the times | Friday March 18 2022 2GM 11
News
A British banker close to President
Putin has been added to the US sanc-
tions list for his alleged role as part of
Russia’s “financial sector elite”.
Yuriy Soloviev, 51, has been targeted
as part of a crackdown on the financial
backers of the Putin regime which has
helped the president build up a per-
sonal fortune estimated between
$100 billion and $200 billion.
Soloviev worked in the City of
London for 12 years and is an executive
at VTB, a state-controlled Russian bank
that has boasted of investing hundreds
of billions of dollars abroad.
His wife, Galina Ulyutina, is also sub-
ject to sanctions and accused of being
implicated in a “golden passport
scheme” in which investors could ob-
tain citizenship in countries in the
West. She was stripped of her Bulgarian
citizenship in 2019.
Soloviev, who has both Russian and
UK citizenship, had lived in a
£1.3 million home in Notting Hill, west
London, and a £2 million home in
City banker added to sanctions list
David Brown owns three cars, a trailer and an 800 sq
ft apartment. He has no assets recorded
abroad. Unofficially, the 69-year-old is
reported to own “Putin’s Palace”, an
Italianate mansion on the Black Sea
coast near Gelendzhik estimated to
have cost more than $1 billion.
The EU has imposed sanctions on a
series of Russian oligarchs including
three said to have been involved in fi-
nancing the “palace complex... which
is widely considered to be personally
used by President Putin”.
The oligarchs are Igor Sechin, 71,
chief executive of Rosneft, the Russian
state oil company; Nikolay Tokarev, 71,
chief executive of Transneft, another
major Russian oil and gas company;
and Alexander Ponomarenko, 57,
chairman of Sheremetyevo inter-
national airport in Moscow.
A $100 million superyacht, Graceful,
allegedly owned by Putin, suddenly left
a shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, re-
cently before repairs were completed,
to avoid sanctions, it was reported. The
270ft yacht features an indoor
swimming pool which converts to a
dance floor. Svetlana Krivonogikh, 46,
a woman alleged to have been in a rela-
tionship with Putin, paid $4.1 million for
an apartment in Monaco, according to
leaked financial papers. She is reported
to have assets estimated at $100 million.
Putin’s former wife Lyudmila, 63, is
linked to the purchase by her new hus-
band of a €7 million art-deco villa called
Reverie in Biarritz in southern France.
Sergei Roldugin, 70, a cellist with
close ties to Putin, received more than
$8 million a year, according to leaked
documents from a Swiss bank. The EU
describes him as “part of Putin’s net-
work financial scheme”.
The EU claims he owns at least five
offshore entities. He is suspected of
“shuffling at least $2 billion through
banks and offshore companies as a part
of Putin’s hidden financial network”.
Bill Browder, a London-based finan-
cier and critic of Putin, told the US Sen-
ate in 2017 that the president was “one
of the wealthiest men in the world”,
with assets totalling up to $200 billion.
Dirty money undermines our diplomatic
clout, Emma Duncan, page 28Westminster near the Houses of Parlia-
ment. He was an executive director in
the emerging markets department at
Lehman Brothers investment bank in
London from 1996 to 2002. After re-
ceiving an MBA from the London Busi-
ness School in 2002 he became head of
global markets in Russia and former
Soviet Union states for Deutsche Bank
in London until 2006.
Soloviev was a director of London-
based VTB Capital from 2008 to 2010
and is chairman of the parent com-
pany’s management board. VTB Capi-
tal has been suspended from trading on
the London Stock Exchange after the
UK’s imposition of sanctions.
VTB’s chairman, Andrey Kostin, 65,
is a member of the supreme council of
United Russia, the country’s biggest
political party. Dmitry Grigorenko, 43,
Russia’s deputy prime minister, is chair-
man of the bank’s supervisory council.
Maxim Reshetnikov, 42, the economic
development minister, is also a member
of the council.
Putin’s presidential salary is about
£105,000 and official records show heAbramovich
‘invested $1.3bn
with US firms’
David Charter WashingtonPressure is growing on the US to sanc-
tion Roman Abramovich after claims
he secretly ploughed at least $1.3 billion
into American investment companies.
