Friends are known

The "close circle" of President Vladimir Putin can control assets worth about $ 24 billion. This is stated in the investigation of the Center for Research of Corruption and Organized Crime OCCRP

We are talking about the money of "family members, old friends and friends who have become family members," noted in OCCRP. Most people from the “Middle Circle”, in particular Yuri Kovalchuk, Gennady Timchenko, the Arkady brothers and Boris Rotenbergs, are associated with oil and gas assets or state -owned companies.

Part of the OCCRP investigation is devoted to people who, presumably, play the role of Putin's "wallets". This, for example, is the cellist Sergei Roldugin, who became famous after the publication of the Panama Dossier, and Petr Kolbin, about whom the media wrote afterthe sale of elite real estate to the grandmother of the gymnast Alina Kabaeva. Another "wallet" is Putin's cousin Mikhail Shelomov. The assets of his company "Accept" are completely unknown. The company began its activities in 2004 after receiving a loan of 18 million dollars from the Panama Offshore Santal Trading Corporation at 5 percent per annum. In the same year, the company became the shareholder of the Bank "Russia". Then the “acceptance” received a share at the Sogaz insurance company, which in 2013 was estimated at 200 million dollars.

Putin always denied media reports that he was one of the richest people in the world. “There is no pockets in the coffin, you won’t take money with you,” he said in an interview with American director Oliver Stone in a documentary that was released this year.

On April 3, 2016, the first data from the Panama Archive was published. The investigation was about numerous offshore companies used by states, politicians, celebrities, well -known athletes. The investigation was based on 2.6 terabyte data, including 11.5 million documents stolen from servers of one of the leading offshore registrars in the world - the Panama Law Firm Mossack Fonseca. Among other things, the Panama documents spoke about the financial fraud of Putin close to the total amount of $ 2 billion. According to ICIJ, transactions were attended by Sandalwood Continental, International Media Overseas, Sonnette Overseas and Sunbarn. All of them are registered in offshores and are associated with the Bank "Russia", which the American authorities called the "personal bank for high -ranking Russian officials", as well as with Putin's close friends.