The businesses of Dmitry Patrushev, Putin's potential successor

2024-08-05 22:52:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The businesses of Dmitry Patrushev, Putin's potential successor

Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Patrushev. Source, TASS

In 2017, an offshore company based in Cyprus called Pimodo invested 3 million euros in ten five-star residences at the Salinas Resort in the Cape Verde archipelago state in the Atlantic Ocean. The investment money was provided by the Russian agricultural trading company, Agrotorg Tulsky, a subsidiary of the Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank), which the Russian Government established in 2000 to support the agricultural sector.

Agrotorg Tulsky was then acquired by Pimodo in April 2018, meaning the bank founded to develop agriculture in Russia became the owner of luxury residences in a remote country known for its white-sand beaches and as a "centre important transit for South America for the transport of cocaine to Europe", according to the US Government.

The purchases at the Cape Verde resort open a window into opaque circles in the Russian elite, Systema, the Russian-language research unit of Radio Free Europe, found. And in this constellation, the brightest star is Dmitry Patrushev, 46, the Russian deputy prime minister who is the eldest son of presidential aide and former Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev. Dmitry Patrushev has been tipped by experts as the successor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, 71, if he relinquishes power, although there are no signs that he will do so.

"The biggest plus" for Dmitry Patrushev as a possible successor "is the combination between a siloviki and a civilian. Thanks to his father, the Chekist corporation will perceive him, if not completely, as 'theirs', and then 'known,'" wrote political consultant and former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov, using the Russian word used to refer to senior officials with military or security experience. "At the same time, the majority of society - tired of military rhetoric and the endless pursuit of our enemies - will not be intimidated by his 'epaulettes'."

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The main minuses for Patrushev, according to Gallyamov, are the scandals surrounding him and his unpopular image as a "lucky guy".

"The New Nobility"

Nikolai Patrushev, 73, has known Putin since the 1970s and is one of the most trusted members of the president's inner circle. He is also the most anti-Western figure in Putin's circle. A career officer in the KGB and the Federal Security Service (FSB), Patrushev succeeded Putin as FSB director when then-President Boris Yeltsin named Putin prime minister in August 1999, a quarter of a century ago. Patrushev sent his two sons, Dmitry and Andrei, to the FSB Academy.

In 2000, Patrushev published a famous article defending the KGB's "arrival at the highest level of power" like he and Putin and denouncing alleged efforts to "demonize" them as a threat to democracy. He described them as "strict pragmatists" who selflessly protect the state from foreign and domestic enemies.

Nikolai Patrushev during a military ceremony in Moscow in February 2020. Source, TASS

They were, according to him, the "new nobility". Like traditional nobility, and now in some cases nobility is hereditary.

Dmitry Patrushev has had a sensational career under Putin. At the age of 32, he became chairman of the Russian Agricultural Bank, the fourth largest bank in Russia in terms of net assets. At the age of 40, he was appointed Minister of Agriculture, while this year at the age of 46 he became Deputy Prime Minister overseeing the agriculture, natural resources and environment industries. He regularly attends meetings with Putin in the Kremlin.

As a member of the "new nobility" in increasingly nationalistic, anti-Western and isolated Russia under Putin, Patrushev did not spend his New Year's holidays abroad, but together with his friends and family they vacationed at his holiday home that Tver region, hundreds of kilometers north of Moscow, a source close to Patrushev's family, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, told Systema. The house is officially under the ownership of his wife, the TV personality, Marina Artemyeva, with whom they have not married. Artemyeva is also the official owner of Patrushev's properties outside Moscow and two apartments in the elite residential complex, Zolotoi, near the Kremlin. According to Systema's estimates, she officially owns properties worth 31 million dollars.

Studying the history of the house in the Tver region, which is modest by the standards of other members of Putin's elite, Systema uncovered a series of inside deals and manipulations that took the plot from the shores of the Volga River to Cape Verde in the Atlantic. All these agreements were connected with the Russian Agricultural Bank, which to this day is under Patrushev's authority.

On the Volga

On November 21, 2022, Patrushev, then Minister of Agriculture, hosted the opening of a poultry farm in the Siberian region of Tyumen. Governors and business representatives from the Moscow, Kaliningrad and Kursk regions broadcast this event via video link. Putin attended virtually from the Kremlin. One of the participants Putin mentioned by name was Sergei Novikov, owner of Agropromkomplektsiya agribusiness.

Novikov, 64, began building his empire based on collective farms in the Tver region shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. The company started work with 200 cows on a land of 2,000 hectares.

Dmitry Patrushev, when he was chairman of the Russian Agricultural Bank, during a meeting with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in February 2015. Source, TASS

Today, the conglomerate raises about 40,000 cows and 1.3 million pigs on more than 100,000 hectares of land, an area almost 17 times the area of ??Manhattan. The company is one of the three leading dairy products producers in Russia and the seventh in terms of production of pig products. In 2023, the company's revenue was about $1.9 billion.

In a 2020 interview, Novikov was very explicit about the role Patrushev has played in his company's massive growth.

"We started working with the Russian Agricultural Bank in 2006," he said. "However, the biggest boost and the biggest development of our business started in 2010 with the arrival of the new team of DN Patrushev".