Investigators at State Street bank in
Boston traced cash funnelled through
offshore companies into the US from
2001 to 2016 and identified the owner as
Abramovich, BuzzFeed News reported.
The oligarch, 55, has had assets fro-
zen in the UK, the EU, Canada and Aus-
tralia but moves by the US have been
“conspicuous by their absence” said
members of Congress who wrote to the
White House urging it to act.
“We request that Abramovich be
sanctioned as a matter of urgency,”
wrote members of Congress including
Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Demo-
crat who was an assistant secretary of
state for democracy, human rights and
labour under President Obama. “His
blood money helps fuel Putin’s unpro-
voked and illegal war against Ukraine.”
The State Street investigators report-
ed Abramovich’s investments in a series
of “suspicious activity reports” to the
US Treasury Department in 2015 and
2016, BuzzFeed reported. State Street
has a stake in BuzzFeed. They detailed
how the corporate structures of ten
companies holding the $1.3 billion had
frequently changed, alleging that this
could be to “conceal ownership”.
State Street’s reports about the com-
panies in the British Virgin Islands and
Cyprus came to light in a leak of docu-
ments from FinCEN, the US Treasury’s
financial crimes enforcement network.
State Street investigators reported
Abramovich, his offshore companies, a
US management company and an Aus-
trian bank to the Treasury for suspi-
cious activity in December 2015. Since
receiving the information the US gov-
ernment has not acted and the State
Street investigation remained secret.
Abramovich is understood to be on
the radar of KleptoCapture, a task force
formed under the US Justice Depart-
ment that aims to freeze the assets of ol-
igarchs close to President Putin.
A representative for Abramovich was
contacted by The Times. The US Trea-
sury said its policy was not to comment
on any possible sanctions, investiga-
tions or actions. State Street was con-
tacted for comment.NewsNews
HENRY NICHOLLS/REUTERSHarrods sold
Russian vodka
Harrods sold expensive Russian
vodka “under the counter” after
pulling stock from shelves. Last
week the department store in
Knightsbridge removed Beluga
vodka from display as pressure
was put on retailers to stop selling
Russian products following
President Putin’s invasion of
Ukraine. It replaced the drink with
vodkas from other countries
including Poland, Ukraine and
Belgium. It emerged yesterday
that staff sold Beluga vodka, which
retails at £100 for 1.5 litres, from
behind their kiosk where the
bottles were stored. Beluga is still
being sold openly in Selfridges, a
rival department store, on
London’s Oxford Street. Harrods,
which is owned by Qatar’s
sovereign wealth fund, said:
“While Beluga vodka was removed
from sale, remaining stock was
held in storage ahead of being
moved off site. After an inquiry by
a customer, it was mistakenly
brought out of stock and given to
the customer. This was an error
and should not have happened. All
remaining stock has now been
moved to an off-site location and
is not available for sale.”Schwarzenegger’s plea
Arnold Schwarzenegger has urged
President Putin to end his war,
praising the strength of “heroic”
Russians rising up against a
Kremlin crackdown on freedom.
The Hollywood actor, 74, released
a nine-minute video on social
media telling Russians that they
have been fed “propaganda and
disinformation” and may not
know of the “human catastrophe”
unfolding in Ukraine.Finns get nuclear plant
The first nuclear power plant to
open in Europe in nearly 15 years
started test production in Finland
this week. The Olkiluoto 3 plant
is 13 years behind schedule and
is meant to reduce the country’s
reliance on Russian gas as well
as helping to lower energy prices.
It is Finland’s first nuclear plant
in 40 years and an increase to
full output is planned by August.
The plant is operated by TVO.Polish railways halted
Railways were halted across
Poland for much of yesterday,
disrupting an important means of
transport for Ukrainian refugees,
after what the authorities said was
a traffic control system failure.
Trains reported problems at about
4am and more than 500 miles of
track were affected. Crews finished
repairs by 6pm. Almost two million
Ukrainians have fled to Poland
since the invasion began.A figure for our time
Lego-style petrol bombs and a
President Zelensky are being sold
by Citizen Brick in aid of Ukraineukraine in brief