Yesterday, TV Rain published an excellent investigation, and thanks to it, you and I have a new acquaintance — a sort of Roldugin No. 2. His name is Pyotr Kolbin. Why Roldugin No. 2? Is he a cellist too? Not at all.
In the 1990s, Pyotr Kolbin worked as a butcher in St. Petersburg, and until yesterday he was completely under the radar — his photograph was published for the first time only yesterday. I call him the new Roldugin because he, too, is one of Putin’s wallets.
Since I’m always asking people to help spread information, I’m ready to do the same myself. I’m happy to help TV Rain, and I recorded a short video about it (don’t forget to subscribe to my channel):
Putin and Kolbin are bound by a close and, most importantly, long-standing friendship. Their parents were friends, and from the age of two they spent summers together at the dacha (country house). In 1969, as teenagers, according to Kolbin’s late father, Petya and Volodya used to go to dances in the neighboring village and got into various fights and scuffles there:
Once “Volodya” was elected president, “Petya’s” fortunes began to rise sharply. In 2005, Kolbin became a shareholder in the famous oil trader Gunvor, owned by Gennady “Gangrene” Timchenko. He then pulled off several more lucrative deals, which earned “Petya” a place on the Forbes list, and a little later, in 2015, a place on the U.S. individual sanctions list.
“Lucrative deal” is almost too flattering to Kolbin’s business skills. As we learned from TV Rain’s report, Kolbin’s source of income is extremely primitive: buy dirt cheap through connections, sell at a huge markup.
That was the case with the company YamalInvest, in which Kolbin held a stake. It supplied Gazprom with pipeline components at prices three times above market rates. Gazprom could have bought directly from the factory, but for some reason it bought from Kolbin instead, who inflated the purchase price.
The Yamal LNG deal is another beautiful scheme. In 2010, Kolbin buys a 25% stake in the company from Gazprombank. He bought it for a laughably low price for a company like that — $90 million. Kommersant reports that it may actually have been just $75 million. And why pay more when the chairman of the selling bank’s board is Miller, another of Putin’s old friends from the mayor’s office?
The deal was so questionable that it had to be approved personally with Putin at a government commission meeting. “Volodya” gives his old dacha friend “Petya” the go-ahead, and just a year and a half later Kolbin sells his stake for $526 million. That comes to $430–450 million in profit in 18 months.
Kolbin also had other companies living off Gazprom contracts, and of course he also traded oil for export. We already know this story; we’ve seen it all somewhere before.
Here’s what people who know Kolbin say about him — and what Kolbin says about himself:
So Kolbin is no investor and no businessman at all — he’s just an ordinary wallet. At first people thought he was Timchenko’s wallet, but it turns out he is a hundred times closer to Putin.
And a wallet is not only where money is put — it’s also where money is taken from. The same goes for Kolbin.
Less than a year ago, Kolbin sold two apartments with a total area of 600 square meters in a luxury residential complex on the Arbat to a certain Anna Zatsepilina. We already know this lady — businessmen Timchenko and Bayevsky (a partner of the Rotenberg brothers) had previously sold apartments to her as well. The new owner of this luxury property is of an advanced age; she already has grown grandchildren and probably great-grandchildren too. Her granddaughter’s name is Alina Kabaeva.