I deliberately chose not to write about this during the week, on the day the piece came out. I thought it called for careful, thoughtful reading over the weekend.
Two stories:
Reuters describes the wedding of Kirill Shamalov and Katerina Tikhonova, leaving no doubt even for the general public that Tikhonova is Vladimir Putin’s daughter and that she is married to the son of his old St. Petersburg friend, Nikolai Shamalov.
RBC published a major investigation, "How the Shamalov Family Builds Its Business," which, among other things, describes an astonishing deal through which the happy 33-year-old groom, Kirill Shamalov, became the owner of a 17% stake in Sibur, the country’s largest petrochemical company.
The purchase scheme looks absolutely ingenious: a) Gazprombank issues an enormous loan—73 billion rubles (about $1.1 billion at the time)—to Shamalov’s shell company, Yauza-12. The loan terms are completely opaque and suspicious; b) that borrowed money is used to buy 17% of Sibur; c) the interest on the loan is paid off using the dividends distributed by Sibur.
"Why, on terms like that, I’d buy Sibur for myself too!" any reader would exclaim at this point.
True enough, but one should not forget the difference between any ordinary reader and Kirill Shamalov. The latter is Putin’s son-in-law, which is why Gazprombank gives him such astonishing loans; the reader is not Putin’s son-in-law, and so can go look up mortgage rates and cry.
Why am I drawing so much attention to these two articles? Because I often hear people say that there is no proof of Putin’s personal involvement in corruption, only that of his inner circle. Well, here is your proof: a $2 billion wedding gift for his daughter.
People