Questions about Putin the Kremlin would prefer not to face

After investigations into Putin and his oligarch friends, the Kremlin faced the media.

After months spent looking for financial links between President Vladimir Putin and his oligarch friends, The Times had some questions for the Kremlin.

Some were general: did Putin really believe, as he had stated, that Western sanctions were actually helping the Russian economy? Did he really have a personal fortune of $US40 billion ($54bn)?

Others were specific: had Putin, for instance, ever had investments in Gunvor, an oil trading group, as is asserted by the US Treasury department?

There were 21 questions in all, mainly concerning Putin’s relationship with those who occupied the most influential and lucrative jobs in Russia. The President’s personal wealth has long proved a subject of epic opacity. According to the Kremlin, he earned $190,000 last year from the taxpayer. The properties he owns, officially, include a flat measuring 77sq m, a 17sq m garage, and a plot of land of about one-third of an acre, all in Russia.

We emailed our questions to Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, on May 13.

Two days later, one of Peskov’s colleagues telephoned to ask if we wanted a response from Putin’s own mouth or that of his spokesman. His spokesman would be fine, we said.

Then a strange thing happened. On May 22, Peskov addressed a pool of reporters accredited to the Kremlin. He said Putin was personally surprised and disappointed to have received questions from two “esteemed” media outlets, one British and one American. He did not name The Times. We have no knowledge of questions posed by an American organisation.

He did, however, proceed to read out our questions, including a claim that Putin received a 4 per cent holding in a company called Sovex for helping to register it in St Petersburg when he was deputy mayor in 1995.

A court in New York is considering a case brought by a Russian businessman alleging he was defrauded of his rightful ownership of Sovex.

Peskov said that the answer to all the questions, bar one, was no. He wanted to share them with the Russian media because he was “jarred by their categorical tone and interrogation-type style”, according to an account of the briefing filed by Interfax news agency.

“These requests are a rather eloquent confirmation as to how uncomfortable Putin remains to those who are lacking a constructive attitude to our country and their ongoing purposeful, quite rude, information attacks, devoid of elegant creativity, on the Russian President,” said Peskov.

Despite the “criminalistic and prosecutorial style of these requests”, the Kremlin would “not hold investigations” into the questions.

Peskov gave more specific answers to two questions. One asked whether Gennady Timchenko, an old friend, had helped Putin to evacuate Anatoly Sobchak, the former mayor of St Petersburg, to France on Timchenko’s private jet in 1996. (Sobchak was under investigation for corruption at the time; he left without passing through passport control.)

Peskov said Sobchak, who had complained of heart trouble, flew by charter plane to Paris. “But it was not Timchenko’s private jet. Timchenko only helped to charter a special flying cardiac resuscitation unit.”

The other asked if Putin approved a loan of 23 billion roubles in the 1990s to 20th Trest, a construction company, and whether the owners of 20th Trest had given him money for his personal use or helped him to build a dacha.

Peskov, appearing to answer the first question and ignore the second, said: “At that time it might be 23 million but it’s difficult to say.”

Asked how Putin had reacted to the questions, Peskov said the President was “rather surprised by the abundance of slander they are trying to cook”. He added: “Moreover, at such esteemed media outlets, it is a bit surprising.”

THE TIMES