A decade ago I commissioned an article about Vladimir Putin’s business cronies. Among other lines of enquiry, it sought to finger ‘a coterie of wealthy and politically influential industrialists, many believed to be former or current secret service officials’ who allegedly had shareholdings in Russian companies which, if we or anyone else had been able to prove that they were controlled by the president, might have evidenced a personal Putin fortune of tens of billions. Sensibly, The Spectator’s lawyer would not let me publish — but the US Treasury has now done its own version of the job by imposing sanctions on seven oligarchs and 17 senior Russian officials who are believed to form the innermost presidential clique.
The Who’s Who of Kremlin favourites has changed many times over the years, but it’s gratifying to note that one of those seven oligarchs also featured large in our unpublished exposé: he is Vladimir Bogdanov, a Putin chum since early St Petersburg days and president of Surgutneftegaz, the Siberia–headquartered oil company which keeps huge reserves of cash and whose owner-ship has long been shrouded in mystery.
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