September 2007. A motley crowd of people gathered at the representative office of Krasnodar Krai in Moscow: Economic Development Minister German Gref, Kuban Governor Alexander Tkachev, and Ahmed Bilalov, a major businessman and member of the State Duma. Unexpectedly, the phone rang. The presidential administration was looking for Gref: he had been summoned for an urgent conversation with Vladimir Putin. Gref returned an hour later, but he was no longer a minister.

Since that fall, Gref had been the head of the country’s largest financial company – the state-owned Sberbank, or “Sber” as it is now called.

Gref’s Savings Bank

By the time he was appointed minister in May 2000, Gref was well acquainted with Putin and was a junior member of his St. Petersburg entourage. Back in the ’90s, Gref came to work at the St. Petersburg Committee on State Property Management, where he became acquainted with many public and non-public masters of life in Russia’s second capital. Some of these acquaintances, such as Dmitry Kozak, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, or Vladislav Reznik, a State Duma deputy suspected of having ties to the criminal world, will remain Gref’s close associates to this day and will appear later in our story.

Having lost his ministry, Gref was not out of a job for long. The bank was managed since the Yeltsin era by President Andrei Kazmin and his first deputy Alla Alyoshkina, who, without much fear of conflict of interest, also cohabitated in a civil marriage. Putin fired them and as if in jest sent them to reform the Russian Post, which was as sluggish as the Soviet Sberbank (in the end, the reform fell through).

This is not to say that Sberbank under Gref’s predecessors was unsuccessful. With help from the state and its essentially monopolistic position in servicing people’s deposits, Sberbank under Kazmin was increasing its profits by 20-40% annually, and the value of its shares was going up. Gref got a promising asset, albeit with outdated infrastructure and Soviet-era attitude to clients.

On joining Sberbank, Gref announced that he would strengthen its “role as an institution that preserves and increases the savings of citizens”. Its social function has always been paramount for Sberbank – the state-owned bank – 50% plus one share of the state bank is owned by the Russian government - × now keeps almost 17 trillion rubles’ worth of Russians’ money , according to the latest available statements of Sber × . In 15 years under Gref, the bank has really changed – at least in terms of customer focus and technological advances, all of the people interviewed by The Project acknowledge the obvious successes of the current management.

But how effectively does the country’s main bank manage the citizens’ money entrusted to it?

In 2016, the Gulfstream G650 business jet was one of the most expensive in the world. At that time, Sberbank bought one in addition to the more “modest” G550 the bank already had – their registration numbers are RA-10203 and RA-10204 according to the list of foreign aircraft recorded in the Russian registry of civil aircraft studied by The Project × . Nowadays, two such jets would cost about $110 million or about 7.5 billion rubles the Gulfstream G550 costs $57 million and the G650 model costs about $65 million × .

Having studied the news about Gref’s movements and the data of Icarus Flights service, which tracks jet flights, The Project can claim with certainty that the head of Sber is using the planes himself For example, in 9 out of 10 cases of Gref’s official trips within Russia and the CIS in 2016-2022 that were examined, one of the two planes invariably followed the same route × . However, Gref’s jets fly not only to Sberbank’s depositors in remote regions of Russia, but also to exotic resorts. Just before the war in Ukraine, one of Gref’s jets flew to Ethiopia, and another went to Antigua and Barbuda and the Dominican Republic according to Icarus Flights × . On the most recent Caribbean tour, Sber’s plane flew routinely from one island to another between January 31 and February 10, 2022. Sberbank has no branches in Ethiopia or the Caribbean islands, nor does it have any publicly known operations there Sber did not respond to Project’s inquiry about the purpose of the exotic tours × .

