The wife of billionaire Kovalchuk entered the top three richest Russian women for the first time

The wife of billionaire, friend of Putin and main shareholder of Rossiya Bank Yuri Kovalchuk, Tatyana entered the top 25 richest women in Russia according to Forbes for the first time. Her fortune was estimated at $600 million, and this ensured her third place.

Together with her husband, Tatyana Kovalchuk is a member of the non-profit partnership “Support for Entrepreneurial Initiatives”, which owns 2.4% of the capital of Rossiya Bank (where Vladimir Putin receives his salary and military pension), and owns 49.9% of the company “Big House 9” - it indirectly controls 32.3% of the Sogaz group, the largest Russian insurer.

Details. Forbes recently named Kovalchuk among the beneficiaries of Russia's largest deal in the insurance market - last year's merger of Sogaz and VTB Insurance (you can read more about it here ).

• The package of Kovalchuk and his wife, valued under this deal, is worth about 90 billion rubles, Forbes wrote . This is more than Kovalchuk’s fortune, thanks to which he entered the top 100 billionaires in Russia.
• Forbes experts said that Sogaz was overvalued by about three times for the deal.

In 2014, after the annexation of Crimea to Russia, Yuri Kovalchuk was one of the first to come under personal US sanctions as a member of Putin’s inner circle. Kovalchuk, for example, invested in the construction of a medical complex in St. Petersburg for 40 billion rubles - a project of Putin’s supposed eldest daughter Maria Vorontsova.

Very little is known about Tatyana Kovalchuk herself - there is not even a reliable photograph of her.

Context. After the Russian Forbes updated the top 25 richest citizens of Russia, a second female billionaire appeared in it for the first time. In second place behind the wife of ex-Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov Elena Baturina ($1.2 billion) is the founder of the Wildberries online store Tatyana Bakalchuk ($1 billion). She entered the ranking only a year ago.

In addition to Baturina, Bakalchuk and Kovalchuk, the top five richest women in Russia include the ex-wife of the former owner of Uralkali Dmitry Rybolovlev, Elena Rybolovleva ($600 million) and the ex-shareholder of Lebedyansky, now co-owner of the Progress company (Frutonyanya brand) Olga Belyavtseva ($550 million).