Sergei Roldugin

Sergei Pavlovich Roldugin (Russian: Сергей Павлович Ролдугин, born September 28, 1951 Sakhalin[1][2]) is a Russian cellist and businessman, based in St Petersburg. He is a close friend of Vladimir Putin.

In this Eastern Slavic name, the patronymic is Pavlovich and the family name is Roldugin.
Sergei Roldugin
Roldugin in Palmyra, May 2016
Born
Sergei Pavlovich Roldugin

(1951-09-28) September 28, 1951
Sakhalin, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
NationalityRussian
OccupationCellist and businessman
Known forPanama Papers
Spouse(s)Irina Nikitina
Elena Mirtova

Early life

Roldugin was born in Sakhalin where his dad, a military man, was stationed. While he was young, his parents moved to Riga, Latvia, where he studied and became fluent in Latvian at Latvian School.[3] He has relatives in Riga where his parents are buried.[3]

Career

He was awarded the 1980 Prague Spring International Music Festival Competition's 3rd prize. In 1984 Roldugin was appointed the Kirov Opera Theatre Orchestra's principal cellist. He subsequently held a professorship at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he served as the institution's rector from 2002-05. The Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra's Guest Conductor, he has been named a People's Artist of Russia.

Since 1990s, Roldugin has been engaged in the oil and media business.[4] He is known for having initiated the renovation of the decayed Alexis Palace as a music school and for having performed at the ruins of Palmyra a month after the site was reconquered from the ISIL.[5] Roldugin plays the Stuart cello made by Antonio Stradivari in 1732; the instrument cost him $12 million.[6]

Close to Putin

Sergei Roldugin is a godfather to Maria Putina (b. 1985), Vladimir Putin's older daughter.[7][8][9] He has been friends with Putin since the late 1970s.[7][10] In March 2016 The Guardian described Roldugin as "Putin's best friend". It was Roldugin who introduced Putin to Lyudmila, his future wife.[11]

In connection with the Panama Papers, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project described Roldugin as the "secret caretaker" of Putin's hidden wealth through his participation in transactions with Mossack Fonseca and Dietrich, Baumgartner & Partner, who are Swiss lawyers in Zurich, to various offshore companies including Panama registered International Media Overseas, British Virgin Islands (BVI) registered Sonnette Overseas, Sunbarn Ltd and Sandalwood Continental, and the BVI registered Ove Financial Corp.[8][12][13][14][15][16][17]

Wealth

Roldugin has maintained close financial ties with the Cyprus-based RCB Bank which is a subsidiary of VTB Bank, Yuri Kovalchuk of Rossiya Bank, Oleg Gordin who owns Sandalwood Continental as the legal representative of Roldugin through Roldugin's sole ownership of International Media Overseas and is a St Petersburg businessman with Rossiya Bank, Aleksander Plekhov who owns Sunbarn Ltd as the legal representative of Roldugin through Roldugin's sole ownership of Sonnette Overseas and is a St Petersburg businessman with Rossiya Bank, Yevgeny Malov who is a partner of Gennady Timchenko and one of the founders of the oil trader Gunvor, the Rotenberg family (Arkady, Igor, and Boris), Suleiman Kerimov, Alexei Mordashov, and other Russian oligarchs.[13][14][18][19]

Established by Mikhail Lesin, Video International (VI) is one of Russia's largest television advertising firms which Roldugin has a large stake through the Cyprus-based Med Media Network which is solely owned by Roldugin's International Media Overseas.[10][14]

In March 2019, Roldugin was implicated in a nearly $9 billion global money laundering scheme allegedly constructed by Sberbank CIB (formerly known as "Troika Dialog"), in which Roldugin received $69 million.[20] The money laundering scheme is known as ŪkioLeaks[21] or the Troika Laundromat.[22][23]

