🇷🇺 In Search of Putin's Money | People & Power

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according to his officials Russia's recently elected president is a man of modest means with a small six-figure salary a couple of properties and some cars to his name his critics say Vladimir Putin is one of the world's wealthiest individuals who is announced a secret multi billion dollar fortune along with his oligarch associates so who's right Sara Spiller has been tried to find out Vladimir Putin newly elected president of Russia after 12 years in power now set for six more at the government victory rally in Moscow his supporters are out in force to them he's a hero the strongman who brought order after the chaos at the Yeltsin years the carefully cultivated image the macho horse riding Action Man and judo black belt these things they say signs of his real character Putin's a leader who's put their country back in her rightful place on the world stage election night and police and troops pour onto the streets of the capital but in the run-up to the poll tens of thousands have braved the state security apparatus to protest against Putin's long dominance of Russian politics I believe in that for these Russians Putin stands for everything that's wrong with their country they claim that far from restoring Russia's place in the world his years and control have seen its reputation become synonymous with cronyism and corruption and that with Putin at the helm in her clicks have been running Russia largely for their own benefit remember that year so cachito abuse from domestic opponents may not matter much to russia's new premier but it does reflect rumors about Vladimir Putin's personal finances and business dealings stories that have been circulating internationally for some time we wanted to find out more our investigation would take us from Moscow to since Petersburg and onto a mysterious palace on the shores of the Black Sea and along the way speculation about a hidden fortune my personal suspicion is that certainly mr. Putin is the richest man in Europe possibly on the planet somewhat different from official information the Kremlin provided last year about Vladimir Putin's wealth the sea stood for the presidential elections when he was Prime Minister Putin his annual salary was a hundred and forty thousand dollars a year assets two apartments three cars a trailer a share in a garage and some land rather modest for one of the world's most powerful men but even a cursory look at the Russian leaders lifestyle does reveal some rather expensive tastes take mr. Putin's fascination with top-of-the-range timepieces a $70,000 platinum Patek Phillipe Aubry gay at almost 15,000 he's also been seen wearing the German brand a longer and son cost in the region of $20,000 and luxury Swiss brand IWC all in all Russia's leader has been photographed wearing over 160 thousand dollars worth of wristwatch so how can his watches be worth more than his annual salary it's a kind of brazen display of wealth and almost arrogance that he'd be wearing these watches and people can see that clearly it's an indication that he has some kind of hidden wealth we asked the Kremlin about the watches were they his personal property or owned by the state they declined to tell us but what we do know is that mr. Putin's official position entitles him to a range of impressive benefits like the use of this spectacular yacht these pictures were taken before she was reportedly brought by the Office of presidential affairs for over 40 million dollars at 50 meters long she has a saloon with panoramic sea view guest cabins jacuzzi and barbecue upkeep an estimated four million dollars a year on top of this there's also access to presidential palaces and residences one of the official if sumptuous perks of the job it indicates his aspirations to live a luxury lifestyle and also almost live like an oligarch but president Putin's critics care less about the trappings of office than the wealth they say you can't see wealth that if rumors are to be believed comes from less than salubrious sources in 2010 a quarter of a million secret memos written by American diplomats from around the world were published on the Internet they've been leaked to the WikiLeaks website and they contain some surprising assertions in one cable a US diplomat based in Madrid reports a briefing from a Spanish national court prosecutor who'd investigated Russian mafia cases according to the prosecutor and a Vladimir Putin Russia is a virtual mafia state where one cannot differentiate between the activities of the government and organized crime groups and there was startling references to allegations about Vladimir Putin's personal wealth the former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice quoted a Russian opposition figure as saying that Vladimir Putin is nervously trying to secure his immunity from potential law enforcement investigations into his alleged illicit proceeds there were numerous allusions to this to mr. Putin's alleged secret assets abroad but there wasn't a kind of smoking