The Cleaning Lady

Before becoming the deed holder of a property on Kamenny Island, Svetlana Krivonogikh spent her childhood in a communal apartment on Gorokhovaya Street. She grew up surrounded by the criminal underworld of Saint Petersburg. Her neighbor down the hall, the brother of a friend, had ties to organized crime , as reported by one of Krivonogikh’s neighbors and as is consistent with archives of the St. Petersburg Organized Crime Control Department × and across the courtyard sat the headquarters of the security holding company Baltic Export. This company was created in the “wild 90s” by the protagonist of a previous article Roman Tsepov, who is closely connected to the Petersburg criminal scene. It’s unlikely that Tsepov himself lived in the complex, but as our story will later reveal, he couldn’t help but cross paths with Krivonogikh.

As is befitting of a communal apartment complex, the once grand pre-revolution facade gives way to squalid living conditions within. The ancient and well-worn door to the building where Krivonogikh used to live is still adorned with five doorbells—one for each family, who all shared a single kitchen and bathroom. Krivonogikh’s parents moved to Leningrad from the provinces: her mother from the Yaroslavl Oblast, and her father from Saratov. Before the birth of their daughter in 1975, they lived in a different neighborhood, but then received permission to relocate to the communal complex on Gorokhovaya, or as it was then called, Dzerzhinsky Street , as found in an archive database of the residents of Leningrad × . Her mother worked as a painter for a team renovating apartments , according to neighbors × . As for her father, one neighbor recalls only that he had indeed existed, that he drank, and that he had died rather young.

The Investor

There is, naturally, no information to be found about Krivonogikh’s benefactor in public documents. However, these documents do reveal the source of her sudden windfall. In the early 2000s, the new graduate obtained stocks in several companies at once, among which the rapidly growing Bank Rossiya stood out.

She began working at the bank in 2001 at the latest , as evidenced by documents procured by Proekt × , and then became a shareholder. In 2001, she registered a company under the playful name “Relax, ” to which she later listed her share in the bank. Public documents are unclear on when exactly Relax obtained this piece of Russia: the first mention of a shareholder with 3.6% only appears in bank documents in 2007. As of the beginning of 2019, the Krivonogikhs had slightly less—about 2.8%, or about 800 million rubles, based on the market value of the bank , or almost 200 million, based on the amount of dividends. How many shares the Krivonogikh’s now own is unknown: the Central Bank decided not to disclose the full structure of the share capital of banks that have come under the sanctions, and Russia itself only publically reports shareholders with a share of more than 5%. However, judging by Relax’s financial reports for 2019, these shares are still registered under the company × .

The Mistress of the Mountain

At the end of January 2011, the Igora Ski Resort in the northern part of the Leningrad Oblast temporarily shut down one of its slopes. Rumor quickly spread among the resort-goers: “Putin is on the mountain.” As he made his way down the slope, the then prime minister was flanked by three guards mimicking his every maneuver, one of which very nearly fell over from his enthusiasm , reports Moskovsky Komsomolets in Petersburg × . Putin truly loved the Igor Resort, located 40 km from the Ozero Dacha Cooperative. He attended the opening of the complex in early 2006 , writes Forbes × , and it was here that his daughter Katerina and the son of his friend Kirill Shamalov celebrated their wedding in 2013 , reports Reuters × .

This resort, so beloved by the president, is owned by the very same Svetlana Krivonogikh. She currently owns 75% of the company Ozon, which manages Igor, as well as owning the land underneath it and the trademark , before this, the ownership structure of the resort changed several times, the Krivonogikh family was periodically listed among the official owners and then removed × . Yuri Kovalchuk and his wife now hold only 25% of the shares, although his bank was the key investor in the resort, whose revenue in 2019 exceeded half a billion rubles.

With support from Rossiya, Krivonogikh came to own another venue—Leningrad Center, located within the Tauride Palace and Gardens in St. Petersburg. In Soviet times, Leningrad Center was home to a movie theater with a panoramic screen, but it was shut down in the early 2000s. The building was later bought up by Kovalchuk, and the tedious reconstruction process began: at first they planned to create a sports center with a go-kart track, then a French-style cabaret, but by 2014, it had become a cultural space where exhibitions and events are held, including the Golden Feather award ceremony for journalistic excellence.

By this time, Krivonogikh had become the main owner of the Leningrad Center with 75% of the shares , this is her share in the company Profit, which owns the building. The leisure center is managed by another body, registered to someone from the SOGAZ subsidiary × . As was the case with the Igor Resort, a quarter of the stocks remained with Kovalchuk. However, they did not completely abandon the idea of ​​building a cabaret: for example, this month, the play Love Sick, hailed as a candid and provocative piece of theater, is being performed at the center.

