Arkady Rotenberg and his younger brother Boris grew up in Leningrad, side by side with Vladimir Putin – in the sixties, as boys, they all went to the sambo section together. Years passed, friendship grew stronger, the influence and income of the brothers grew following the career growth of Volodya’s friend. The era of Putin as president made his loved ones rich. The closest people became the richest. According to Forbes, the combined fortune of the two Rotenbergs, largely earned on government contracts, is about $5 billion.
The annexation of Crimea added trouble to the brothers: in 2014, both fell under American sanctions, and Arkady also under European ones. A significant part of the Rotenberg capital was “parked” outside of Russia – part was kept on the accounts of foreign companies, part was invested in villas, hotels, yachts and planes. Urgent and non-standard measures by the standards of ordinary business were required.
Dozens of consultants, both in Russia and in Europe, began to invent strategies designed to secure the Rotenbergs’ capital and protect their assets from freezing. “We are spinning, as if on a pitchfork,” they succinctly described the situation in their working correspondence. This mobile team was led by Russian lawyer Maxim Viktorov, co-founder of the law firm Legal Intelligence Group and the management company Evocorp, under whose auspices many of the Rotenberg assets were collected.
The archive that came into our hands is about 50,000 letters and documents from Evocorp Management Company and persons associated with it, sent from 2013 to 2020. Thanks to them, we not only discovered previously unknown assets of the Rotenbergs, but were also able to reconstruct typical — and often quite successful — schemes for avoiding sanctions using concrete examples.
This is how the Rotenberg brothers were helped by their women – citizens of Latvia and the United States.
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This article is part of The Rotenberg Files project. What is this project and where are the other articles?
The Rotenberg Archive is a leak of more than 50,000 letters and documents from the Evocorp management company, which worked mainly for Boris and Arkady Rotenberg. “Important Stories” shared this data with the world’s leading media, as a result, more than 60 journalists from 17 publications worked on the project.
Girlfriend Maria
In 2013, Arkady Rotenberg divorced his wife Natalya after eight years of marriage. The divorce turned out to be scandalous: courts in Britain and Russia, the division of property and even a warrant for the arrest of Natalia, issued by a London court for failing to appear at the meeting. The breakup was widely covered in the press. And while Big Stories doesn’t usually focus on the personal lives of investigative heroes, in this case we can’t ignore it. The reason is that, thanks to the leaked Evocorp letters, we discovered not only Arkady’s relationship with a 36-year-old Latvian citizen, but also a business and an impressive amount of real estate in Russia and the EU, recorded on the chosen one. The cost of just what we discovered is several billion rubles.
In 2011-2012, the Latvian tabloids heatedly discussed the personal life of a Latvian national basketball team player: “Did Armands Skele break up with sexy Maria?” – headlines blew up. “By the way, I also heard that in Russia she has another one – much older and richer,” readers shared in the comments.
Maria Borodunova then studied in Moscow as a lawyer, graduated from the university. Judging by her social networks of that time and the surviving photographs from fashionable clubs, Borodunova knew a lot about bright outfits and fun parties. In 2012, describing her graduation course, Tatler could not do without the expression “golden youth”: “It is not known when the future masters of life showed more enthusiasm and zeal: while studying or celebrating the issuance of the coveted diplomas. Having received a guarantee of successful employment and – what is there – a successful marriage, yesterday’s students of the “golden” universities, MGIMO and Moscow State University, did not stint either on a wide feast or on luxurious outfits, ”the journalists reported.
The life of Maria Borodunova really turned out well, but it is unlikely that employment had anything to do with this. We did not manage to find any traces of employment until 2018, in the documents for opening companies in the “Profession” column, Borodunova wrote “beautician”, and on the page on VKontakte she had the status “I have the most wonderful activity, I do MYSELF!” .
Six months after graduation, in early 2013, Borodunova became a co-founder of the French company SCI Dana, which acquired a villa on the Cote d’Azur, in the town of Villefranche-sur-Mer, for 4.25 million euros.
After that, Borodunova gave birth to two children – both in Nice, both have the mother’s citizenship, the father’s name is not indicated in the documents (40% of the Dana company is now recorded on the children, the remaining 60% belong to their mother).
