“Unfounded allegations”: the Kremlin on Monday swept aside a vast journalistic investigation claiming that several alleged relatives of President Vladimir Putin had wealth hidden by offshore montages.
“We do not understand how this information can be considered reliable,” commented Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency, at a press conference. “We are simply dealing with a set of completely unfounded allegations (…) When there are serious publications, based on things or referring to serious things, then we will read them with interest”, he said. he continued.
Where are the billions?
This survey, published this Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ, according to the acronym) and entitled Pandora Papers, in reference to the legend of Pandora’s box, mobilized around 600 journalists. According to the ICIJ, Svetlana Krivonogikh, presented by Russian media as an ex-mistress of Vladimir Putin, in 2003 acquired an apartment for four million dollars in Monaco via offshore accounts.
In November 2020, the Russian investigation site Proekt affirmed that this woman had had an affair with Vladimir Poutine in the 1990s and early 2000s. During these years she would have accumulated a colossal fortune. According to this publication, the couple even had a daughter, born in 2003 and named Elizaveta. The Kremlin had previously denied Proekt’s allegations, with Dmitry Peskov calling them in November 2020 “provocations” and low-end journalism.
Suspicious relatives
Last July, the investigative media was declared “undesirable” by the Russian Ministry of Justice, banning its activities on pain of criminal penalties. In recent months, several Russian investigative media having investigated the relatives of Vladimir Poutine, a highly sensitive subject in Russia, have been banned or classified as “foreign agents”, a status which greatly complicates their operation.
According to the ICIJ investigation, an alleged childhood friend of the president, Pyotr Kolbine, is linked to a juicy offshore assembly involving the oligarch Gennady Timchenko, also close to the Russian head of state. The detractors of Vladimir Putin see in these personalities potential figureheads for the Russian president.