gun there was no kind of disses his bank account in Switzerland kind of thing but bear in mind the WikiLeaks cables dealt with sort of five categories of secrecy up to secret was the highest court of classification but we never saw top secret I would have liked Racine top secret rumors diplomatic chatter for what are the substance of all this we wanted to explore the origins of stories about Vladimir Putin we travel to st. Petersburg Vladimir Putin came here in 1990 after 15 years as an officer in the KGB he quickly rose to become the city's deputy mayor and even during these early days he was beginning to attract attention to find out why we drove out of the city deep into the countryside to meet a woman called marina Sally a a friend of famous Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1992 Sally a headed a city council investigation into a deal Putin oversaw while he was an official in the mayor's office the deal involved the export of a hundred million dollars worth of raw materials in exchange for food for the city but the food never materialized and marina Sally a and the council wanted to know why she kept her documents from the time the material usually the granite saw a productive Zamir neighborly pollution what to stop resentment a cousin even a Putin s no present nah he would do a host of teramo called a product of nibel rupture estar submissive oh what a tada cousin stop resentment what although her investigation turned up no evidence that Putin had personally benefited from the deal Sally a says his signature was on papers granting export permits to the companies involved what is this document show where we see Lacroix Medora stop Putin new Evoque immediate the crooked contractor martyr may now pass cough cough water prana well stay on with the vowel it's ng e material a lease me tau tropic Mizzou Tom nifty oka de les grandes Oh Oh Kadena's renewed so mr. putin has denied ever signed these documents and now the real story may never be known marina Sally I died a week after this interview back in st. Petersburg we heard more claims afternoon colonel and recycle is a former senior investigator at the Russian Interior Ministry in June 1999 when Putin was serving his first term as president Zhukov was put in charge of criminal case number one four four one two eight the case involved a construction company who xx trust which officials suspected had been used to siphon money from st. Petersburg city budget in the early 1990s Viswa processed oil but she more eager party leaders Niederreiter the north nicosia builder Texas whistling it's party versus dog guy he divided the valley the valley at yet another velocity key chain or nakum is Mary Santiago what was the connection to Vladimir Putin in all this natural to meta-crisis redevelop Nikki overdosed or occur operates adversity Trieste past Royal Agia Pelagia Virginia passed rowella domina welcome Simone's come ye past worship the past Rouladen evocative miss Barney the Riviera is in 2000 Russia's prosecutor general shut the investigation down on the grounds of insufficient proof Zykov says he was fired a year and a half later we asked the Kremlin to respond to mr. cycles claims it's declined to do so from st. Petersburg to Moscow the same journey Vladimir Putin made back in the 90s to become prime minister than president for some muscovite the Putin years have brought affluence and a taste of the good life but it's here that we heard the most serious allegations against Russia's president-elect stanislav belch offski is a russian political insider and founder of the national strategy institute a Moscow based think tank his widely publicized and astonishing claim is that the Russian premier is almost unimaginably wealthy a billionaire several times over the figure of 40 billion dollars emerged in 2007 now by now this figure could have changed I believe at the level of 60 to 70 billion of dollars if true such gigantic sums would easily make Vladimir Putin the richest man in Europe falkowski claims the money comes from shares the Vladimir Putin secretly owns in three giant oil and gas companies 4.5 percent of the National giant Gazprom 37 percent of oil supplier circuit Nattie gas and up to 75 percent of overseas oil trader gun vol well Koski is reluctant to explain exactly how he knows this saying only that the information comes from confidential sources inside the presidential administration but he's more forthcoming about why he claims Radomir Putin would need such a vast sum I think both mr putin and his inner circles firm do firmly belief that money decides everything in the world and without controlling such amounts of money you can never protect yourself both physically and politically money is about of Russian elite the three companies identified by Bell Koski refute his claims said with Neff Daguerre's Gazprom and gun war have all strongly denied any links to Vladimir Putin or that he benefits or owns any shares in their businesses and the man himself has been equally forthright in 2008 when he was asked about allegations that he may be the richest man