French authorities seize a villa near Biarritz Arthur Ocheretny – husband Lyudmila Putina (Ocheretnaya), the ex-wife of Vladimir Putin (*international criminal). This was reported by the Challenges publication, the prosecutor’s office confirmed this to AFP.
The prosecutor’s office explained this as an investigation into the origin of Ocheretny’s money, which was launched in September 2022 by a unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office dedicated to fighting organized crime (Junalco). The audit was launched after an appeal from Transparency International. Junalco officers had previously conducted a search of the villa.
The case is now being handled by the Serious Financial Crime Central Office (OCRGDF). No one was charged with money laundering.
Lyudmila Putina and her husband are not under EU sanctions; 46-year-old Ocheretny participates in triathlon competitions in Europe. In 2022, the UK imposed sanctions against 66-year-old Putina. Villa, according to Challenges, has been under arrest since December 6, 2023.
It was first reported on by an OCCRP investigative project in 2017. According to an extract from the French register (.pdf), built in 1927 in Art Deco style Villa Souzanna in the Biarritz suburb of Anglet, it was purchased by Arthur Ocheretny in 2013. Its cost to OCCRP was estimated at 7 million euros.
[…] The neighbors said Politico correspondentthat at the same time the renovation of the villa, which had been going on for the last seven years, stopped, and it began to fall into disrepair.
Nearby in Biarritz is the villa of the ex-husband of Putin (*international criminal)’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova; the building was seized as part of sanctions in 2022.
The Anti-Corruption Foundation, created by Alexei Navalny, talked about the sources of income of Lyudmila Putina and Artur Ocheretny.
The Moscow City Hall transferred to the “Center for the Development of Interpersonal Communications,” which is headed by Ocheretny, mansion built in 1774 on Vozdvizhenka Street near the Kremlin worth 10 billion rubles. It is subleased to Sberbank, VTB and other commercial projects. Along the way, the Ocheretny center also receives about 415 million rubles a year from the Moscow City Hall, Gazprombank and Severstal.
In addition to the villa in Biarritz, investigators also found Ocheretny real estate in the Spanish resort of Marbella and in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. They estimated the total cost of foreign real estate at almost 600 million rubles.
RBC news agency, 04/18/2024, “Peskov called seizures of property of Russians abroad illegal”: […] Press Secretary of the Head of State Dmitry Peskov responded to French media publications about the confiscation of the villa of businessman Arthur Ocheretny, an RBC correspondent reports. […] Peskov refused to comment on the publication itself. “Of course, issues related to the private property of Russian citizens are not entirely our prerogative.”
“On the other hand, here we are talking about the fact that this is private property, as far as I understand. And therefore, any encroachment on private property is a violation of any laws and is a priori illegal. In this way, the French authorities are undermining the foundations of their legal system, we have said this more than once,” Peskov said. — Insert K.ru