Systema has calculated that during the time when Patrushev was the head of the Bank, in the period 2010-2018, he gave loans to Novikov's company in the amount of 1 billion dollars. In 2014 alone, this value was 609 million dollars. This money helped the company get through the severe bird flu that hit some Russian regions in 2013. Meanwhile, smaller farmers accused the authorities of failing to help them and only helping big agribusinesses.

In April 2013, about a year before the Russian Agricultural Bank started providing massive loans to Novikov's group, Korovinskoye agribusiness left the enterprise. This business was taken over by businessman Andrei Aleshkov, an old school friend of Dmitry Patrushev. In 2016, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe, Patrushev's Bank gave Aleshkov a $54 million loan to build the Praim-Taim residential complex in Moscow.

Moscow offices of the Russian Agricultural Bank. Source, TASS

There are other indications that Korovinskoye was under Patrushev's wing. The company's new general director, Ivan Pleshakov, and his new phone number were linked to a company called Trial, which provided supplies to the state's emergency reserve fund, Posreserv. Investigative journalism website Proyekt linked the Patrushevs to him in a 2023 investigation.

Korovinskoye, in addition to dealing in cattle, owns land on the banks of the Volga in the Tver region, north of Moscow. Here is the holiday home of Dmitry Patrushev. Later in 2013, a 3-hectare plot of land was cleared of trees. According to Google Earth images, construction began in 2014.

By 2016, the works were almost complete and in addition to the residence, other buildings, a courtyard, a football pitch, a boat dock and a swimming area can be identified from the images. At the same time, Korovinskoye started selling other plots, probably at a cheaper price than the market price. In 2016, the company recorded $160,000 in revenue, while the land it sold was worth at least five times that figure.

Two of the four plots were officially transferred to Novikov. However, a source close to the Patrushev family said that the family regularly spent the last holidays of the year there. In 2023, Novikov transferred the plots of land owned by the Patrushevs, according to documents obtained by Systema.

The other two plots of Korovinskoye land were transferred to entrepreneur Andrei Sadovsky, which are still owned by him.

"Recreation and sports"

The owner of the chicken coop that Putin and Patrushev opened in November 2022 was Naum Babayev. His agribusiness, Damate, is one of the largest bean producers in the world, according to the company's website, and the Russian Agricultural Bank was instrumental in the company's growth.

Over the years, Patrushev's Bank gave Babayev's company more than $1.2 billion. Moreover, Babayev was repeatedly allowed to take over some of the Bank's distressed assets on favorable terms.

"It turned out that we became the cleaners of the Russian Agricultural Bank in the Penza region," Babayev joked in an interview given to Russian Forbes in 2020.

In 2020, the Agricultural Bank allowed Babayev to bankrupt his main competitor, a firm called Yevrodon.

Until 2018, the Bank's risk assets department was headed by Dmitry Sergeyev, an important figure in Patrushev's inner circle. Sergeyev and Babayev have long had business ties, while Sergeyev's wife and the couple's eldest son also have partnerships with Babayev.

Patrushev and Sergeyev have known each other since at least 2000, when both were senior executives at state-controlled bank VTB. Sergeyev became Patrushev's deputy at VTB, his first deputy at the Russian Agricultural Bank, and later deputy minister of agriculture.

In 2019, Sergeywv was appointed chairman of the United Grain Company (OZK), which is a state-owned agricultural corporation that operates the state's grain infrastructure and is under the direction of the Ministry of Agriculture. At least one Telegram channel has referred to Sergeyev as Patrushev's "right-hand man".

According to a Systema source close to Patrushev's family, Dmitry Patrushev's family sometimes vacations with the Sergeyev family, and Sergeyev has a vacation home not far from Patrushev's. The person who took ownership of the plots of land adjacent to Patrushev's land, Andrei Sadovski, is Sergeyev's brother-in-law.

In March 2023, forest authorities in the Tver region auctioned off a forest plot adjacent to Patrushev's land. Sergeyev won the auction at the starting price of $2,700 and took control of two hectares of forest for 49 years.

The forest has already been taken under control and cleared of many trees, according to Google Earth images. According to the lease agreement, the plot of land can be used for "recreation and sports".

Dmitry Patrushev during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in 2022.

In 2018, the branch of the Russian Agricultural Bank took control of the Cypriot "offshore" company, Pimodo, and its investments in the Cape Verde resort. Pimodo was represented by Montenegrin businessman Stela Kolman, according to the Cypriot corporate registry. Kolman had business connections through the Montenegrin company Open Investment with the former manager of the Russian Agricultural Bank, Ivan Chepovoi. Chepovoi, meanwhile, was Sergeyev's deputy at VTB Bank and had once again worked under him in the risk assets department at the Russian Agricultural Bank. Now, Chepovoi is Sergeyev's deputy in OZK.

This lasted until at least 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and it became necessary to protect Russian assets located abroad. Three weeks before the break on February 24th, Pimodo was sold to another offshore company called Fiosal Ventures. According to the Cypriot register of corporations, Fiosal Ventures had indirect links with Novikov's Agropromkomplektsiya.

"Our best colleagues, the pride of the FSB, do not leave their jobs for money," said Nikolai Patrushev in the 2000 article where he spoke of the "new nobility." "That everyone looks different, but it is a very special characteristic that unites these people, which is a very important quality: their sense of service"./ REL