in Europe he said it was just rubbish picked out of someone's nose and smeared on bits of paper the claims on nonsense rubbish but the stories about links between Vladimir Putin and the gun war oil trading companies were loud enough to reach the ears of John Burrell US ambassador to Moscow in the secret diplomatic cables published on Wikileaks he is quoted as saying it's secretive ownership rumored to include Prime Minister Putin Luke Harding was Moscow correspondent for the UK Guardian newspaper until he was expelled in 2011 after reporting on the WikiLeaks cables nobody knows how much money by my Putin is worth it's kind of hard to calculate I mean if you go to Switzerland and say look I'm an investigative journalist do you have an account in the name of mr. VV Putin I'm terribly sorry we have no account of that name Harding investigated Gonville the oil trading company in which Putin is alleged to hold a 75 percent stake like us he was unable to find any hard evidence to bat pal Kostas claims but he says it's rise to prominence be surprising gamble has gone from being a relatively small oil trader to the company that exports 1/3 of Russia's Seabourn oil not from Russia but from from zoo a sleepy little Swiss village with green pasture cows and so on and to me that seems very strange amid all these claims and counterclaims there is one undeniable fact about Vladimir Putin while he's been in power both as Prime Minister and president a small circle of associates of the very wealthy indeed we've been told that the origins of this group go back to st. Petersburg and a gated community of Dutchess or country homes outside the city we went to take a look vladimir putin's old his dacha on the shores of lake Komsomolskaya a number of years ago but in the mid-1990s he and others formed a cooperative to buy property in the area okay I think this is just about as far as we're going to be able to come you can see there's a security barrier here and some guard dogs who've been howling away at us and there's a guy up there he was keeping an eye on us but this was the - of compound where Vladimir Putin formed some of his closest associations it was a tight-knit group and they lived along the lake side and some of those men have now become dollar billionaires some of the richest and most powerful men in Russia they include Yuri Koval shock a former deputy director of a regional scientific Institute now a shareholder in the powerful Rossier Bank according to the authoritative Forbes list he's worth 1.2 billion dollars another is nikolai sharm olive also a major shareholder in rossia bank his fortune listed by Forbes at five hundred million dollars other associations with Mal wealthy businessmen may have been formed here at the U Warren Eva Judo Club in st. Petersburg which Putin reportedly co-founded and where youngsters now practiced their moves CEO of the club is Arkady Rotenberg and he and his brother Boris was said to be Putin's sparring partners back in their youth the brothers now control much of Russia's oil and gas pipe building industry together they're said to be worth just over 1.5 billion dollars another co-founder others in Petersburg judo club a man called Gennady timchenko in the late 80s he worked in a local oil refinery now he's co-owner of Gonville Russia's biggest foreign trader according to forbes worth 9.1 Billy dollarz we approached all these men for a response only mr. timchenko lawyers replied they told us any suggestion that our client is a close friend of mr. Putin is false mr. timchenko had already established himself as a successful businessman well before mr. Putin rose to office his success is as a result of many years of extremely hard work nevertheless if you add up the personal fortunes of mr. Putin's acquaintances from the Lakeside properties and from the judo club as well as some of mr. Putin's relatives and former KGB associates they have an estimated worth of over 180 billion dollars journalist Luke Harding has a view on their staggering success are the connections that Vladimir Putin formed early on a tremendously important and those people have risen with him and really what we've seen since he came into power in 2000's we've seen kind of Kremlin Inc we've seen a group of his chums who've many with KGB backgrounds who've kind of taken over state corporations as we continued our journey around Russia one story kept attracting our attention it concerned a lavish Italian style property being built on the Black Sea coast a palace so the rumors went fit for as all these photographs were taken secretly by construction workers they show richly decorated interiors ornate grounds gates topped by a two-headed eagle and lifts down to the beach but who's this mysterious Palace 4 and who's paying for it in the early 1990s Sergei kolesnikov was boss of a Russian medical supply company in 2000 the firm became involved in a scheme to raise money from prominent businessmen to buy equipment for clinics in st. Petersburg one of his partners in the project was Nicholas Romanov an old acquaintance of Putin's from the - of