In some cases, it is evident that it was Gref who flew on the bank’s plane on tourist trips. On the morning of July 23, 2018, Sberbank’s business jet landed in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, where the famous resort town of Baden-Baden is located. On that day, Gref was seen there at the traditional Festspielhaus Summer Festival, where the Mariinsky Theater performed under the direction of Valery Gergiev, a St. Petersburg friend of the head of Sberbank (CНОСКА – this concert, in particular, was covered by RIA Novosti). If we study the flights of Gref’s business jets, it would seem that Baden-Baden is where the largest number of Sber depositors live – they have flown there at least 25 times in the last six years according to Icarus data from the end of 2016 to 2021 × . However, there are no Sber branches there. We can argue that Baden is Gref’s favorite place to vacation, not to work (more on that below).

Flying to resorts on a corporate jet, while egregious, is not the largest example of controversial spending by the main state bank.

Back in 2010, Sberbank got involved in the construction of the Mriya premium resort in Crimea, which includes a five-star hotel and medical and SPA centers designed by the famous British architect Norman Foster. It would seem that a hotel is not the most logical business for a state bank, especially considering the fact that Mriya has been generating losses ever since its opening For instance, between 2017 and 2021, the hotel made a cumulative loss of over 4 billion rubles. However, if we count it together with Horizon-Service, which produces wine and cheese for Mriya, this loss will increase by another 2 billion rubles × . Gref justified the project by the fact that he wanted to create an “exemplary boarding house” where the bank’s employees would rest this is what he said in 2010 × . A night in a single room at Mriya costs at least 18 thousand rubles, and although Sber employees can expect discounts, the majority of regular employees cannot afford to take independent vacations at the resort – one night will cost half of the monthly salary of an ordinary bank teller.

In 2014, Russia took over Crimea, and Mriya was rewritten from its Ukrainian legal entity to the state bank-owned spacer firms Auktsion and Garant-SV , whose owners are now hidden under Russian sanctions avoidance laws × . Studying their activities provides a chance to better understand how Sber’s third-party business is organized.

The director of Auktsion is Ernest Bakhshetsyan, a former head of Far Eastern customs, who had previously been imprisoned in a smuggling case. Judging by the registry of legal entities, Bakhshetsyan is a super ambitious manager. He also managed the Cypriot offshore Kiparisiana Investment Ltd, which owned until the end of 2015, then the golf club was taken over by the previously mentioned OOO Auktsion, and then by another Sberbank subsidiary, OOO Barus × the oldest golf club in Moscow, in the high-end area on Mosfilmovskaya Street. The club was purchased by Sber structures in 2012 allegedly for $180 million such is the estimation by Bilalov who is aware of the circumstances of the purchase × .

If in Japan the Minister of Finance has to apologize for the fact that he only purchased a subscription to a golf club, then German Gref can afford to buy an entire golf club. The photo shows the Moscow golf club owned by Sber. Photo: club website

Why does the state bank need a golf club which also generates continuous losses 2021 showed a loss of 36 million rubles, 2020 – 43,2 million rubles, 2019 – 38,3 million rubles × ? As Bilalov, then head of the Golf Association of Russia, recalls, Gref valued this club in a green area of Moscow as a place for secluded meetings – business and personal. Under Gref, the club was rebuilt, adding a personal elevator and an office for the head of Sber as described by Bilalov, who had been to the club more than once × .

Perhaps to make it easier for Sber’s executives to travel to and from the golf course in a car-loaded Moscow, Auktsion bought an American Bell 429 helicopter in 2019.

It cost the straw company 738 million rubles , according to its accounts × . Curiously, the entire proceeds of the selling company, most likely created specifically for this one transaction – this is indicated by the fact that it was established in 2018 and liquidated in 2020 × – was only 615 million rubles (which roughly corresponds to the current price of the helicopter $9.5 million × . It is unknown where the remaining 100 million rubles ended up. This selling company ООО Evap × is also of interest because its owner and director Alexei Sukharev × is a security guard who used to work at the very golf club owned by Sber , according to the leaked databases × .

