Arkadi Rotenberg, a Russian businessman, and oligarch, also as a private friend of President Putin, assured today that he owns the palace on the shores of the Black Sea that the opposition leader Alexei Navalny has linked to the leader of Russia. Now it’ll not be a secret. I’m the beneficiary. There was a rather complex structure, there have been many creditors. I managed to become the beneficiary several years ago, he said in an interview published by the Mash channel on his Telegram account.
On the 19th, each day after Navalny was sent to preventive detention after returning to Russia, his team published an investigation into the “most expensive palace within the world”, located on the outskirts of Gelendzhik, between the town of Sochi and therefore Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014. Navalny accuses Putin of receiving that palace from his friends as a part of the “largest bribe in history” that amounts to quite 100 billion rubles (about 1.4 billion dollars).
The palace, with a neighborhood of 17,692 square meters, would occupy 68 hectares, to which must be added quite 7,000 hectares belonging to the Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB). the large mansion has, consistent with the investigation, an inside pool, a gym, a helipad, an underground ice-skating rink, a church, a greenhouse, a theater, a tunnel to the ocean, and immense vineyards. Navalny’s team assures within the video of the investigation – which has already received quite 103 million visits – that behind the property there are front men.The Kremlin has denied that the palace belongs to Putin, as has the Russian president himself, and tries to ridicule the investigation.
Yesterday, journalists from the state channel Rossia 1 and therefore the Mash channel showed the building from outside and inside, with images of the place supposedly fully works and ensuring that a hotel is being inbuilt the place. Rotenberg, Putin’s former judo partner and sanctioned by the US and therefore the European Union (EU) for his role within the Ukrainian conflict (he is additionally one among the builders of the Crimean bridge) today followed the road of the official argument. He told Mash that an aparthotel has been under construction “for quite a year” on the location which he hopes’ll be completed in another two.
Meanwhile, taking advantage of the outrage over the investigation and Navalny’s imprisonment, the opposition team has involved another massive protest across Russia tomorrow. The authorities have tried to behead her in recent days with searches and arrests of the most allies of the opposition, like his number two Liubovo Sóbol and his doctor or his brother Oleg, who is sentenced to 2 months of confinement.
This Saturday the safety forces also detained the editor-in-chief of the opposition media Mediazona, Sergei Smirnov. the inside Ministry has already warned that it’ll not hesitate to classify Sunday’s unauthorized protests as “mass riots” and have made it clear that those that participate may face prison terms of between 3 and eight years. In Moscow, the Mayor’s Office has recommended the closure of outlets and restaurants within the center, also as seven metro stations. Meanwhile, Russian human rights defender Tatiana Moskalkova has urged the police and therefore the Russian Guard to not resort to violence and special equipment tomorrow. Last week, when quite 110,000 citizens clothed for protests in additional than 100 Russian cities, nearly 4,000 people were arrested across the country, often with excessive use of force by security forces
