New investigation by ACF on Putin’s ex-wife

Just a few days after the US imposed sanctions on gymnast Alina Kabaeva, who is believed to be Vladimir Putin's mistress, we published an investigation on Putin’s ex-wife. Even though Lyudmila Putina claims to be just a regular housewife, she somehow earns very unhousewife-like amounts of money. And her new husband, an athlete called Artur Ocheretny, turns out to be the owner of several luxury villas and apartments in the West.

In the year 2000, while still being married to Vladimir Putin, Lyudmila became a trustee of the Centre for Russian Language Development, which was later renamed into Centre for the Development of Interpersonal Communication. This foundation was given an old mansion near the Kremlin, as well as the plot of land around it – and later the state went even further and handed it over to the foundation for free use. According to our estimates, the building and the land under it are worth approximately ten billion roubles. In 2009, the mansion lost its status as a historic building protected by state; after that, two more floors were added to the original building, which means that the heritage site was literally vandalised.

Why did they do it? To make more money. Lyudmila Putina earns more than 250 million roubles every year by renting it out. The Centre for the Development of Interpersonal Communication rents all the premises to “Meridian”, a company owned by Lyudmila, and then “Meridian” subleases it to other companies. The largest tenants are VTB and Sberbank, which are both companies with direct ties to the state and Putin’s government.

Apart from that, the Centre for the Development of Interpersonal Communication receives hundreds of millions of roubles every year for providing personal development training courses of dubious quality. This foundation is also heavily sponsored by the Moscow City government, Gazprombank and Severstal, which is owned by Aleksei Mordashov, an oligarch close to Putin. Finally, the director of this foundation is none other than Artur Ocheretny, Lyudmila’s new husband.

Just a few months after the divorce of Lyudmila and Vladimir Putin, Artur Ocheretny became the owner of a villa in the French resort of Biarritz, and a bit later bought an apartment in Davos, Switzerland. Both of those places are quite important to Lyudmila: according to her letters, she made great memories there. But that isn’t all: we found out that the happy couple owned even more real estate: they also have two luxury apartments in Malaga, Spain, that no one knew of previously. Basically, what it means is that Lyudmila came into her new marriage with quite a dowry bestowed upon her by Vladimir Putin – and financed by the money stolen from the Russian people.

Just a little tidbit to share: the very same mansion that Putin gave his wife as a gift was earlier owned by the grandfather of Leo Tolstoy. Several scenes from War and Peace take part in that building. How ironic: Russian authorities are very vocal in their displeasure with the so-called “cancellation” of Russian culture, but mercilessly destroy this very culture just to make a quick buck.

As of now, the only country that imposed sanctions on Lyudmila Putina is the UK. Not a single country imposed sanctions on Artur Ocheretny: he is still actively participating in international competitions, just not under the Russian flag.

We hope that this investigation will kickstart the process of putting both Lyudmila and her husband under sanctions. They clearly deserve it at least just as much as Putin’s daughters that already made it to the sanctions list. All people in Putin’s circle should learn one simple lesson: that there are consequences of accepting money from him, and that villas and yachts bought with that money could be seized. The quicker they come to this realisation, the faster the regime’s foundation will start to rattle.