A little-known Russian businessman from St Petersburg
has provided properties to multiple women who share one common theme: President
Vladimir Putin.
One of the women is Putin's younger daughter; two are
close relatives of a woman Russian media have reported to be Putin's
girlfriend – though the president has strongly denied any relationship. And a
fourth is a student who posed for a calendar celebrating the president's
birthday. All of the properties are in upmarket gated complexes in and
around Moscow.
Public records show Grigory Baevsky, a 47-year-old
business associate of an old friend of Putin, sold or transferred the
properties to three of the women. In the other case, Putin's younger child,
Katerina Tikhonova, used the address of a flat owned by Baevsky as her own when
registering a new company.
The connections add to the picture of individuals in
Putin's wider circle and the way these people blur the lines between public and
private business.
Last year, Reuters reported that Putin's daughter
Tikhonova, who holds a senior position at Moscow State University, is
personally advised by some of Putin's oldest friends. She is also married to
Kirill Shamalov, son of billionaire Nikolai Shamalov, an associate of Putin's.
Baevsky has worked as an aide to another close friend
of Putin, his judo partner, Arkady Rotenberg.
Public records show that companies co-owned by Baevsky
have benefited from state construction contracts worth at least 6 billion
rubles ($89 million) in the past two years.
Baevsky has previously attracted little attention. His
connection to Putin was uncovered by investigative journalist Roman Anin who
was conducting research for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting
Project (OCCRP), an East European media network.
Baevsky is a former property manager for a state
company in St Petersburg. In 2006, he founded a dacha cooperative near the city
with Arkady Rotenberg and Rotenberg's brother Boris, public records show.
Baevsky went into business with the Rotenbergs in
2011, working until 2014 as a director at Arkady Rotenberg's investment
vehicle, the Russian Holding company, according to corporate filings. Public
records also show he was declared as an 'affiliated person' of SMP Bank, which
is majority-owned by the brothers.
Arkady Rotenberg was among the first Russian
businessmen to be put under Western visa bans and asset freezes over Moscow's
seizure of Crimea. According to the U.S. Treasury, Rotenberg and his brother
Boris have won billions of dollars from projects awarded to them by Putin. The
brothers have denied getting help from the Russian leader for their businesses.
Reuters sent questions about the property deals to
Baevsky's last known home address, and to businesses owned by him, but received
no response.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters: "We
know nothing about who this (Baevsky) is. The President is also not acquainted
with him."
Separately, Peskov told reporters on a conference call
that the Kremlin was facing a series of queries from international media about
Putin's relationship with his childhood friends and their receipt of state
contracts. He said he would not comment because the Kremlin believes the
articles are part of a politically-motivated campaign to discredit Putin.
A spokesman for Rotenberg said the businessman had no
information about Baevsky's property deals. Asked if Baevsky was acting on
behalf of Rotenberg in his property dealings, or if they were related to
Rotenberg's friendship with Putin, Rotenberg's spokesman said: "Of course
not. Such declarations are absurd." The spokesman said Baevsky "does
not work" for any Arkady Rotenberg company or holding.
STUPID QUESTIONS?
The role of Baevsky emerged when the OCCRP – which is
funded by the Open Society Institute, USAID, and the Swiss government, among
others – discovered that a woman called Katerina Tikhonova declared her home to
be an apartment owned by the businessman. Tikhonova, as Reuters reported last
year, is Putin's 29-year-old daughter. In November 2012, she used the
apartment's address when she filed papers to register herself as co-founder and
owner of a private company called Interdisciplinary Initiatives Foundation in
Natural Sciences and Humanities.
Reuters has reviewed the Tikhonova company
registration papers, and public documents confirm the flat is owned by Baevsky.
It is not known whether Tikhonova lived at the flat or paid any rent there. The
flat is around 6.5 km (4 miles) from Putin's official residence.
Tikhonova did not respond to questions about her use
of the address.
In addition to the Tikhonova deal, public records show
that in 2013 Baevsky transferred ownership of a home and plot of land in a pine
forest at Uspenskoe in the Moscow region to Anna Zatsepilina. The
neighborhood is one of the most expensive in Russia.
Zatsepilina is the 81-year-old grandmother of Alina
Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast and public supporter of Putin. In 2008 the
Russian newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent named Kabaeva as Putin's girlfriend.
Putin has rejected the assertion and Reuters could not independently confirm
it. The newspaper closed soon after the article appeared.
Zatsepilina could not be reached for comment. The
Uspenskoe home sits within a gated community and is protected by security
guards, who denied access to Reuters and declined to help contact any of its
residents.
In an earlier deal, in 2009, public records show that
Baevsky transferred ownership of an apartment in Veresaeva Street in the Moscow
suburbs to Leysan Kabaeva. She is the sister of Alina, the former gymnast.
Asked about how she came to acquire the property from
Baevsky, a spokeswoman for a company owned and run by Leysan Kabaeva declined
to comment.
Asked about Alina Kabaeva's relationship with Putin
and about Baevsky's dealings with her relatives, a spokeswoman for the former
gymnast said: "They are all adults, answer to themselves, and live
their own lives. Alina Maratnova Kabaeva is not connected to a single one of
these questions."
Last year Baevsky transferred another apartment in a
smart gated complex in Moscow to Alisa Kharcheva, a 23-year-old former
international relations student. The sale price was not disclosed.
In 2010, a group of students and would-be students
from Moscow State University created a calendar to celebrate Putin's birthday.
The calendar featured pictures of themselves; Kharcheva starred on the month of
April. Two years later, Kharcheva posed with a cat and a photograph of the
president in a personal blog post entitled "Pussy for Putin," which
extolled the president's leadership. The blog post also featured her entry
from the 2010 calendar.
Asked how she came to buy a flat from Baevsky,
Kharcheva said the transaction was a normal one conducted through a real estate
agency. She said she did not know the businessman.
"We bought this flat with a mortgage. And we pay
that mortgage to this day." Asked if any connection to Putin had helped
her obtain the flat from Baevsky, she replied: "No one has ever asked me
such stupid questions."
(Additional reporting by Anthony Carter and Winnie
Agbonlahor; Edited by Richard Woods and Simon Robinson)
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