2016 United States elections hacking

According to Andrei Soldatov, the 3 April 2016 release of the Panama Papers, which is known in Russia as OffshoreGate (Russian: "Офшоргейта"), and, in particular, information about Roldugin's nearly $2 billion in assets, which are closely associated with Vladimir Putin's assets, directly led to a quid pro quo or a tit for tat with Putin ordering hacks of Hillary Clinton, her party and others to support Donald Trump's 2016 Presidential campaign and his party.[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2] Dmitri Alperovitch, one of the founders of CrowdStrike, stated, "They ([hackers]) cast a wide net without knowing in advance what the benefit might be," and Andrei Soldatov said, "It was a series of tactical operations. At each moment, the people who were doing this [hacking] were filled with excitement over how well it was going, and that success pushed them to go even further."[27]

Personal life

Roldugin's first spouse was Irina Nikitina, President of the Musical Olympus Foundation.[35][36][37][38] His current spouse is Elena Mirtova (opera singer, soprano).[39]

Yevgeny Roldugin

Yevgeny Roldugin, Segei Roldugin's older brother, attended the KGB training school with Putin in the 1970s and later returned to the Latvian SSR and worked as KGB.[11][12][40][lower-alpha 3] On 15 November 2020, Yevgeny Roldugin died from COVID-19 in Riga, Latvia.[40] In Riga, Yevgeny had been head of Gazprom in Latvia since 6 April 2009 when Gazprom opened its Latvian office.[40][44][45] Previously, he was at Latvijas Gaze as head of the industrial safety and labor protection department.[44]

Notes
  1. In November 2014, Russians hacked into the United States Democratic Party's computer system, but United States authorities took no action.[31] During April 2016, Vladimir Putin's close inner circle talked to persons close to Donald Trump. They had been talking to each other beginning in 2015.[28][29][30]
  2. The 3 April 2016 release date of the Offshoregate was just before Vladimir Putin's largest annual press conference, the All-Russian Popular Front (ONF) "Truth and Justice" in St. Petersburg (Russian: Медиа-форум Общероссийского народного фронта (ОНФ) «Правда и справедливость» в Санкт-Петербурге) which was held 4–7 April 2016.[32] During this press conference, Vladimir Putin stated that Julian Assange's WikiLeaks told him that George Soros and his Open Society Foundation had provided funding for Offshoregate and, on behalf of the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov stated that Offshoregate was intended to denigrate (Russian: "вброс") "Putin and Russia personally".[33][34]
  3. In the Latvian KGB branch with Yevgeny Roldugin, Yuri Simonkov (also spelled Yuri Simonenkov) owned the business Skonto with other KGB officials; Multibank until 2008, the bank was under sanctions in the United States in 2005; a joint business until 2016 with Sergei Nosov who is a close advisor to Vladimir Putin; and, through Simonenkov's wife, he owns Sigmen, a Latvian rails provider with factories through Evraz and ArcelorMittal in Russia and Spain, that since February 2019 provides nearly all the rails for Lithuanian Railways, LG (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai) which is building the Rail Baltica railways network in the Baltic to connect with European railway providers in the European Union.[41][42][43]