Gref’s Fund

In 2011 Bilalov met with Gref again. Bilalov’s business – construction of a ski resort on Krasnaya Polyana – was already experiencing problems, including due to the global economic crisis. Bilalov recalls that a strange proposal followed at the meeting: “I was to transfer half of my controlling stake to Androsov for one dollar. Of course, I refused and asked, ‘How is this supposed to work? In front of everybody? Let Androsov buy these shares at least at nominal price'”. Bilalov was not saved by this refusal – by 2015 his business was in the full possession of Sberbank, and he himself was forced to emigrate under the threat of criminal proceedings . In 2011, Bilalov eventually agreed to Gref’s offer to transfer a controlling stake in his Sochi projects to Sberbank, but in 2013, amid a conflict with Gref that turned into criticism of Bilalov by Vladimir Putin, he was forced to flee the country, and in 2015 his companies responsible for the Olympic construction came under full ownership of Sberbank Capital, a Sberbank subsidiary that will be discussed later in this investigation × .

The buyer that Gref offered Bilalov was Kirill Androsov, former deputy head of the Apparatus of the Government of Russia. Three of Gref’s acquaintances and colleagues call Androsov the most trusted confidant of the head of Sber, while Bilalov refers to him as “Gref’s wallet”. Further investigation showed that this characterization was not far from the truth.

Gref and Androsov met back in the 90s, when they worked together in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office. When Gref became minister, Androsov took a job as his deputy. In 2008, there were rumors that Androsov would soon join his patron at Sberbank, but he ended up unexpectedly leaving the government for nowhere. More precisely, he entered private business, which he had never been in before. That business – the Luxembourg investment fund Altera Capital – immediately became incredibly successful.

The fund created by the former official quickly accumulated assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. These were mostly Russian businesses: from aluminum production to cybersecurity services. The fund’s total assets in past years ranged from $300 million to almost $500 million – according to the annual accounts of Altera Capital, the fund’s net assets in 2011 were $400 million, in 2012 – almost $500 million, in 2017 – $300 million × .

Where did the former deputy minister get so much money and who entrusted him with his millions? Until recently it was almost impossible to find the answer: formally, the sole owner of Altera Capital was the Swiss insurance company Swiss Life. This is a well-known firm, tracing its history back to the 19th century, so even the reputable auditor of the investment fund, Ernst & Young, had no doubts about this fact . The audited financial report of the fund’s subsidiary Gosforth Enterprises Ltd for 2015 and 2016 claimed that Swiss Life Holding AG was the ultimate controlling party of the fund × . That changed when in 2021 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) got access to leaked documents from Singapore-based trust service provider AsiaCiti as part of the Pandora Papers project. The Project has reviewed previously unpublished documents from this archive, and believes that the man behind Altera Capital, as well as a number of other foundations and trusts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, is none other than German Gref himself.

Altera Capital was headed by two of Gref’s close friends, Androsov and Philip Kindt, a German and Swiss citizen. The latter name is little known, but AsiaCiti documents provide a picture of this man. In one of the emails dated February 21, 2015 × an AsiaCiti employee described how he met with Gref and Kindt, and at that meeting they recalled the story of their acquaintance. In the early 1990s, when Gref was working at the St. Petersburg mayor’s office, he needed someone who knew about insurance. Kindt was working at Munich Re, a German reinsurance company, and probably thanks to his knowledge of the Russian language he was responsible for working with Russia and other CIS countries. Gref and Kindt have remained good friends ever since. When Gref’s nephew Oscar moved to Switzerland in 2014, he lived in Kindt’s house – at Freiestrasse 148B in Zurich, as follows from numerous documents signed by him and Kindt between 2011 and 2018. Oscar Gref also lived in another house for a while – at Cramerstrasse 6 × . Oscar Gref will play a major role later in this story.

Of course, it could be a simple coincidence that Altera Capital is run by two of Gref’s friends. However, further examination of AsiaCiti’s documents casts doubt on that.

