Ludmila Putin's Billions: Navalny's Team Releases New Investigation

The former wife of the Russian head of state is actively buying up real estate in Europe.

Associates of jailed Russian politician Aleksei Navalny have wondered where Vladimir Putin's ex-wife Ludmila disappeared to after their divorce. They managed to find out about her new husband's holdings, huge income from Moscow real estate, shares in businesses and life abroad. A new investigative film appeared on Navalny's channel on August 4.

The investigators point out that Ludmila Putina has always been in the shadows, hardly ever appearing in public. However, they did manage to find a Live Journal, which Navalny's associates believe Putina ran in secret until 2008. Their marriage to the Russian president was already just a sham, the video notes. In 2013, Ludmila divorced Putin without formally receiving any of his assets, and in 2015 she married businessman Artur Ocheretny and took his last name.

The main focus of the film is on the sources of Putina-Ocheretnaya's income. The main one, the filmmakers suggest, is an old mansion, with 40 hundred square meters of land, in Vozdvizhenka Street near the Kremlin. When Putina became a trustee of the Center for Russian Language Development in the 2000s, the building was given to the foundation. In 2009, the foundation changed its name to Centre for the Development of Interpersonal Communication, and a year later Arthur Ocheretny became its director. He still runs it today, and Ludmila is not formally connected to it.

Although the Foundation's website has not been updated for more than a year, it is actively sponsored by businesses and not only businesses. The biggest sponsors are the Moscow government, Gazprombank and Severstal (which is owned by Aleksei Mordashov, an oligarch close to Putin). The foundation has received 175 million Russian rubles (nearly $3 million) from the Moscow mayor's office alone over the last three years, and over 400 million (over $6.6 million) from all three. The fund's spending is also interesting. They include expensive Italian furniture and millions of transfers to the account of a sports coach.

At the same time, Ludmila Ocheretnaya herself owns the company Meridian, which subleases premises in the Volkonsky House. The Navalny team obtained bank statements showing that in March 2020 alone, Ludmila received 192 million rubles (more than three million dollars) from Meridian in her personal account.

Business assets of Putina-Ocheretnaya were also found: for example, she owns stakes in Karmani, a microfinance organization, and the Zaprosto! smartphone rental service.

Investigators also discovered that Putin's ex-wife was actively buying up real estate in Europe. They found several properties registered in her new husband's name: a house in the French resort of Biarritz, where the Putin couple used to vacation, as well as two flats in Malaga, Spain, and a flat in Davos, Switzerland.