References
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  2. "Сергей Ролдугин". Mariinsky.ru. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  3. Высоцкая, Светлана (Vysotskaya, Svetlana) (18 January 2016). "Виолончелист и дирижер Сергей Ролдугин" [Cellist and conductor Sergei Roldugin]. Созидая Жезнь. Archived from the original on 19 April 2016. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  4. Сурначева, Елизавета (Surnacheva, Elizaveta); Галактионова, Александра (Galaktionova, Alexandra); Сурганова, Елизавета (Surganova, Elizaveta); Пузырев, Денис (Puzyrev, Denis); Полякова, Юлия (Polyakova, Julia); Дзядко, Тимофей (Dzyadko, Timofey); Михайлова, Анастасия (Mikhailova, Anastasia); Баданин, Роман (Badanin, Roman) (29 March 2016). "Информационный вброс: что известно про друга президента Сергея Ролдугина. Шесть фактов о жизни и бизнесе известного музыканта, который, по сведениям Кремля, стоит в центре новой информационной атаки на российского лидера" [Information stuffing: what is known about the friend of the president Sergey Roldugin. Six facts about the life and business of a famous musician who, according to the Kremlin, is at the center of a new information attack on the Russian leader]. RBK (in Russian). Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  5. Kramer, Andrew E.; Higgins, Andrew (5 May 2016). "In Syria, Russia Plays Bach Where ISIS Executed 25". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  6. "Аукционный дом удалил информацию о виолончели, купленной Ролдугиным". Радио Свобода (Radio Svoboda). 22 April 2016. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  7. Orth, Maureen (1 October 2000). "Russia's Dark Master: Vladimir Putin, Russia's new president, won the admiration of his people for his iron grasp on power. Then came the Kursk submarine crisis. Will the Kremlin's mystery man be able to rein in a massively corrupt oligarchy, or will he wake the ghost of Stalin?". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on 24 March 2015. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
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  13. "Золото партитуры: Почему Сергей Ролдугин, близкий друг Владимира Путина, может считаться не только музыкантом-виртуозом, но и владельцем теневой офшорной империи с активами в миллиарды долларов" [Gold scores: Why Sergey Roldugin, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, can be considered not only a virtuoso musician, but also the owner of a shadowy offshore empire with assets of billions of dollars]. Novaya Gazeta (in Russian). 3 April 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  14. Anin, Roman; Shmagun, Olesya; Velikovsky, Dmitry (3 April 2016). "The Secret Caretaker - The Panama Papers". OCCRP. Retrieved 7 April 2016.
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  18. "Виртуозная спекуляция. Продолжение "Панамского досье": Как офшоры заработали сотни миллионов рублей на торговле акциями банка "Россия", а государство — потеряло миллиарды" [Virtuoso speculation. Continuation of the “Panama dossier”: How offshore companies earned hundreds of millions of rubles on trading in shares of the bank “Russia”, and the state lost billions]. Novaya Gazeta (in Russian). 28 May 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
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  20. O'Donnell, Tim (4 March 2019). "One of Putin's closest friends was just implicated in a massive money laundering scheme". TheWeek.com. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
  21. Černiauskas, Šarūnas (4 March 2019). "Ūkio bankas – milijardinės pinigų plovimo sistemos centre" [Ūkio bankas is at the center of the billion-dollar money laundering system]. 15min (in Lithuanian). Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  22. Clerix, Kristof (4 March 2019). "België, het doorgeefluik voor 10 miljard euro van 'witwasbank' Ukio Bankas" [Belgium, the channel for 10 billion euros from 'money laundering bank' Ukio Bankas]. Knack (in Dutch). Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  23. Kleinnijenhuis, Jan; Kuijpers, Karlijn (4 March 2019). "Troika laundromat. Bijna een miljard euro stroomde vanuit Litouwen naar Nederland" [Troika laundromat. Nearly a billion euros flowed from Lithuania to the Netherlands]. Trouw (in Dutch). Retrieved 22 January 2020.
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  26. ""Вашего покорного слуги там нет": Путин прокомментировал "Панамские документы"" ["Your humble servant is not there": Putin commented on the "Panama Papers"]. newsru.com (in Russian). 7 April 2016. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
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  34. "Песков объявил расследование об офшорах атакой на Путина и Россию, которую подготовили бывшие представители Госдепа и ЦРУ" [Peskov declared the offshore investigation an attack on Putin and Russia, which was prepared by former representatives of the State Department and the CIA]. newsru.com (in Russian). 4 April 2016. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
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  40. "От Covid-19 умер Евгений Ролдугин. За ним в Ригу присылали "летающий госпиталь" МЧС" [Eugene Roldugin died from Covid-19. He was followed to Riga by the "flying hospital" of the Ministry of Emergency Situations]. rus.DELFI.lv website (in Russian). 15 November 2020. Archived from the original on 16 November 2020. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
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  45. Петрова, Алла (Petrova, Alla) (6 April 2009). "Газпром открыл в Риге латвийское представительство" [Gazprom opened a Latvian representative office in Riga]. The Baltic Course (in Russian). Retrieved 20 November 2020.
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