekt,
she gave birth to his daughter Elizaveta.
A few months after that, she became the owner of a 447 m2 apartment,
having received it from Kovalchuk and other friends of Putin from the “Ozero” dacha cooperative.
Then there were more apartments, again from Putin's old friends.
For example, this 197 m2 apartment, 300 meters from the Hermitage,
was given to the Krivonogikhs by Oleg Rudnov,
whom the Kommersant newspaper called Putin's friend back in 2005, along with Kovalchuk
After Krivonogikh gave birth to Putin's child, a bunch of assets
(including a 3% stake in Rossiya Bank) were registered for her,
and they are financed from the same scheme that we described to you.
For example, her companies “Ozone” and “Pulse” receive money from “Accept”.
“Ozone” owns the Igora resort in the Leningrad region,
and “Pulse” owns the 40-meter yacht of Svetlana Krinovogikh.
The offshore company “Forstis”, which gave money for the vineyards in Divnomorskoye,
also issued loans to another Krivonogikh’s company, “Profit”.
This company owns the "Leningrad Center" in the Tauride Garden in St. Petersburg.
Therefore, we can confirm the investigation of Proekt.
There can be no random women in this scheme.
This is another example of how Putin's friends steal from the entire country,
and as a token of gratitude they support Putin's mistress and her child.
Putin's personal life concerns only him.
He can even have 20 families if he desires, it’s none of our business.
We pay attention to something else.
His tumultuous relationship is paid for by bribes and corruption.
Get this - there are 20 million beggars in the country, and he buys a yacht for his mistress.
Forget the yacht, though. Both the yacht and Krivonogich’s apartments look like a trifle
compared to the funding of the famous gymnast
and the woman with the most incomprehensible status in Russia, Alina Kabaeva.
I don’t think it will surprise you if I say that I like them all
In 2008, a whole newspaper “Moskovsky Korrespondent” was closed down
because it wrote an article about the relationship between Putin and Kabaeva.
This is a forbidden topic for everyone, but the truth does not change from this.
Billions of stolen money are being spent on supporting another woman of Putin.
We see from the documents that Alina Kabaeva is inseparable from our scheme.
Alina Kabaeva's grandmother got a 212-meter apartment in St. Petersburg from Gennady Timchenko.
4 days before that, another person involved in our scheme, or rather his father,
transferred to the same grandmother two neighboring apartments on the Arbat, 300 m2 each.
In August 2013, businessman Grigory Baevsky, who can also be called Rotenbergs’ nominee,
like Ponomarenko, handed half a hectare of land on Rublyovka
and 2 houses on it (1454 and 1722 m2) to Kabaeva’s grandmother.
And after 5 years, the neighboring land plot was bought by Kabaeva herself.
I mean, a former gymnast has been appointed the country's chief media manager.
She is the chairman of the board of directors of National Media Group.
This structure belongs to the main holder of Putin's money, Kovalchuk.
She owns almost half of the major media outlets in Russia.
And there is no dispute: Alina Maratovna Kabaeva is the best in the world
at jumping with a ball and a ribbon, but she would not have been able
to manage television companies and newspapers if not for her connection with Putin.
After all, just her official salary from Kovalchuk in 2018 was 785 million rubles.
But do not think that Alina Maratovna and her relatives only receive these apartments and money.
They give back too. Here is a touching document we found. A real document of the era.
This is a registry extract for a relatively small apartment in Sochi.
Alina's grandmother bought it in 2011. And six years later,
the apartment became the property of Mikhail Shelomov, a relative of Putin.
Consolidation of joint property is underway, so to speak.
That is, the registry extract for this apartment is the only document in history so far
where both families - of Alina Kabaeva and of Vladimir Putin - appear together.
Today, I have confidence in my future. I will go to the elections on December 2
and vote for “United Russia” and the person who gave me this confidence, Vladimir Putin.
However, the life of a polygamist brings not only pleasure, but also problems.
And the song known to everyone in our country, seems to be directly dedicated to Vladimir Putin.
Remember: "Three wives are wonderful, what you can say,
But on the other hand - I've got three mothers-in-law!”
That's not so bad to have three wives,
But it's much worse on the other hand!
After all, Putin also has three mother-in-laws. At least three. Fortunately for our national leader,
he has what the heroes of the film "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style" lacked: Gazprom.
Gazprom used to have a subsidiary called “Teplo Invest”.
Formally, it was engaged in operating all sorts of small boiler houses, pipes, cable lines.
A small structure, it doesn't even exist anymore, it was liquidated.