It is clear from the leaks that Swiss Life was not in fact the ultimate owner of the Altera fund – the Swiss company helped conceal the true owner with a special life insurance contract for the gigantic sum of $460 million. Behind the insurance company was a trust – The Evolution Trust - × , whose beneficiary was the Russian Evgeny Novitsky According to the life insurance contract, the purchase agreement for Altera, and AsiaCiti internal charts, Novitsky was the beneficiary of Evolution Trust, which owned Pharonic Investments Limited, and the latter owned Evolution Assets Limited, which in turn was the beneficiary of Altera Capital, through an insurance contract with Swiss Life (Luxembourg) S.A.). Novitsky is a former top manager in the company of Gref’s close friend Evgeny Yevtushenkov and the former owner of the Mosmart retail chain, which he acquired with the help of Sberbank during the crisis of 2009. Two of The Project’s interlocutors, who know Novitsky, identified him as a confidant of Gref.

AsiaCiti documents show that its employees have occasionally wondered whether Novitsky could be the real owner of hundreds of millions in offshore assets. The documents made them doubt it: among the materials there is Novitsky’s income statement since 1995, according to which he has only legally earned $15 million. In the end, in 2017 it was decided to re-hide the real owner of Altera – not without help of AsiaCiti it was transferred to another offshore, whose listed beneficiary this time was Androsov himself — Grand Investment Trust × .

This time, the truth might have not been revealed were it not for the authorities of Singapore, where some of the companies of this offshore network operate. They initiated an inspection of AsiaCiti which resulted in a serious fine for the offshore service provider and resulted in an internal investigation. It was then that AsiaCiti employees stumbled upon a surprising document, which is now also at the disposal of The Project. It is a draft of Kirill Androsov’s memorandum of wishes drawn up in the fall of 2017. The testator says that in the event of his death or incapacity, his offshore company, which owns, among other things, the entire Altera Capital fund (! as well as the Lang Capital fund × should almost entirely 80% of it, to be exact × be transferred to another offshore company – Halco Group SA.

What is this unknown Panamanian firm? In short, it is an offshore company owned by the family of German Gref. It turns out that a multimillion-dollar investment fund hidden in foreign jurisdictions has been controlled for many years by the president of the main state bank of Russia.

 Androsov’s will in favor of the Gref family was not an accident or a momentary weakness of the beneficiary of Altera. In the same archive of AsiaCiti documents, there is also the text of the same will, dated already in 2018, as amended – now Gref’s nephew Oscar is directly listed as the heir to the entire business.

Could Gref have officially earned hundreds of millions of dollars? “He would always fight for his bonus,” recalls a former colleague of the banker’s at the Sberbank management. But even after those fights, Gref’s total annual income could not have been more than $15-16 million if we base our calculations on Gref’s tax records previously published by Baza, which he has never refuted × , clearly not enough for the capital stashed away in Asian trusts.

Either because of that investigation in Singapore, or for other reasons, the Luxembourg-based Altera had to be shut down by its owners this happened in August 2019 × . Now its assets have come under the ownership of the Russian legal entity Altera Capital, whose beneficiary is once again Androsov the Russian legal entity was established back in 2016, and the assets previously registered to the Luxembourg fund were re-registered to the Russian fund in 2020-2022 × . By the way, among these assets was the firm ABDevelopment × that owns the ultra-modern Arcus 3 business complex on Leningradsky Prospect in Moscow. Altera headquarters is located here, but not only it. One of the largest tenants of the complex is Sber subsidiary Sberbank Capital, which will have its own place in our investigation. In other words, a state bank pays rent to a firm affiliated with its own president.

However, it is not only the fact that Gref is directly connected to millions of dollars stashed away in offshore jurisdictions that is interesting. The timeline below shows how the president of Sber was building his personal offshore network – the facts below show how low the head of the largest state bank and a longtime acquaintance of Putin was estimating Russia’s prospects.

