By Gleb Stolyarov
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian businessman Arkady Rotenberg said on Saturday that he owns a huge palace in southern Russia that arrested the Kremlin critic that Alexey Navalny linked to President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny and his anti-corruption foundation published a video in which they claim that the opulent mansion belonged to the Russian leader. The video has been viewed more than 103 million times.
Rotenberg, a former Putin judo sparring who sold his stake in the gas pipeline construction company Stroygazmontazh in 2019 for a sum that RBC’s business put at about 75 billion rubles ($ 990 million) daily, said he bought the palace two years ago.
“Now it will no longer be a secret, I am the beneficiary,” said Rotenberg in a video published by Mash on Telegram. “There was a very complicated installation, there were a lot of creditors and I managed to become the beneficiary.”
He gave no further financial details about the purchase or how it was financed.
Putin has already denied ownership of the palace.
Navalny was detained in custody for 30 days on January 18 for parole violations that he says were forged and could face years in prison. He was arrested after flying back to Moscow from Germany, where he was recovering from nerve agent poisoning last August.
After Navalny’s arrest, thousands of people joined unsanctioned protests across Russia last Saturday to demand that the Kremlin release Navalny from prison.
Navalny’s supporters plan to hold more protests across Russia on Sunday. Authorities said they were illegal and promised to separate them.
Rotenberg was among the blacklisted Russian authorities and business executives from the United States and other Western powers after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014.
Russian police on Saturday arrested Sergey Smirnov, editor-in-chief of the independent media outlet Mediazona, in Moscow on suspicion of participating in the protest in Moscow last weekend, Mediazona said on Saturday.
($ 1 = 75,7500 rubles)
(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Additional reporting by Polina Nikolskaya; Writing by Maxim Rodionov; Editing by David Holmes)