In 2016, a 400-meter apartment in the Sun Tower in the very center of Monaco, acquired by Borodunova through a chain of companies, is added to the French villa. From the reports of these companies and the correspondence of lawyers, it can be concluded that Borodunova’s Monegasque investments were estimated at 65 million euros (almost 5 billion rubles at the rate of 2016). An apartment in the Solar Tower of Borodunova’s company was leased to offshore Faraotis Holdings from the British Virgin Islands (BVI) for 260 thousand euros per month (today this is equivalent to almost 25 million rubles) – there are relevant agreements in the leaks. Faraotis was managed by Viktorov through the Russian investment fund Forward, but the archive files indicate that this fund was used in the interests of Boris Rotenberg. The same offshore also owned the $42 million Bombardier business jet associated with Rotenberg. Why was it necessary to conclude a lease at exorbitant prices between de facto two pockets of one family? It can be assumed that, for example, for Borodunova to have easily explainable income in Monaco.
Further – more: 2017 turned out to be especially fruitful for Borodunova. And it’s not even that she became a candidate of economic sciences, having defended her dissertation at St. Petersburg State University of Economics on the topic “Formation and implementation of sports and recreation services.” The most important acquisition was an 80% stake in the major Russian developer RG-Development. This share was packaged in a closed-end investment fund Lontano (at first under the auspices of Evocorp, then other management companies), which made it possible to maintain complete anonymity.
“Fund No. 6 is designed to generate significant profits for the shareholders of the management company,” said Evocorp in the relevant explanations to the Central Bank. – The management company plans to make a profit of 12 billion rubles by 2023 (at the same time, the management company acquired a stake in RG-Development for 11 million rubles). The owner of the fund’s shares is Borodunova Marija (foreign entity).”
Since 2019, Lontano has been managed by another management company, RVM Capital. From the leaked tax payments of Russians, we learned that in 2020 alone, Borodunova received 1.8 billion rubles from her – apparently, the same dividends from RG-Development.
Starting from the same 2017, Borodunova became interested in luxury real estate in Moscow and St. Petersburg. And in just a couple of years, she managed to collect an impressive collection of Russian real estate worth several billion rubles. Her neighbors in cozy VIP complexes for just a few apartments were the families of the Russian elite: the Chemezovs, the Abramovichs, the Kovalchuks, the Krivonogs and, of course, the Rotenbergs.
Russian collection of Borodunova:
apartment in residential complex “Stella Maris” in St. Petersburg, 340 sq. m;
apartment in residential complex “Malaya Nikitskaya, 15” in Moscow, 175 sq. m.;
three non-residential premises in Moscow at Kutuzovsky Prospekt, 2/1 – the building of the former hotel “Ukraine” – with a total area of 894 sq. m.;
three apartments in the residential complex “Residence on Kamenny” in St. Petersburg with a total area of 650 sq. m. Borodunova also owns 20% of the management company of this residential complex.
The person to whom 36-year-old Borodunova owes such fabulous wealth is directly pointed out by the Getcontact application, which shows how the user is recorded in the phone books of other subscribers. Among the various consumption-related tags, such as “Maria is a good check” and “Buy fast and expensive,” a dozen and a half point to her connection with Arkady Rotenberg. More often – just “Maria Rotenberg”, but there are also clarifying ones: “Wife of Arkady Rotenberg” and “Maria (wife of Arkady Romanovich)”.
The source of Important Stories, who is familiar with the circumstances of the life of the Rotenberg family, when asked if the name of Borodunov says something to him, replied: “Of course. Maria is the unofficial wife of Arkady, the mother of his two daughters. This, of course, is non-public information, but close people have long known about these relationships. Years since 2013, and maybe even earlier – now it’s hard to remember more specifically. ” Approximately the same was told to Re:Baltica by a source in Latvia.
Obviously, if all the assets belonging to Maria Borodunova and her two daughters were in the possession of Arkady Rotenberg, then their foreign part would definitely be frozen.
Girlfriend Karina
Boris Rotenberg has a legitimate, determined and enterprising wife, who is able to take on some of the risk management.
The president of the Moscow Equestrian Federation, 44-year-old Karina Rotenberg (Gapchuk), lived in the United States for many years – her parents took her there as a teenager. There she received a master’s degree in business administration (MBA), worked in telecom, opened a real estate agency, bought an apartment, got married.
In 2008, flying to Monaco for a Zenit match in St. Petersburg, she met Boris Rotenberg, who was so impressed that he immediately bought a mansion in Georgia – in the town of Alpharetta, where Karina then lived. Karina reciprocated: she divorced an American and, leaving their family home for herself, moved to Russia, where she married Boris.
After that, status real estate in the Karina family increased – primarily due to land with stables and several villas on the Cote d’Azur of France. Some of them were known before, but often it was possible to connect them with Boris and Karina only with the help of circumstantial evidence – the ownership structure was too confusing.
