In December 2023, French law enforcement officers arrested Villa Riveri, which is associated with the ex-wife of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Lyudmila Ocheretna. This is reported by Challenges.
The villa belonged to the Russian Artur Ocheretny, the husband of Putin's ex-wife, media reports.
The property is located in Anglet, close to Biarritz. Previously, the Paris prosecutor's office had already conducted searches there.
The real estate of several oligarchs close to the Kremlin — Gennady Timchenko, the Rotenberg brothers and businessman Serhii Toni — is also "under the crosshairs" of the prosecutor's office.
Villa Riveri was built in 1930. It was originally named Villa Suzanne after the widow of a London banker who sponsored it.
OCCRP notes that the 5,000 square meter property was purchased for €5.4 million by Artur Ocheretny in December 2013.
What happened before
In the summer of 2023, Austrian journalists found a villa worth 10 million euros in the local resort of Kitzbühel, which is believed to belong to the Russian oligarch Arkady Rotenberg and is used for recreation by the daughter of the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, Maria Vorontsova. This was discussed in an investigation by the Der Standard newspaper together with international partners.
"Internal documents show that Putin's confidant Arkady Rotenberg financed the purchase of a chalet (a type of house typical of the alpine region of Europe - ed.) in Kitzbühel. The house was also used by Putin's daughter," the article says.
We are talking about the house at Oberleitenweg 31b in the Kitzbühel ski resort in Tyrol. Officially, neither the local authorities nor the federal interior ministry know who actually owns the 800 square meter house with garden and swimming pool.
According to the publication, the State Protection and Intelligence Office of Austria has been trying to find out the real owners of the house since April 2022. The special service does not rule out that the property belongs to a person subject to sanctions, but this suspicion has not yet been confirmed.
Journalists have established that an Austrian real estate company sold this house in January 2013 for 10.8 million euros to the Cypriot company Wayblue Investments Limited. Since then, the chalet has been owned by this company, which is headquartered in Nicosia. However, internal documents testify to the system of company schemes, front persons and intermediaries in the EU, with the help of which the authorities were deceived for many years.
"According to them, the money used to buy the chalet came from Arkady Rotenberg," the investigation says.
The purchase of real estate was financed by a loan from the Cypriot company Olpon Investments, which has been owned by Rotenberg himself since 2003. Olpon transferred EUR 11.5 million to the then SMP Bank in Latvia, which in turn belonged to the Rotenbergs. From there, the money went to Wayblue. Later, due to sanctions against the Rothenbergs, SMP became Meridian Trade Bank, the loan went to the Estonian financial services provider, which says it ended its business relationship with Wayblue in 2021.
As the journalists note, it is difficult to determine who is the owner of the shell company Wayblue Limited. It is only known that it is controlled by another Cypriot company called Velidom Limited, which is a provider of trust services and manages assets for third parties.
"The investigation suggests that Maria Vorontsova, the eldest daughter of Vladimir Putin, has probably been a regular guest at Oberleitenweg 31b since around 2015 with her then-husband, Dutchman Jorrit Faassen, and their child," the article reads.
According to the investigation, Putin's daughter was always accompanied by security. She visited the house especially often at the beginning of January - for the New Year holidays.
One of the caterers told the newspaper that he used to cook food at home for this occasion. At that time, about 30 people were present, and allegedly even the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin himself. Another person told Der Standard that he also saw Putin and his bodyguards on Oberleitenweg in Kitzbühel.
One former neighbor told the publication that she saw Maria Vorontsova and her Dutch husband in the Oberleitenweg 31b house.
Also, some other residents of Kitzbühel told reporters that "everyone knows" about the periodic residence of Putin's daughter in the house.
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