Gref’s Club

In the first half of 2007, a motley crowd gathered on the Spanish island of Mallorca. Friends and colleagues flocked to MP Vladislav Reznik’s family reunion, including members of the government and presidential administration, among whom were Minister of Economics Gref and Presidential Envoy Kozak. The guests admired Reznik’s collection of expensive paintings and relaxed on his Sasha-I yacht. At the time nobody was embarrassed by the fact that Reznik is a friend and companion of the leader of the Tambov criminal group, Gennady Petrov. It was from him that he got one of his houses on Mallorca and the yacht Sasha-I according to the Spanish court materials × . A year after that holiday, the Spanish police accused Reznik and Petrov of participating in criminal gangs and money laundering, and searched the deputy’s villa, and in 2022 the Sasha-I yacht was seized In 2018, charges against Reznik and some other suspects were dropped due to lack of proof of their involvement in Russian organized crime groups × .

Among Reznik’s friends was another of Gref’s confidants, Ashot Khachaturyants. In 2007, he was deputy director of the FSB Border Guard Service, supervising the State Border program. Khachaturyants’ career is amazing. In the 90s, he was engaged in business and even lived in Argentina for a while, then came Gazprom, then the Ministry of Economics under Gref, after which he was delegated to the FSB for several years. In 2008, Khachaturyants returned to Gref as the head of a Sberbank division, called Sberbank-Capital.

This structure was created as an investment division, but almost immediately turned into a firm to deal with the bank’s bad debts. In 2009 Khachaturyants said his famous phrase: “Why should anyone be afraid of us? We are not raiders,” although the Sberbank subsidiary was being accused of taking over businesses. This may have been caused by the way it operated: businessmen took loans from Sberbank, but against the background of the 2008 and 2014 crises, they were losing clients and counterparties and were unable to service the loan. The bank assigned their debt to Sberbank-Capital, which, in exchange for writing off the debt, offered the borrower to hand over a controlling stake in their company for a nominal fee. If the borrower agreed, Sberbank Capital would bring its own people into the company and start managing it. At the same time, either deliberately or due to inefficiency, things in the company would get worse and worse. The owners would be asked to increase the capital by issuing additional shares, during which the remaining shares of the former owners would be diluted or simply bought out by the bank. If the owners were obstinate, criminal cases were often initiated against them. In both scenarios, the business would eventually be sold to outside investors, to whom Sberbank sometimes even provided a loan for their purchase. The new owners were sometimes connected in one way or another with Gref’s managers.

Such a story happened to Sergey Poimanov, the owner of Pavlovskgranit. In 2008 he borrowed 5 billion rubles from Sberbank to buy out the 47 percent of the company he did not own. The financial crisis soon hit and Poimanov wanted to restructure the debt. The bank agreed, but on the condition that he surrender 51% of the shares to Sberbank-Capital. Poimanov resisted. In response, the bank demanded the entire debt to be paid back immediately, while obstructing Poimanov’s attempts to re-lend elsewhere In this regard, the materials of Poimanov’s U.S. lawsuit contain the plaintiff’s story of how Khachaturyants called Dmitry Ananyev, then owner of Promsvyazbank, with a request not to refinance Pavlovskgranite unless he wants to ruin his relations with Sberbank, something that Ananyev himself later told Poimanov × .

While Poimanov was looking for a solution, Gref’s friend Yuri Zhukov, the owner of National Nonmetallic Company (NNK), a competitor of Pavlovskgranit, got in touch with him. He offered to help with Sberbank, but only if Poimanov would merge Pavlovskgranite into NRK. Zhukov even brought Oleg, son of the head of Sberbank, to the meeting, “as if to confirm his abilities,” Poimanov said in an interview with The Project. Poimanov declined the offer and Sberbank-Capital simply destroyed him.

