Brussels: A Russian oligarch who is godfather to Vladimir Putin’s daughter is one of 26 businessmen, officials and military figures who have been added to the EU’s expanding sanctions list.
Sergei Roldugin, 71, the former principal cellist of the Kirov Opera Theatre’s orchestra in the 1980s and godfather to Putin’s eldest daughter, Maria Vorontsova, is among those who it is claimed are threatening the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
He joins a total of 680 individuals and 53 entities whose assets in EU member states are frozen and who are under a travel ban.
The latest listings include oligarchs and businessmen active in the oil, banking and finance sectors, as well as government officials, military figures and media personalities in Russia.
The invasion of Ukraine has prompted a raft of sanctions on Russian individuals, institutions and companies in wide-ranging measures that have helped send the Russian economy into turmoil.
Notably, a number of those targeted are described as being within Putin’s small circle of good friends.
The legal text approved by EU foreign ministers on Monday evening, says: “Mr Roldugin is a businessman with close ties to Vladimir Putin. He is part of Putin’s network financial scheme. He owns at least 5 offshore entities and he keeps his assets at Bank Rossiya (sanctioned by the Union), known in Moscow as ‘Putin’s wallet’.
“According to the investigation of the ICIJ, Mr Roldugin is responsible for ‘shuffling’ at least 2 billion USD through banks and offshore companies as a part of Putin’s hidden financial network.
“He also took part in ‘Troika Laundromat’, and he funnelled billions of USD through the system. Moreover, he received more than 69 million USD through companies within the ‘Troika Laundromat.’”
The Troika laundromat is the name given to a collection of 70 offshore shell companies whose controllers used them to move billions of dollars of private wealth from Russia to the west.
The network is said to have worked as a washing machine: money arrived from multiple sources and was then “spun” between network companies and sometimes between multiple bank accounts belonging to a single company.
Others on the list, include Igor Sechin, 61, the chief executive of Rosneft, the state oil company and one of the world’s largest crude oil producers.
He is described by the EU as “one of Vladimir Putin’s most trusted and closest advisers, as well as his personal friend” who is in contact with him on a daily basis.
“Igor Sechin’s Rosneft was involved in financing the vineyards of the palace complex near Gelendzhik, which is considered to be personally used by President Putin,” the EU text said.
A former KGB colleague of Putin’s, Nikolay Tokarev, 71, who is chief executive of Transneft, a major Russian oil and gas company, is also sanctioned.
Alisher Usmanov, 68, a businessman who operates in the iron ore and steel, media and internet sectors and is said by the EU to be “one of Vladimir Putin’s favourite oligarchs”, is included.
“Mr Usmanov has reportedly fronted for President Putin and solved his business problems,” the EU text said. “According to FinCEN files, he paid $6m to Vladimir Putin’s influential adviser Valentin Yumashev.
“Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former president and prime minister of Russia, benefited from the personal use of luxurious residences controlled by Mr Usmanov.”
Others listed are: Petr Aven, 64, who has been friends with Putin since the 1990s and is among 50 wealthy businessmen who regularly meet the Russian president; Mikhail Fridman, 55, a key shareholder of the Alfa bank which helped Putin’s eldest daughter, Maria, run a charity project, Alfa-Endo; and Dmitri Peskov, 54, who is Putin’s press secretary.
President Vladimir Putin’s eldest daughter Maria Vorontsova took her first steps into the business world as a shareholder of a new firm developing a $634 million medical centre near St. Petersburg, in 2019.
Nomeko, a contraction of the Russian phrase for ‘new medical company,’ was founded in January 2019 and is closely involved in the state-of-the-art medical centre’s development. The centre is located in the Leningrad region and is expected to be equipped with advanced cancer treatment technology.
Nomeko is the 40 billion ruble centre’s managing company. The 200,000-square-meter complex is able to hold 20,000 patients and carry out 10,000 operations a year. It will include an oncology centre, a multidisciplinary clinic, a rehabilitation and sports centre, an educational complex and a nuclear medicine centre.
Little is publicly known about Vorontsova, who has never been officially confirmed as Putin’s daughter. She is most known for her work in medicine and endocrinology.
One of the project’s primary investors, the insurance company Sogaz, is partially owned by Putin’s friend, the banker Yury Kovalchuk. To date, the firm has invested 30 billion rubles ($476 million) in the project, BBC Russia reported.
Vladislav Baranov, the managing director of Sogaz’s subsidiary company SogazMedicine, is one of five shareholders in Nomeko, each of whom holds a 20% stake in the company.