The mission to sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to prove difficult as he keeps his assets and full wealth hidden behind complex schemes, but experts believe that he could rival the net worth of the wealthiest businessmen.
"Putin’s total wealth remains a mystery even to U.S. intelligence agencies," according to Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of "Putin's Playbook."
"It’s extremely hard to nail down the exact number with any accuracy, because it’s essentially a cobweb of secret assets, offshore deals and accounts, some belonging to members of his family and of his very small inner circle, spread out among various banks, properties, across the globe," Koffler told Fox Business.
"His properties include palaces, aircraft, helicopters, yachts, cars, and luxury items," she added. "Ultimately, Putin’s wealth probably rivals Elon Musk and similar Western businessmen."
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The recently deceased Alexei Navalny, Putin’s greatest domestic political rival, had fought to expose the Russian leader’s absurd wealth and national corruption in a bid to "mobilize" the civilian population to push back against him, financial expert Ilya Zaslavsky claimed in an interview with The New York Post.
Putin hides his wealth in real estate — domestically and in the West — and offshore tax havens. The non-existent paper trail for Putin’s assets makes it difficult to fully appreciate the wealth the Russian leader has amassed since his humble roots as an intelligence officer.
Various testimonies from economists and experts have estimated Putin’s total net worth to sit between $70 billion and $200 billion.
Official disclosures list Putin’s annual income at around $140,000, and that he lives in an 800-square-foot apartment in St. Petersburg, owning only two Soviet-era cars — an off-road truck and car trailer, TIME reported. The infamous Panama Papers and other leaked financial documents suggest a more complex picture.
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Former Hermitage Capital Management CEO Bill Browder in 2017 told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Russia has a "well-known reputation for corruption" that Putin originally stepped in to clean up after coming to power in 2000.
That all changed after Putin arrested Russia’s richest man in 2003: Putin gained the support and loyalty of the other oligarchs — along with "50 percent" of their earnings, which helped make him "the biggest oligarch in Russia," according to Browder.
The most recent testimony, from Swedish economist and author Anders Aslund in 2022, estimated that Putin has assets valued between $100 billion and $130 billion. His estimate is derived from the wealth of Putin’s oligarch confidants, who have between $500 million and $2 billion each.
"It’s not unusual for top government officials in Russia — especially those close to Putin — to achieve extraordinary wealth," Koffler said. "There’s a whole informal system or playbook established in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union to redistribute wealth among the Russian government apparatchiks and the oligarchs, who are usually one and the same."
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"Krysha (literally ‘roof’ in Russian) is the form of protection guaranteed by the Kremlin to those businessmen, who typically are former intelligence operatives who provide kick-backs to their guardians in the government," she explained.
Koffler said that even when businessmen break the law, they face no prosecution — unless they "don’t play the game" and refuse to "pay up." She stressed that this is a simplified explanation of a "complex and convoluted scheme."
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This scheme has yielded a laundry list of the most luxurious assets a person could dream of owning, including a $100 million mega-yacht and a 190,000 square-foot Black Sea palace allegedly valued at $1.4 billion.
The yacht, nicknamed "Graceful," is 270 feet long and hosts its own gym, saloon, spa and library, along with a 49-foot indoor pool that can be converted into a dance floor, Business Insider reported.
Putin also maintains a nearly-750 acre compound of fenced-in forest land requisitioned for his compound in Karelia, just 18 miles from the border of NATO member Finland, where Putin enjoys a residence complete with a brewery, tearoom, bathhouse, fishery and farm and private access to a waterfall and lake.
U.S. officials believe they have connected Putin to St. Petersburg-based Bank Rossiya, which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has pegged as "Putin’s personal cashbox."
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Trying to identify and target Putin’s assets has proven virtually impossible thanks to complex distribution across a network of shell companies, real estate and other people’s accounts, according to Time Magazine.
For example, close Putin ally Yuri Kovalchuk, a hotelier rumored to be the Russian president’s "personal banker," headed up the construction of the Karelia compound and poses as the de facto official owner for many of the operations and assets related to its construction, according to East2West.