In 2010, Poimanov’s company was put up for auction, with a preliminary valuation of the asset. The valuation was done for Sberbank by NEO-Center, which concluded that the entire business was worth 3 billion rubles, i.e. much less than even the loan from Sberbank to buy 47% of Poimanov’s company. It is difficult to call this valuation independent: at that time Oleg Gref was co-owner of NEO-Center he owned almost 20% of the company × , and German Gref’s niece Olga Tyschenko also worked at the company according to leaked data on the income of private individuals × .

As a result, the shares of Pavlovskgranit were sold to offshore companies Aletarro Limited and Nisoram Holding Limited. Also involved in the scheme were companies from the British Virgin Islands, Urasay Ltd and Mostra Consulting Ltd × , the ultimate beneficiary of the majority of which according to the US lawsuit filed by Poimanov × was covertly the same Zhukov, a friend of Gref Subsequently, Poimanov’s business was taken over by Zhukov’s National Nonmetallic Company × . As soon as Poimanov went to court in the U.S., a criminal case was opened against him in his homeland on charges of abuse of power, and he was sent to prison. He was released from prison two years ago. “I am fully convinced that Gref, Khachaturyants and Zhukov acted together. With a relatively small loan, they not only took my company away from me, but also left me in debt,” Poimanov summarized in a conversation with The Project.

In February 2020, almost at the same time that Poimanov was released from prison, Khachaturyants left Sberbank and was temporarily put in charge of the Russian Football Premier League. He did not work there for long, though. Khachaturyants spent most of his career working in governmental posts except for the 1990s and his participation in the boards of directors of private companies to which he was delegated by Sberbank × , including a “general’s post” in the FSB as Khachaturyants himself explained in an interview with Vedomosti in 2009 × , which, however, did not prevent him from becoming a super-rich man who loves living and investing abroad and not at home.

Khachaturyants owns two companies in Florence, Italy. One of them Societa’ Agricola Arsenio S.R.L, is partially owned by his relative Arsen × owns olive groves, from the harvest of which it then produces premium oil and sells it to Russia. The second company MOTION AK Hotels S.R.L., fully owned by Ashot Khachaturyants × runs the four-star The J & J Hotel in the historic center of Florence . It is impossible to book a room in this hotel – not a single room is available at any date × .

Gref’s Comfort

Among his friends, Gref is known as “Gena” and is compared to the crocodile of the same name from a Soviet cartoon as claimed by Bilalov × . In person, however, Gref is not always as affable as the character in Eduard Uspensky’s book. Bilalov recalls his meeting with Gref in Dmitry Kozak’s office at the White House in Moscow in 2012: “I said, ‘What will happen if I refuse to participate in this so-called emission of yours?’ At that time, according to Bilalov, Gref had proposed to the latter to issue additional shares of Krasnaya Polyana in order for Sberbank to increase its stake × . And Gref said, ‘Well, we provide various services, we can poison, kill, hire hitmen.'”

Bilalov recorded these words and is now presenting the recording in an American court The Project has examined it × . At that moment, Bilalov recalls, even Kozak was surprised: “Gena, I don’t understand, what do you mean?” “I told you that Sberbank provides various services, so you can contact me if you need such services,” Gref repeated.

Kozak along with oligarch Yevtushenkov and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin are Gref’s closest acquaintances, so close that they even prefer to live together as follows from Bilalov’s words and the facts discovered by The Project × .

It all started back in the noughties, when the head of Sber worked in the government: Evtushenkov regularly invited Gref, Kozak, and Sobyanin to his wellness club in a picturesque spot in Serebryany Bor, on the banks of the Moscow River The Sosnovy Bor wellness club is located at Yevtushenkov’s Medsi clinic × . There you could work out in the gym, go to the bathhouse, get a manicure, and talk privately. At the same time, Evtushenkov came up with a more ambitious plan – for everyone to move in together near this club according to Bilalov, Gref told him about such a plan × . For this purpose, firms connected with Yevtushenkov built four mansions on the 4th Line of Serebryany Bor at 153, 4th Line of Khoroshevsky Serebryany Bor × – for himself, Gref, Kozak and Sobyanin. The new elite owners demolished the old house of the opera singer Sergey Lemeshev, which stood there In 2006 the Moscow Government transferred the house to OAO Mosdachtrest for “more effective management”, the Mayor’s decree of 2009 included the house in the list of property to be privatized and purchased by the companies related to Evtushenkov × .

