Putin’s son-in-law forfeits massive fortune in breakup
Marrying into Vladimir Putin’s family offered a path to guaranteed success, but the man who did so has discovered the flipside after separating from the Russian leader’s daughter.
Kirill Shamalov wed Katerina Tikhonova in February 2013 in a discreet ceremony near St Petersburg. No expense was spared, and everyone present was sworn to secrecy, with guards keeping members of the public well away.
The fairytale appears to be over, however, and Shamalov, 35, has had to forgo hundreds of millions of rubles after splitting from his wife, according to an investigation by the Bloomberg financial news agency. Four sources told the agency that the pair were no longer together.
Tikhonova, 31, Putin’s youngest daughter with his former wife, Lyudmila, is a project manager at Moscow State University and an accomplished acrobatic rock’n’roll dancer who has taken part in various tournaments.
Shamalov’s future looked bright when he and Tikhonova married five years ago. The ceremony was held at a ski resort about 35 kilometres from the Ozera dacha co-operative, a development started in the 1990s by Putin and friends of his, many of whom have since become prominent in business. One of them was Nikolai Shamalov, Kirill’s father.
A year later, the young businessman secured a 72 billion-ruble loan from Gazprombank and used it to buy a 17 per cent stake in Sibur, Russia’s leading gas and petrochemicals processor.
There is no suggestion that the transactions were illegal, but Shamalov’s remarkably swift rise to affluence and his network of Kremlin-linked business contacts demonstrated the dynastic transfer of wealth and power in Putin’s Russia.
Gazprombank is a state-linked bank whose deputy chairman is Shamalov’s brother, Yuri. The chairman is Alexei Miller, who worked with Putin in St Petersburg in the 1990s.
Shamalov bought the stake from Gennady Timchenko, an oil and gas trader who is a friend of Putin.
It is unclear when the separation from Tikhonova took place, but sources claimed that Shamalov ‘‘made zero’’ when he sold the shares he had bought from Timchenko, because he was allowed to hold them in a kind of trust only as a member of the Putin family.
Shamalov is now back working as a senior Sibur executive, a huge step down from his heady days as a billionaire.
Shamalov may rue the loss of his place among the mega-rich but he has not exactly been left a pauper: his wealth is still estimated at a highly respectable 43.7 billion rubles (NZ$1 billion).