Putin’s speech about how his friend Roldugin spent ALL HIS MONEY on buying musical instruments for Russia was so heart-rending that it actually made us want to look for traces of those purchases.
The man gives away everything. He’d give you the shirt off his back. And here we are, idiots, fixating on his $2 billion in offshore accounts, failing to understand that the money went to rare violins.
It’s actually not that hard to trace something like this. There aren’t many expensive musical instruments to begin with; they all have serial numbers, they’re entered into catalogs, and every purchase is recorded.
ACF’s (Anti-Corruption Foundation’s) St. Petersburg branch immediately looked into the Mariinsky Theatre’s procurement records and found that yes, Stradivarius violins, Guarneri violins, and similar items had indeed been purchased:
A total of 928 million rubles was spent. But all of it was purchased with budget funds. There is no sign here of any money from the noble Sergey Roldugin.
There is also a state collection of musical instruments, which likewise says nothing about either Sergey Roldugin or anonymous donors of rare pieces.
We are, of course, neither art experts nor collectors, but no publicly available information points to any noble undertaking by Sergey Roldugin either.
As Vedomosti rightly points out, the total volume of musical instrument imports into Russia does not even reach $50 million a year. In other words, that is 40 times less than the amount of bribes and kickbacks transferred to Roldugin’s offshore accounts.
Which means he could have financed the import of literally all musical instruments into Russia for 40 years.
You know what... it looks like Putin is lying. Brazenly and shamelessly.
P.S. If you know anything about old man Roldugin, write to us anonymously via Black Box.