The Overseas Wealth of Russian Oligarchs and Politicians

Russian Asset Tracker is an international journalistic project of 25 media outlets initiated by OCCRP and represents the most comprehensive audit of wealth held outside Russia to date. This wealth is associated with some all-powerful Russian oligarchs and officials. Assets in the search engine include real estate, yachts, private jets and company shares. The Bulgarian partner in the project is the Bureau for Investigative Reporting and Data /BIRD.BG/.

The project begins with a list of 35 individuals named last year by imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny as “key aides and beneficiaries of the Kremlin kleptocracy.” These are Roman Abramovich, Denis Bortnikov, Andrei Kostin, Mikhail Murashko, Dmitry Patrushev, Igor Shuvalov, Vladimir Solovyov, Alisher Usmanov, Alexander Bastrikin, Alexander Bortnikov, Konstantin Ernst, Viktor Gavrilov, Dmitry Ivanov, Alexander Kalashnikov, Sergei Kiriyenko, Elena Morozova, Denis Popov, Margarita Simonyan, Igor Yanchuk, Viktor Zolotov, Oleg Deripaska, Alexander Miller, Igor Sechin, Gennady Timchenko, Nikolay Tokarev, Alexander Beglov, Yuri Chaika, Andrey Kartapolov, Pavel Krashennikov, Mikhail Mishustin, Ella Pamfilova, Dmitry Peskov, Sergei Sobyanin, Anton Vaino and Andrei Vorobyov. The revelations about their assets are the first wave in the Russian Asset Tracker project.

In addition, the riches of other prominent politicians and oligarchs who are included in the sanctions lists of the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom are explored and added to the project. In Bulgaria, several expensive real estate properties on the Black Sea coast have been identified so far, which will be published in the second wave of revelations. There are also data on companies of Russians registered in Bulgaria that have no property in Bulgaria but have significant assets in third countries.

So far, we have identified more than 145 assets related to the persons designated by Navalny. Taken together, they are valued at more than $17 billion. The search engine includes only possessions where ownership can be established through documentary evidence and other reliable sources. Evidence of dozens more assets, including valuable aircraft and yachts, totaling $1.4 billion is in the process of being acquired. More than twenty are the assets for which no public information was available so far.

The contribution of the BIRD.BG is not only to the Bulgarian assets of the sanctioned Russians. Our IT team has developed a search engine in the French cadastre that links property ownership with managers, shareholders or final beneficiaries of companies that own real estate.

Thanks to this tool, the luxury possessions associated with Roman Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska, Gennady Timchenko, Dmitry Peskov and Konstantin Ernst on the Cote d’Azur and in Paris were identified and located.

A film crew of the BIRD.BG visited and droned the properties of Russian oligarchs in France and Greece.

“The International Journalistic Project to Investigate Corruption and Organized Crime (OCCRP) has been investigating and exposing Russian assets in the West for 15 years, and therefore we are aware of the ways in which they are hiding. We wanted to contribute to the global effort to vet the most obvious supporters of Vladimir Putin’s autocratic regime by tracking as many assets belonging to these people as possible and putting them together in a verified database for the public to see,” said Drew Sullivan, co-founder and editor-in-chief of OCCRP.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the lists of Russian assets subject to attachment were expanded and updated by both Europe and the United States and the United Kingdom. Several European countries, including France, Italy, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, have proceeded to effective arrests of yachts and planes, and seizure of property and bank accounts. Bulgaria is not currently among the countries where Russian property has been arrested, despite Prime Minister Kiril Petkov’s statement in an interview with Le Monde that the assets of the sanctioned persons in Bulgaria have been identified and European sanctions will be applied.

See the search engine for Russian assets here.

Media involved in the project #RussianAssetTracker: OCCRP, Le Monde, Follow the Money (Netherlands), MANS (Montenegro), Reporter.lu (Luxembourg), The Guardian, Re:Baltica, NDR, De Tijd (Belgium), investigace.cz (Czech Republic), Transparency International UK, Bird.bg, Oštro (Slovenia, Croatia), ICJK (Slovakia), Anti Corruption Data Collective, Irpimedia (Italy), Lighthouse Reports (Netherlands), Inside Story (Greece), Miami Herald (USA), infoLibre (Spain), Delfi Estonia, Siena (Lithuania), profil (Austria), Frontstory.pl (Poland), Tamedia (Switzerland), Swedish Television, iStories.media (Russia).

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Разследващата журналистика е разузнаването на гражданите. BIRD се финансира от дарения. Ние не публикуваме реклами. Не получаваме държавни субсидии. Не разчитаме на грантове. Финансирането чрез малки дарения от читатели е гаранция за нашата независимост. Включете се, за да продължим да разкриваме злоупотреби и да държим отговорни властимащите. Използваме Вашите пари за хонорари на журналистите, командировки, изграждане и поддръжка на нашите информационни системи, такси за фирмени и имотни регистри у нас и по света, придобиване на техника и специално оборудване, осигуряване на нашата безопасност и други важни работни мисии. Важно: Ако дарявате всеки месец това ще ни даде възможност да планираме и организираме нашата работа. Благодарим Ви! Нас ни има, защото Вас Ви има!

This post is also available in: Български (Bulgarian)