PUTIN’S AFFORD CRONIES WHO CAN’T TO LET LEADER FAIL
FAMILY AFFAIR: Construction mogul Arkady Rotenberg and his billionaire son Igor; Soviet-era physicist Yury Kovalchuk; his son Boris and media chief nephew Kirill
THEY are the Reds-to-riches dynasties propping up Vladimir Putin, his closest cronies and offspring who cannot allow him to fail.
These days the Russian president is often portrayed as “the planet’s richest man” with claims he owns a tacky taxpayer-funded £1billion Black Sea palace with its own pole-dancing boudoir, casino, and vineyards.
Yet he is surrounded by longtime friends and colleagues who, at least nominally, also control much of the country’s power and wealth.
They are his formidable Praetorian Guard, protecting him as protests gain momentum even in -50C cold to demand an end to his autocratic 21-year rule as either president or prime minister.
Some were old pals from the KGB in the depths of the Coldwar.
Others were judo sparring partners or dacha neighbours or contacts who survived the bloody gun battles of murky mafia-ridden St Petersburg in the 1990s, when Putin was deputy mayor in charge of issuing lucrative business permits and contracts.
Back in the day, this crowd wore ill-fitting Soviet suits and earned a pittance as Communist bean counters or functionaries. Now they are billionaires, top security officials, or key Kremlin powerbrokers, all because they were loyal to Putin.
But here’s the thing about Putinocracy, as described by his biggest foe, the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny: their untouchable offspring are also now inheriting their wealth and power in a new dynastic aristocracy.
“Putin has chosen to stay in power with the president-for-life formula and he is building a feudal system based on family clans, who now control 85 per cent of our economy,” says Navalny.
Take Soviet-era physicist Yury Kovalchuk, 69, nicknamed “Putin’s
Purse”, a former dacha (country house) buddy at the Ozero cooperative near St Petersburg.
He now controls Bank Rossiya, while his nephew Kirill, 52, is installed as president of his large pro-kremlin media holding.
Kovalchuk senior acts as “consigliere” in a Godfather-style operation, ensuring financial support to the women closest to Putin, while also being proxy owner for properties secretly belonging to the strongman, according to one recent report.
And his son Boris, 43, is general director of Inter RAO, key to electricity supplies to eastern Europe.
Or take another Putin-era clan around multi-billionaire Gennady Timchenko, a mate from the old KGB, whose son-in-law Gleb Frank, 38, is a well-connected young businessman with interests in construction and fish farming.
His father Sergei, in turn, was Putin’s former transport minister, while Timchenko – worth £15billion – has been linked to the Black Sea palace which Putin denies owning,
but which is widely seen as a presidential property.
Timchenko’s earlier oil enterprise Gunvor was co-owned with the late Pyotr Kolbin, a Putin playmate from childhood who accrued a fortune of almost £500million, and whose son Vladimir supplies wines from the palace to the Kremlin.
Then there is the Rotenberg clan with construction mogul Arkady, 69, Putin’s judo-partner, having known him since the age of 12.
He is worth £1.5billion, while his son Igor, 46, is a Russian officialturned-businessman, and brother Boris, 64, are both billionaires.
Yesterday Arkady dramatically claimed the Black Sea palace actually belonged to him, in a move mocked by the opposition as seeking to divert attention from a major
corruption scandal. “His old judo sparring partner has been dragooned into saving him, but this is not believable,” said one source.
Another clan to thrive under what Navalny calls this feudal model is former Putin KGB friend and Beatles’ fan Sergei Ivanov, 67, who was his deputy at the FSB, and also defence minister and Kremlin chief of staff, and is now his green tsar.
As a trainee spy in the Cold War, he was somehow allowed into Britain to learn English in Ealing.
Ivanov’s 40-year-old son Sergey’s glittering prize is to control Russia’s lucrative diamond industry as president of Alrosa.
Then there is Putin’s most senior and trusted security official Nikolai Patrushev, 69, yet another old KGB colleague and an EX-FSB chief, is father to FSB Academy graduate and banker Dmitry, 43, who is now Agriculture Minister. The son is tipped by some for future tsardom, as prime minister or president.
Navalny has said: “It is more than just a dynastic succession. Children don’t just inherit their parents’ posts, but also the right to choose any other post they fancy.
“The danger is that very soon, all key resources will end up in the hands of five to seven families.”
First among them is Putin’s own extended clan, as he sees it. For years Western diplomats have claimed Putin has a stake in many of the famous oligarch fortunes that have appeared during his long rule.
Putin strongly denies this, as he does ownership of the Gelendzhik Palace, and clear proof of this allegation – which lies behind the claim he is the world’s richest man – is hard to come by. A spate of recent revelations, which Russia sees as inspired by Western intelligence, possibly throws some light on this.
Putin declines to inform Russians of the identity of his current partner or wife yet most Russians believe this to be glamorous Olympic gold medal winning rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, 37, who for unknown reasons has not been seen in public for more than two years.
But it is clear she earns £7.8million a year from her role, for which she has no experience, as chairwoman of National Media Group, controlled by Yury Kovalchuk.
Kovalchuk’s empire has also provided indirect financial backing to Putin’s daughters, Mariavorontsova, 35, and Katerina Tikhonova, 34, from his marriage to former Russian first lady Lyudmila, which ended in 2013, it is claimed.
Shares in his Rossiya Bank were arranged as “alimony” for Putin’s suspected former mistress, Svetlana Krivonogikh, mother of a secret Putin daughter, Elizaveta, now 17, alleges Proekt Media.
Navalny is perhaps the biggest threat to this “corrupt medieval model”, but it does not mean he will be victorious. He only just survived last year’s horrific Novichok poisoning and now languishes in jail with a slew of new “politically motivated” charges likely facing him.
‘Resources owned by seven families’