The Daily Beast
Anti-Putin activists: it’s time to sanction the great adult children of oligarchs and cronies
ATTILA KISBENEDEKBack when he was still running the Russian FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, a longtime Putin comrade who now heads the Russian Security Council, referred to himself and his colleagues as representatives of the “new nobility”. “Nobles”, who are about to take over the Kremlin after their parents’ retirement. These princes – some of whom already occupy prominent positions in the government and in the corporate world – are accused of benefiting from their parents’ money, largely stolen from the state, through accounts abroad. They also travel abroad and educate their children in America and Europe, while paying tribute to the leadership of the Kremlin, which portrays the West as an enemy. Anti-corruption activists say that the children of officials and oligarchs who enable Putin’s repressive kleptocracy are effectively being used to evade Western sanctions and should be targets to prevent the Kremlin from future criminal behavior. European Union foreign ministers met in Brussels last week and reportedly decided to add four Russian officials responsible for the imprisonment of Russian Democrat Alexei Navalny to a list of six Russians already sanctioned in connection with Navalny’s poisoning in August 2004. 2020. The Daily Beast reported in January that the Biden administration was also considering imposing a new round of sanctions as part of its own response to the opposition leader’s treatment. On Monday, government officials informed various media outlets that these sanctions were likely to be announced this week. The Biden team is considering new sanctions against Russia for Navalny poisoning and imprisonment. Navalny and his team are advocating the imposition of sanctions on a broader range of Russian oligarchs, who form the backbone of the Putin regime, as well as the children of the henchmen. of Putin. Travel bans related to sanctions and asset freezes for Putin’s siloviki (strong men) proved inconvenient, but some seem happy to stay in Russia and sunbathe on the Black Sea instead of the Mediterranean, as long as they can escape the restrictions. financial institutions transferring their assets to their adult children. After the West imposed sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Crimea, Navalny said: “If the meaning of the sanctions is to exert real pressure on the mafia that has seized power (and that is precisely what is declared), then children would be included … These young children are sailing calmly on their yachts and eating crème brulée in cafes on the streets of European cities. ”Navalny and Vladimir Ashurkov, the executive director of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation, included two princes in a suggested list of sanctions that accompanied a letter that Ashurkov sent to President Biden earlier this year: Denis Bortnikov, son of FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov, and Dmitry Patrushev, on Bortnikov’s predecessor, Nikolai Patrushev, who now heads Putin’s National Security Council. The document states that both children act as “wallets” for their parents’ “illicit earnings”. Ashurkov told the Daily Beast that these two men are deeply corrupt and tall enough within the government structure to be sanctioned for their own rights. He insisted that it was not his role to tell Western governments what to do, but said it would be appropriate to extend sanctions for new siloviki children. “I think it is logical that the immediate family of people involved in human rights abuses and corruption is also banned from Western countries,” he said. There is a precedent in Washington to sanction the children of Putin’s facilitators: Roman Rotenberg, son of Russian billionaire Boris Rotenberg and Roman Igor Rotenberg’s cousin, son of Arkady Rotenberg, were both sanctioned because of their financial ties to their parents. In late 2017, the U.S. Treasury added Artem Chaika, son of Russian Attorney General Yuri Chaika, to those sanctioned by the Magnitsky Global Law. And in April 2018, the Treasury appointed Kirill Shamalov, Putin’s former son-in-law, for sanctions. But these four represent only a fraction of the new generation of the Russian elite that reaps the rewards of corruption and Putin’s repressive regime. American diplomat Steven Pifer, now a member of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, thinks it’s a well-balanced calculation. “Although I am not entirely comfortable targeting family members, it may be time to sanction spouses and children with the main individual,” he told The Daily Beast. “If a Russian oligarch cannot travel, that is one thing. If his wife cannot go on shopping trips in London and the children cannot go to their colleges in the West, that would be a different degree of pressure. ”There is no shortage of potential targets among the Russian princes class. Not surprisingly, Nikolai Patrushev’s two sons graduated from the FSB Academy, which trains its students to become spies against the West. Dmitry Patrushev, 43, is on the target list suggested by Navalny’s organization. He was appointed Minister of Agriculture in 2018 after heading the Russian Agricultural Bank and indebting it deeply and scandalously (close to a billion dollars in 2016). (Despite, or perhaps because of Dmitry’s widely publicized bank failures, the same year Putin personally awarded him the Order of Honor, and the Russian Bankers Association named him the Banker of the Year.) Dmitry’s brother Andrei Patrushev, aged 39, worked for the FSB before becoming adviser to Rosneft president Igor Sechin (one of Putin’s oldest friends in the KGB) in 2006, at the age of 25. The following year, President Putin awarded him the coveted Order of Honor “for his successful work and many years of conscientious work. ”Later, Andrei became a senior employee at Gazprom Neft. He is now a co-owner of a marine geology company, which in 2019 had $ 155 million in annual gross revenue, and serves on the board of the prestigious Russian