The Friend

On the evening of January 4, 1999, a flight departed from Pulkovo on its way to Moscow. At the head of the plane, in seats 5A and 5B, sat Putin, then the director of the Federal Security Service, and his work acquaintance from Smolny Viktor Zolotov. In front of them, in seat 1B, sat Svetlana Krivonogikh , as evidenced by the Sirena ticket reservation system archive; The Insider also wrote on the topic and referenced a similar database × . Coincidence or not, Krivonogikh bought her ticket seven and eight minutes before Zolotov and Putin, respectively.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Krivonogikh could often be found on flights between St. Petersburg and Moscow , according to data from the Sirena system archive × . Her constant companion was a girl named Dina Tsilevich! , for example, on April 4, 1999, they flew together from the capital to St. Petersburg. They also took the same flight together on November 7, 2000, January 12, 2001, and April 12, 2002*). This is beyond the realm of coincidence, they were clearly friends, bought tickets together and sat side by side. On at least two occasions, they were accompanied by Zolotov.

What was the purpose of these flights? Who were they visiting? It is known that in the late 90s and early 2000s, Tsilevich, the subject of the first part of our investigation, was quite close to Zolotov. This was an interesting period in the life of the man who currently heads the Russian Guard. At first, he may have worked for Roman Tsepov at the very same Baltic Escort , according to two Proekt sources familiar with Tsepov × , and as soon as Putin became the head of state, Zolotov moved to Moscow to head the presidential guard. It was at this moment that the lives of Krivonogikh and Tsilevich became closely intertwined: they flew to Moscow and back together, they both became business owners, and almost simultaneously, they both became mothers. Dina Tsilevich confirmed to Proekt that she has known Krivonogikh for quite some time.

Two sources who know the pair of friends explained the reason why Krivonogikh’sf life took a sudden upswing: she had been close friends with Putin. Their relationship began back in the 90s, before Putin was elected president, and continued into the early 2000s. Somewhere near the end of the last decade, according to Proekt sources, they most likely broke ties. When asked about Krivonogikh, two of Putin’s acquaintances from the 90s reacted strongly—not denying that they had information about her, but blatantly refusing to discuss it, saying, “Maybe I heard something, but I’m not going to talk about it, ” and “I will not comment on that topic.”

The reason for such secretiveness might lie in the fact that Krivonogikh has a daughter who was born in 2003, at the same time when Putin was campaigning for the first election of his career. In copies of documents obtained by Proekt, Elizaveta Krivonogikh’s father is not indicated, and only her patronymic is known: Vladimirovna.

For the past several years, Elizaveta has lived under a different surname and maintains several social media accounts with this alias. Judging by the pictures procured by Proekt, she bears a phenomenal resemblance to the Russian president. Professor Hassan Ugail, Director of the Center for Visual Computing at the University of Bradford in the UK, has come to the same conclusion. According to him, Putin and the younger Krivonogikh share a facial similarity of 70.44% , bear in mind that if this figure exceeds 75%, it means that the pictures are of the same person × . “From this information, we can draw the conclusion that they may be related, ” the professor states in the conclusion made at the behest of our editor’s office.

A fragment from the conclusion of the director of the Center for Visual Analysis of Bradford University, Hassan Ugail, on the similarity between Putin and the daughter of Krivonogikh

The Ever-Popular

The Krivonogikhs purchased the enormous apartment on Kamenny island in 2004 from a company that, naturally, had connections to Rossiya Bank . The developer of the elite complex was the private corporation BSK-Saint Petersburg, co-owned by Yuri Kovalchuk and Viktor Myachin, another member of the Ozero cooperative. They, along with other company shareholders, are among those who sold the apartment × .

Vladimir Litvinenko, permanent rector of Saint Petersburg Mining University, under whose leadership Putin defended his dissertation, also helped the Krivonogikhs find other housing. The university has several dormitories on Vasilievsky Island, including on the unusually named street, Shkipersky Channel. However, students are not the only ones living in this masterpiece of Stalinist architecture. At the beginning of the 2000s, a company associated with the Mining University became the owner of a number of premises, and then sold them as apartments , the courtyard entrance leading to the apartments is separate from the one leading to the dormitory, affirms Proekt’s correspondent × . Some of them went to the professors, and others to less-than-ordinary citizens such as the family of Roman Tsepov or the mother of Svetlana Krivonogikh.

A little later, Oleg Rudnov, the now deceased owner of the Baltic Media Group, became another benefactor. At one time, he had worked as the director of the St. Petersburg Channel Five, where he became close to Putin during Anatoly Sobchak’s election campaign in 1996 , says an acquaintance of Rudnov × . The Rudnov family did then, and continues to carry out delicate assignments for the president—Rudnov restored the grave of Putin’s grandfather in the Moscow region , explains Rudnov’s acquaintance × , bought the president’s family home in the Tver region , continues Rudnov’s friend and reports Russian news source Sobosednik × , and Rudnov’s son owns a mansion near Vyborg, where the president has supposedly vacationed , reports news source Dozhd × .

In 2006, Rudnov Sr. bought a 200-square-meter apartment and non-residential premises in the most famous spot in St. Petersburg—at the very head of Bolshaya Morskaya Street, next to the Palace Square exit. Both properties went to Krivonogikh in around 2008, after which she opened the Oil Canvas restaurant in the non-residential property , it is difficult to find the exact date of this transition, as between Rudynov and Krivonogikh, ownership was passed to two nameless companies in Cyprus, but as of 2017, the owners of both offshore companies were the very same Krivonogikhs × .