PUTIN’S ‘£1BN PALACE’
POISONED NAVALNY RELEASES IMAGES OF ‘NEW VERSAILLES’ HE SAYS RUSSIAN PRESIDENT FUNDED THROUGH GRAFT
KREMLIN critic Alexei Navalny has revealed details of a £1billion palace – with a strip club, casino and theatre – which he says president Vladimir Putin built for himself using dirty money.
The politician and campaigner, who was arrested on his return to Russia last weekend, claims to have obtained floor plans of the luxury property on the southern Black Sea coast.
He has now released 3D images which he says are based on the plans and reveal a ‘New Versailles’ that was paid for with ‘the largest bribe in history’.
The pictures show an arcade room with slot machines and a dance mat, a spa and hookah bar, plus the strip club complete with its dancer’s pole.
There are vineyards, a church and even an ice rink tucked away under a helipad on an estate that Mr Navalny claims is 39 times the size of Monaco.
The pictures are part of a huge investigation published on the opposition leader’s blog along with a two-hour YouTube video recorded before his arrest. It was released by his team just after his airport arrest on arrival from Germany, where he had treatment following the novichok poison attack that nearly killed him in August. Mr Navalny, whose supporters have now urged Russians to join nationwide protests on Saturday, said of the estate: ‘There are impregnable fences, its own port, its own security, a church, its own permit system, a no-fly zone and even its own border checkpoint. It is absolutely a separate state within Russia.’ He said it was ‘a new Versailles – a new Winter Palace’.
The campaigner said the plans, leaked to his team by a contractor, also show a
gym, swimming pool and underground wine cellar. Located in a secluded area heavily guarded by Russia’s security forces, the palace also has a tunnel that leads down to the coast, he said.
Claims that Mr Putin had built the mansion were first made in 2010 by whistleblower businessman Sergei Kolesnikov, in a public letter to thenpresident Dmitry Medvedev.
But the Kremlin continued to deny its existence in the wake of the latest allegations.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state news agency
RIA Novosti: ‘We explained many years ago that Putin does not have any palace in Gelendzhik (south Russia).’ Mr Navalny, who fell ill on a domestic flight in Russia after being poisoned with novichok, has blamed Mr Putin but the Kremlin denies involvement. The 44-year-old was put in pretrial detention for 30 days on Monday on a charge of violating probation terms of a suspended sentence for embezzlement that he says was politically motivated. A separate case against him was due to start yesterday but was postponed.