compound days millions of dollars of equipment were indeed purchased through the scheme but according to Collier sneaked off now turned whistleblower and living in exile millions more dollars were diverted into a private investment company set up at mr. Shimano's behest its ownership he claims was hidden by anonymous bearer shares the vast bulk of which were held by mr. Schimmel off on Vladimir Putin's behalf the money collie esna cough believes has gone towards the costs of the mysterious black sea palace Tammany demolished of Kaneesha motoki of CET dinky both patrician and last registered Watsa Matta preached in esto national action is colonoscopy Dragoon tardicaca sombrero Arzo naturally a planner asana vultures Danny and v3 VT CI a-- i become or what no patent possibility she stole bodies meaningless planning is that a which that image shows daniel-san grow networks oval pocket cosmic off claims that Vladimir Putin was regularly briefed about investments made on his behalf diced yeah you see God not what the wrath of God got a valid shot or to invest it's a kotori's DNA of economy coracii catalepsy practica torii pred paula galas case viciously não é para dar Al Aqsa mala grave of chima me on take a chronopath Lesnar is delusional the Apple Cheney instructs attack the Miata sniveling avarage M Tom stow a chip seal material Dhokla SS pussy no II pollution a instructive delineation petty devilish minion neither mr. jamal of nor mr. gorelov the other man mentioned responded to our request for a comment on these claims but we've seen documents that appear to link the presidential administration to building contracts for the property they bear the signature of a man called vladimir codon head of the presidential administration property department the presidential office has insisted that currently it has no connection to the palace so officially at least this building has nothing to do with the Kremlin or with mr. Putin we took a trip to see how close we could get curiously the palace seemed to enjoy an unusual amount of protection there were guarded outposts barbed wire and the approach road to the palace was closed just over there is the road to the palace and there's heavy security all around in fact we've been approached once already I'm told to move on there's a barrier and it's reportedly guarded over by the federal protection service who look after high-ranking officials so this is about as far as we can get so we went to the nearest village had people here seen mr. Putin visiting this palace oh yes they said you always know when he's around because there are helicopters overhead and yachts in the harbor and one man was willing to tell us about mr. Putin's trips on camera and and have you seen mr. Putin visiting here yes Rio Oh Julia for logistical stress palapa Europe award Oh aha rose upon obviously the courage other conceal how often does he come nobody is that good shift mobile white car Chester you the documents the security all around this place the whistleblower Kalashnikov and the testimony of local people all suggest this property is indeed connected to Vladimir Putin but the exact status of the palace remains a mystery as with the other claims we've examined in this film every question about mr. Putin's affairs throws up yet more questions how much all this matters is of course first and foremost for the people of this nation to decide and they've just elected Vladimir Putin for another six years for many it's enough that their strongman has brought wealth and stability others may feel that taking to the streets is the only way of getting the change they seek for the rest of the world the questions about mr. Putin's friends his business dealings his personal probity persist Russia remains a global force playing a full role in international affairs therefore the way this man this enigma wields power in this vast country is of significance to us all you

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Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 217,934

Rating: 3.7048612 out of 5

Keywords: president, peoplepower, Putin, sarah spiller, Russian, Russia, billion dollar fortune, people and power, Vladimir Putin, aljazeera, al jazeera, aljazeera english, al jazeera english, al jazeera live, In Search of Putin's Money, In Search of Putin, Putin's Money, People & Power, People, Power, Moscow

Id: xh_vYB-go-0

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Length: 25min 2sec (1502 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 19 2012

Reddit Comments

He does have unnatural resources...http://imgur.com/lQgLf

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/zangor 📅︎︎ Oct 15 2012 🗫︎ replies

great doc. worth viewing. you'll understand that in Putin's thinking you cannot have political power in Russia without having financial power -- this was a big driver of his acquisition of wealth.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/jpeg_hero 📅︎︎ Oct 16 2012 🗫︎ replies

Dayyuum dat palace

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/FredCDobbsy 📅︎︎ Oct 20 2012 🗫︎ replies