The “Rotenberg Archive” allows you to fill in many gaps. Among the documents are detailed diagrams compiled by consultants from the Rosemont consulting company based on data from asset managers Boris and Karina. The diagrams show clusters of companies from Luxembourg, Monaco, France and the British Virgin Islands, which owned the Rotenberg estates in a chain as of September 2016. Having studied the registers of legal entities available to us in these countries and the reporting of the companies mentioned in the diagrams, we can assume that the structure has not undergone fundamental changes since then.
Karina is a public person and spoke in detail about her life and even about some possessions. For example, she showed Tatler magazine the “cottage” and the Rotenberg equestrian center adjacent to it in Mouan Sartoux, 50 kilometers from Monaco. The article described the “master’s house” as “a light beige, with blue shutter doors, the mansion is modest, down-to-earth, and not at all photogenic.” Thanks to the Rotenberg Archive, we can say that a modest dacha actually occupies 30 hectares, but, as they say, who counts.
Consisting of several villas, stables and adjoining fields, the estate consists of several cadastral plots and captures the lands of as many as two communes, Mouans Sartoux and Grasse. Its estimated value as of 2014 is more than 17 million euros (more than 1.5 billion rubles at today’s exchange rate). The dacha was arranged in fairness: Karina’s effective share of ownership is 50%. So much for Boris.
Fifty kilometers from the cottage, near the town of Eze, there is another impressive nest. Several hectares of land with villas, a swimming pool and a hostel for servants. Bought an apartment in nearby Eze. This cluster belongs to Boris alone, and in 2014 was estimated at 16.2 million euros (about 1.5 billion rubles at today’s exchange rate).
A separate scheme is devoted to the property of the Rotenbergs in the kingdom of Monaco. These are five apartments and six parking spaces. Almost all of them are located in the Mirabeau Tower, built in 2010, a luxury 33-storey complex with a fitness and swimming pool. Most of the assets here belong to Boris, Karina indirectly owns a share in only one of the apartments. The total value of the Rotenberg real estate in Monaco as of 2014 is at least 26.5 million euros (2.5 billion rubles at today’s exchange rate).
Thus, in aggregate, the assets of Karina and Boris in Monaco and France were worth more than 60 million euros.
Among the details that we would hardly have known without the current leak is the American citizenship of Boris’s loved ones. As it turned out, Karina herself had a US passport, and at least two of her three children, as well as her mother. According to French customs, it was them that Boris’s family used when flying to the United States.
Karina did not mention the presence of American citizenship in any of her many interviews. Perhaps it would be inappropriate from an image point of view. Still, the husband is a friend of Putin, a major government contractor, and in general a great patriot. Even the standard livery of SMP Racing racing cars (owned by Boris Rotenberg) includes the coat of arms of Russia, a golden double-headed eagle on the hood.
Curiously, Karina’s American passport added a headache to the Rotenberg lawyers. In 2014, Boris fell under sanctions in the US, and European banks began to refuse to make payments to him. Karina’s American lawyers frantically tried to figure out what to do with the ban on American citizens from doing business with sanctioned persons. They corresponded for some time with Karina and her Russian representatives from Viktorov’s office, but the verdict was disappointing: the sanctions regime does not provide for exceptions for relatives, including “for payments aimed at family support and daily expenses.”
However, the family did not remain without money in the West. From the leaked documents, it can be concluded that another financing scheme was invented: an offshore not formally associated with the Rotenbergs placed a deposit in the Cyprus branch of Promsvyazbank, and the bank, secured by this deposit, issued a loan in the name of Karina. In any case, this is how she was supposed to receive $ 2 million in 2015 – the offshore company from the BVI Gremarana Projects, recorded on Boris’s key denomination – his former bodyguard Alexander Kozlov, acted as a depositor. At the same time, the Gremarana company itself borrowed money from another offshore – Culloden Properties (BVO), whose beneficiary was Boris Rotenberg.
Not being under sanctions (they were introduced only in 2022), Karina could act as her husband’s representative in business. She not only communicated with lawyers, but also paid them. It follows from the leaked documents that it was Karina who was billed by the lawyer from Monaco, Donald Manasse, who dealt with the French affairs of the family.
In particular, it was Manass in 2014-2015, though unsuccessfully, but stubbornly defended the family from the claims of the French authorities, who demanded customs clearance of the Rotenberg yacht Rachel. Then the Rotenbergs did not dispute their involvement in the yacht, but soon it turned out to be registered with the company, the beneficiary of which was Alexander Kozlov. Correspondence with the captain regarding the functioning of the yacht, its repair, decoration and other pressing issues continued to be supervised by Karina.
As a result, another, previously unknown project of the Rotenbergs was also recorded at the firm of the same Kozlov. We are talking about a Mediterranean villa built for the Rotenbergs in the picturesque place of Oliva, not far from the Spanish Valencia. The curtains alone cost 200 thousand euros, and the entire impressive villa as a whole cost 9 million euros. The total area of buildings on the site is 2206 sq. m.