But somehow, before liquidation, this company bought several super-elite apartments
in the most expensive part of Moscow, the Ostozhenka area.
In 2014, “Teplo Invest” became the owner of a 260 m2 apartment
in this building on Prechistenka and 220 m2 one in this one, in Molochny Pereulok.
These are very, very expensive apartments.
And within a year after the purchase, one of the apartments, the more expensive one,
went to the mother of Alina Kabaeva, Lyubov Mikhailovna Kabaeva,
and the second, a little more modest one - to the mother of Svetlana Krivonogikh.
Remember what Gazprom says in its ads? National treasure.
I think they need to change the slogan.
Gazprom: Using the national treasure to support Putin's mother-in-laws!
The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy once very clearly described the structure of power in Russia:
The villains who robbed the people gathered together,
recruited soldiers and judges to guard their orgy, and are feasting.
This brilliant phrase still precisely describes what is happening in our country.
The villains robbed the people. They recruited judges, the National Guard and FSB officers
to guard their palaces, while they themselves sit and play in their personal casinos,
surrounded by wives, mistresses and children.
And they will never voluntarily leave power.
The stupidest phrase that you often hear sounds like this:
“Well, these have already stolen enough.
Leave them be, or new ones will come and start stealing again”.
You can clearly see that there’ll never have enough. On the contrary.
More money is constantly needed. Even if your salary is raised from 30 to 45 thousand rubles,
it’s still not enough for you. It’s the same with them.
Buy this yacht, buy this apartment. The palace was built, but the pipe burst, it needs to be redone.
And the contractor asks for more. And the children are growing up.
And everyone needs their own house. And then Putin's daughter gets married
and her husband must be made the youngest billionaire in Russia,
otherwise she will make a scene. And the eldest daughter also has a husband.
And Krivonogikh's daughter is already an adult, soon a separate yacht will be needed.
And then the grandchildren will grow up. And everyone has colossal appetites.
And that's just Putin. But there’s still Medvedev, and all the ministers,
and these Millers, Rothenbergs, Kovalchuks and Timchenkos.
They will never have enough. On the contrary, they will steal more and more.
Until the whole country is ruined. Russia is still selling oil, gas, metals, fertilizers, timber
in huge quantities, and the income of the population keeps declining.
Because Putin has a palace, and Kabaeva, and Krivonogikh.
And each smaller official has his own palace and his own Kabaeva.
We will live normally only when we stop tolerating officials who steal and re-electing them.
And if they refuse to hold fair elections,
then we’ll take to the streets and remove them from power in this way.
This is what distinguishes poor countries from rich ones.
In rich countries, people take to the streets at the slightest indignation,
and officials are afraid of this. In poor countries, people tolerate all this,
and officials hold referendums to extend their powers.
And they say: wait a little longer. We've only been in power for 20 years.
Just look at what they do. Every day there are new laws prohibiting criticism of the authorities.
All who are dissatisfied are foreign agents. It is already forbidden
to even campaign for candidates in the elections that you like and criticize “United Russia”.
Putin and his group of thieves want life-long and uncontrolled power.
We have reached the point where it is no longer a group of people who rob the state,
but the state itself has turned into an instrument of theft.
The FSO and National Guard guard the palaces. The judges jail the dissatisfied.
The FSB has created a group of murderers
whose task is simply to kill those who refuse to remain silent.
But the good news is that there are still many, many more of us.
Putin and everyone who guards him, steals for him, falsifies elections for him -
these are several hundred thousand people. And there are tens of millions of us.
We just do not believe in our strength.
If everyone who watches this video shares it, we will tear the censorship to shreds.
If 10% of the disaffected take to the streets, they will not dare to falsify the elections.
If each of us registers and participates in the “Smart Voting”,
then Putin's party of theft and degradation “United Russia” will lose the elections,
political competition will begin and the quality of politics and officials will begin to improve.
Fair courts and normal prosecutors will appear.
Stealing on such a scale as now will become impossible.
And step by step, we will start living better and richer.
All we have to do is stop being patient. Stop waiting.
Stop wasting your life and your taxes on enriching these people.
Our future is in our hands. Do not be silent. Don't agree to obey the feasting villains.
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Investigation and screenplay: Alexey Navalny, Maria Pevchikh, Georgy Alburov
[30] Video production: Kira Yarmysh, Alexandra Dubrovskaya, Vitaly Kolesnikov, Alexander Lebedinsky, Yaroslav Mudryakov
[37] Art director: Varvara Mikhailova
[39] IT decisions: Vyacheslav Romantsov