Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Add this one -- Lake of money

Yury Kovalchuk and Putin turned their attention to Bank Rossiya in 1991, when its largest shareholder was still the Leningrad Communist Party.

At that time, Putin was deputy mayor and the person responsible for attracting foreign investors and forming public-private partnerships.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Putin signed the documents bestowing ownership of the bank on a newly formed joint venture created by Kovalchuk and others, according to Dawisha, author of “Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?”

“Putin’s function was to make legal what would otherwise have been illegal,” Dawisha said.

Kovalchuk became majority shareholder and board chair of this new version of Bank Rossiya. When the U.S. government sanctioned him in 2014, it described Kovalchuk as one of Putin’s “cashiers.”

In the mid-1990s, Kovalchuk and a few other shareholders of the bank owned dachas a few hours outside of town on the eastern shore of the Komsomolskoye Lake. Putin found the money to buy a property. The men formed a co-operative society to benefit the eight residents of their shared gated community, which was called called Ozero (the Lake).

The Mossack Fonseca files show that the communal principles that defined Ozero continued with Bank Rossiya and its participants more than a decade later.

That's just a little snip --much more plus photos and all kinds of things ..I had already read that he was the richest man in the world .. I did post it but no comment and I can't remember where I read it .. maybe nyt.. not sure .... anyway.. FASCINATING! the Rich and the Famous killers and thieves.... Never could stand that man..

https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160403-putin-russia-offshore-network.html