Association of Arctic Explorers. Patrushev’s two sons own large summer houses by the sea near the infamous Putin palace in Gelendzhik. Viktor Zolotov, who is on the US sanctions list, has known Putin for years and is said to have the deepest confidence of the Russian president. Zolotov heads the powerful Russian National Guard of 300,000 people, which is used to brutally suppress street protests. (In 2018, after Alexei Navalny exposed illegalities in procurement contracts for the National Guard, Zolotov posted a video message in which he challenged Navalny to a duel and promised to make “juicy mincemeat” of him.) Zolotov’s son-in-law, Yuri Chechikhin, 44 , is a partner of oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who gave him a stake in his construction business, which earns several billion rubles a year, including through lucrative government contracts. Zolotov’s son, Roman Zolotov, 40, was educated at the FSB academy and worked at the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), where his father was deputy minister, for several years. He is a co-owner of a Russian company called Quantum Technologies and serves on the boards of several state-owned companies. Roman, who owns a holiday home in Gelendzhik along with the Patrushevs, is also deputy head of the Moscow Department of Sports and Tourism, an actor and film producer. While Roman was still earning a modest salary at MVD, he and his brother-in-law Yuri produced several low-quality Russian films, one of which featured Roman in the cast. Both have mansions outside Moscow valued at more than $ 10 million each. Yuri Chaika, currently a Russian representative in the Caucasus region, was a Russian attorney general from 2006 to 2020 and chaired the Kremlin’s sustained campaign to persecute civil society. During Chaika’s tenure as attorney general, his sons, Artem Chaika, 45, and Igor Chaika, 33, created huge business empires. A January 2020 article in Forbes Russia, based on a previous explosive investigation by Navalny, describes how the two Chaika brothers, beginning with Artem’s illegal seizure of a major shipping company in 2002, each achieved impressive wealth. They have accumulated countless companies – construction, transportation, garbage collection, property development, industrial products and food exports – and through fraudulent auctions, massive government subsidies and uncompetitive state contracts have made them profitable. Meanwhile, his father avoided legal challenges to his dubious business practices. An investigation by Navalny’s FBK revealed that Artem Chaika bought a $ 3 million house near Lake Geneva in 2013 and is residing in Switzerland. Brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg have been friends with Putin since childhood and former judo partners of the Russian president. (Arkady recently came to the rescue of Putin claiming, unconvincingly, that he was the owner of the “Putin palace” exposed by Navalny.) Putin says he knows nothing about the billion-dollar palace that Russia built him since Putin became president in 2000, the duo has become a billionaire, supplying pipelines to state-owned energy company Gazprom and signing exclusive contracts for the Sochi Olympics. In 2014, the EU and the US sanctioned the two brothers as a result of the Crimean invasion. A 2020 United States Senate report accused the Rotenbergs of circumventing financial sanctions by buying expensive art through Barclays Bank, as well as handing over assets to their children. Roman Rotenberg, 39, is the son of Boris Rotenberg. He studied international business in London, is a British citizen and owns a £ 3.3 million home in London’s exclusive Belgravia district. Roman, who is the first vice president of the Russian Hockey Federation, is also the formal owner of many of his father’s companies, including those in Finland, where he and his father Boris have citizenship. Arkady’s son, Igor Rotenberg, 47, has held various positions in the Putin government and is also on the boards of several gas and energy companies. Its net worth was recently estimated at US $ 1.1 billion. These names represent the tip of a large iceberg. Anti-corruption activists believe that Russia’s princes are not just destined to continue the Kremlin’s anti-democratic and corrupt government practices; they must also ensure that the huge gap between those who have and those who do not have in Russia continues to widen. In 2019, ten percent of Russians owned 83 percent of the country’s wealth. Among the major economies in the world, Russia is the country with the most striking material inequality. The Biden government has yet to make an official announcement about the Navalny-related sanctions, although Secretary of State Antony Blinken has virtually attended the Brussels meeting and “welcomed the EU’s decision to impose sanctions against Russia”. In a speech at the State Department on February 4, President Biden asked the Kremlin to release Navalny from prison and emphasized that “we will not hesitate to increase the cost to Russia”. Biden also said that he told President Putin in a phone call that “the days of the United States running ahead of Russia’s aggressive actions – interfering with our elections, cyber attacks, poisoning its citizens – are over”. So perhaps the United States will consider the recommendations of Navalny’s team and include Russian oligarchs – and perhaps some princes – in its sanctions list. Before last week’s meeting in Brussels, Russia warned that it would be “ready to react” to any new EU sanctions. But in reality, there is not much that Russia can do other than to expel a few more diplomats from Moscow or sanction specific Western officials, which would have little impact. In 2014, after being blacklisted in Russia in retaliation for U.S. sanctions, the late Senator John McCain joked: “I think that means my spring break in Siberia is canceled, my Gazprom shares are lost and my account secret bank in Moscow is frozen. ”Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Subscribe now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. To know more.