- A new video from Alexei Navalny’s FBK foundation accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of building a private palace with $ 1 billion raised through corruption.
- The FBK said Putin financed the 17,691-square-meter palace on the Black Sea through a bribe scheme to gain access.
- Navalny was arrested when he arrived in Russia on Sunday. He was returning home after an assassination attempt last August.
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Alexei Navalny, the archcritic of Vladimir Putin, accused the Russian president of building a secret $ 1 billion coastal palace financed through a bribe scheme to gain access.
The Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation, or FBK, released an extensive report and a nearly two-hour video starring Navalny on Tuesday, describing a palace built near Gelendzhik, on the Black Sea.
The FBK said its report was based on interviews with contractors, projects and publicly accessible documents. The Kremlin called the report “pure nonsense”.
Navalny was arrested when he arrived in Russia on Sunday. He was returning for the first time since he was poisoned in August in an attempt on his life.
Navalny accused Putin of ordering the attack. An investigation by a consortium of journalists found that the attack was carried out by agents of the Russian security agency FSB.
In the video, the FBK said Putin had been secretly building the 17,691 square meter palace since at least 2014.
Watch the full video here. It is in Russian, but it is available with English subtitles.
Russian presidents have an official residence on the Black Sea, called Bocharov Ruchey, near the city of Sochi.
But the Gelendzhik palace is owned by Putin, said the FBK.
“This is not a country house. It is not a country house. It is not a residence. It is an entire city, or rather a kingdom,” said Navalny in the video.
Citing blueprints, official documents and aerial photographs, the FBK said the palace and gardens had impregnable fences, a port, a church, a no-fly zone, a border checkpoint, a wine cellar, a theater, a gym, a swimming pool, an “aquadisco” and an ice hockey rink.
“It is like a separate state within Russia,” said Navalny. “And in this state there is a single and irreplaceable czar: Putin.”
Moscow in December.
Aleksey Nikolskyi / AP
The FBK said the palace cost 100 billion rubles, or about $ 1.3 billion, and was financed through a corruption scheme in which Putin’s inner circle paid the president for access and influence.
Work on the palace was conducted in absolute secrecy, said the FBK.
“Thousands of people who work there are forbidden to bring even a simple camera phone,” said the report.
He added: “Incoming cars are inspected at various checkpoints with the help of mirrors and video cameras. The trunk and glove compartments are searched.”
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A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, rejected Navalny’s report on Wednesday. “These statements are absolutely unfounded. This is pure nonsense and a compilation, and there is nothing else there,” Peskov told reporters, according to the state news agency Interfax.
He said the palace “had nothing to do with the president or the Kremlin”, adding, “So we have no desire to be interested in that.”
Navalny and his anti-corruption foundation have been a stumbling block for Putin for years.
Russian authorities have regularly tried – with some success – to close the foundation and accused Navalny of fraud in an attempt to silence him.