Putin's "Billions" In Hidden Wealth De-Fang US, EU Financial Sanctions

"Before 2016, the personal wealth of the Russian leader was shrouded in mystery, but a series of leaks from inside the law firms and banks that dominate "offshore" finance - including the 2016 Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers released in October 2021 have offered some clues that the president's vast wealth stretches well beyond Russia's borders. The only problem is that, since most of this "hidden wealth" is officially registered in the names of others (often close friends and even former lovers of the Russian president whom he has known for years) it makes it difficult for US sanctions to truly be effective.

Officially, Putin earns about $140K per year (much less now given the moves in the ruble in FX markets), and owns a modest apartment in Moscow. But several  assets believed to belong to the Russian president, including a yacht known as "Putin's yacht" and a massive, billion-dollar dacha on the Black Sea known as "Putin's palace", have now been widely publicized.

There's also the question of several luxury properties, including a $4.1M apartment in Monaco, and a palatial villa in the South of France. The apartment in Monaco is registered to a woman suspected of being an ex-lover of Putin, while the French villa is registered to his ex-wife, Lyudmilla Putin, and her new husband.

There's also the question of Sergei Roldugin, a cellist and longtime friend of Putin's (their friendship reportedly dates back to their childhoods in St. Petersburg), who was identified by the Panama Papers as holding tens of millions of dollars in assets supposedly on Putin's behalf.

But perhaps the largest ever recorded was shared by Bill Browder, a western financier who has become a prominent Putin critic (most notorious for sheparding the "Magnitsky Act" to fruition in the US), has testified before the US Congress that Putin's hidden wealth is more than $200 billion, making Putin the wealthiest man in the world, even moreso than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos." ZH