Initially, it was planned to register the villa on the offshore of Karina herself. The emergence of a nominal owner in this place, of course, did not change anything – judging by the correspondence, the project remained under the jurisdiction of Karina. From the leak, you can see how she smashes the Spanish contractors: “You were sent lined plans for the insides of wardrobes! Stop making fools out of yourself! .. And the decoration you need is the one for which you were paid a lot of money! Don’t compost our brains!” – once again Ms. Rotenberg swore at the employees of the Spanish construction company.
From an interview with Tatler, we learned that the estate in Mouan Sartoux was bought by Boris and Karina, great connoisseurs of show jumping, “for the sake of one goal – horses.” Obviously, the Spanish villa was built for them. Literally a couple of hundred meters from the Spanish estate of the Rotenbergs there is a hippodrome, where Boris and Karina have repeatedly performed. Karina even won prizes. In one of her conversations with journalists, Karina complained: “Equestrian sport is becoming more and more difficult, and more and more competitions are being organized. If you want to have a high rating, you must participate in tournaments all the time. And it’s hard. You have to either give up everything for the sake of sports, or take your family everywhere with you.” The decision to build a grandiose villa next to the competition site cannot but be considered optimal.
Initially, it was planned to register the villa on the offshore of Karina herself. The emergence of a nominal owner in this place, of course, did not change anything – judging by the correspondence, the project remained under the jurisdiction of Karina. From the leak, you can see how she smashes the Spanish contractors: “You were sent lined plans for the insides of wardrobes! Stop making fools out of yourself! .. And the decoration you need is the one for which you were paid a lot of money! Don’t compost our brains!” – once again Ms. Rotenberg swore at the employees of the Spanish construction company.
From an interview with Tatler, we learned that the estate in Mouan Sartoux was bought by Boris and Karina, great connoisseurs of show jumping, “for the sake of one goal – horses.” Obviously, the Spanish villa was built for them. Literally a couple of hundred meters from the Spanish estate of the Rotenbergs there is a hippodrome, where Boris and Karina have repeatedly performed. Karina even won prizes. In one of her conversations with journalists, Karina complained: “Equestrian sport is becoming more and more difficult, and more and more competitions are being organized. If you want to have a high rating, you must participate in tournaments all the time. And it’s hard. You have to either give up everything for the sake of sports, or take your family everywhere with you.” The decision to build a grandiose villa next to the competition site cannot but be considered optimal.
Initially, it was planned to register the villa on the offshore of Karina herself. The emergence of a nominal owner in this place, of course, did not change anything – judging by the correspondence, the project remained under the jurisdiction of Karina. From the leak, you can see how she smashes the Spanish contractors: “You were sent lined plans for the insides of wardrobes! Stop making fools out of yourself! .. And the decoration you need is the one for which you were paid a lot of money! Don’t compost our brains!” – once again Ms. Rotenberg swore at the employees of the Spanish construction company.
From an interview with Tatler, we learned that the estate in Mouan Sartoux was bought by Boris and Karina, great connoisseurs of show jumping, “for the sake of one goal – horses.” Obviously, the Spanish villa was built for them. Literally a couple of hundred meters from the Spanish estate of the Rotenbergs there is a hippodrome, where Boris and Karina have repeatedly performed. Karina even won prizes. In one of her conversations with journalists, Karina complained: “Equestrian sport is becoming more and more difficult, and more and more competitions are being organized. If you want to have a high rating, you must participate in tournaments all the time. And it’s hard. You have to either give up everything for the sake of sports, or take your family everywhere with you.” The decision to build a grandiose villa next to the competition site cannot but be considered optimal.
After the start of a full-scale war, European sanctions were extended to both Boris and Karina. Despite all the tricks, the villa is now frozen, according to the decision of the Spanish authorities – it can be used, but cannot be sold. Reason: There are good reasons to believe that the property is in fact “owned or controlled” by the sanctioned entity. The KRB family monograms (Karina and Boris Rotenberg), which once adorned the facade and gates, also disappeared.
Difficulties arose with other assets. In the United States, the bank took Karina’s former house for debts, and her apartment and Boris’s mansion were sanctioned: registration actions cannot be performed with them. In France, the estate in Eze, which belonged directly to Boris Rotenberg, was arrested. The rest of the property, recorded on companies from Monaco and Luxembourg, judging by extracts from official registers, did not fall under the sanctions.
However, Karina is philosophical about property: “Life is one, it’s a pity to subordinate it to square meters … I often think that I am not at all attached to either a place or objects. My home is always where my husband and children are.”