While the construction was in progress, Gref was likely living in another 500 m2 house on the 3rd Line of Serebryany Bor as claimed by Bilalov. We were unable to confirm this information with a Rosreestr extract: the agency sent an official notice that there are no records of the owners of this property in the Unified State Register, which could also mean that the name of the owner has been concealed by the authorities × .

The fact that Gref loves Serebryany Bor and probably lives there was reported in the noughties by secular media For example, Vslukh.ru wrote in 2005 that Gref, Kozak, Alexei Kudrin, Georgy Poltavchenko, and Dmitry Medvedev are all members of the same sports club in Serebryany Bor. In 2009, Tatler magazine devoted an article to the residents of this place. Gref is not mentioned once in the text, but after saying that there are a couple of beaches in Boroo, including a “gay” one, the artist depicted Gref and his second wife, Jana Gref, sitting on a sandy beach × . Furthermore, Gref’s phone number is recorded by someone he knows as “Gref. Ser. Bor.” this follows from data from the phone number identification application Numbuster × .

The luxury village built by Yevtushenkov is now surrounded by a fence, and the houses are registered to offshore companies, the ultimate beneficiary of which was Sistema, Yevtushenkov’s company According to an extract from the Rosreestr, the houses are owned by one Cypriot and three British Virgin Islands offshore companies – Dexbert Enterprises Limited, Drastrend Ltd, Blakstead Ltd and Promargent Ltd. All these companies belonged to Sistema Management Cyprus LTD this is stated in the company’s 2019 financial statements × . It was owned by Luxembourg-based SFH Invest S.A, which in turn was registered to Sistema Finance S.A, a subsidiary of Sistema. The latter withdrew from SFH Invest in mid-2022, according to The Project’s interlocutor, who managed one of the listed companies × .

Mansions in Serebryany Bor built for Yevtushenkov, Gref, Kozak and Sobyanin.

Bilalov says that in the end the officials decided not to live in the houses built for them by Evtushenkov: “They were probably afraid that if someone found this residence, corruption would be evident.”

However, this didn’t stop Gref from purchasing real estate from another of his acquaintances on another occasion. Away from prying eyes, in Baden-Baden, Germany, the same place where the bank’s business jet flies with enviable regularity, Gref owns an apartment at 35 Sofienstrasse. Bilalov arranged it for Gref. “I had a house there, so I sold him the apartment at such a humane price,” Bilalov says, without mentioning the purchase price.

Extract from the German land registry, verifying the name of the owner of the apartment

The market value of the apartment now is 300-400 thousand euros. This sum is more than affordable for the head of Sber. But, according to Bilalov, Gref needed the apartment in Baden not for a luxurious pastime.

It was a place of secluded recreation for the country’s chief banker – he would go there with friends for May and winter vacations. A local resident and an employee at the nearby Fabergé Museum confirmed that they saw Gref here regularly before the war: the banker once asked for an after-hours tour of the museum for his teacher.

In Russia, Gref eventually settled in a luxurious mansion on Rublyovskoye Highway, in Arkhangelskoye – a four-story with an underground level × house located on the bank of the Moscow River in the territory of the so-called “Kosygin dachas”. The mansion is worth at least 250 million rubles.

Kozak also lives nearby as claimed by his acquaintance × but the house is not officially registered in his name Officially, it belongs to Kirill and Yevgeny Kopylov, two underage grandchildren of Rudolf Kopylov, the former co-owner of NPO Kosmos, but his wife has regularly ordered food to this address according to the Yandex.Food leaked database × . So did their children Varvara Kozak (at least 20 times) and Dmitry Kozak (at least 25 times).