UPDATE:
Zahir Ebrahim in the comments questions the figure $75 billion. Well, I used the term “apparently” because there’s not much concrete to go by, but that is the figure (or $70b) given out by critics.
How credible is it? No way to know for sure, but besides the Gazprom shares, Putin is said to secretly own shares in many other companies:
“While many previously state-owned industries were privatized, Putin allegedly has used his power to build large secret ownership stakes several multi-billion dollar commodity firms. His most vocal critics assert that Putin has leveraged his power to acquire a 4.5% ownership stake in natural gas producer Gazprom, a 37% stake in oil company Surgutneftegas and 50% stake in Swiss oil-trader Gunvor. Gazprom alone does over $150 billion in revenue annually, Guvnor does $80 billion and Surgutneftegas over $20 billion. Using their most recent market capitalizations, Putin’s combined ownership stakes would give him a personal net worth of $70 billion!So what evidence is there of Putin’s secret obscene fortune? Let’s start with the small stuff. Putin is known to sport a $150,000 Patek Philippe watch on most occasions and his total collection has been valued at $700,000. He also has full access to a $40 million ultra-luxury yacht that features a wine cellar, Jacuzzi, helipad and outdoor barbecue area. In terms of living accommodations, Putin has access to 20 mansions throughout the world including a lavish ski lodge and Medieval castle. The crown jewel of his property portfolio is a $1 billion palace overlooking the Black Sea that he allegedly owns through an anonymous trust. Furthermore, Putin makes frequent use of 15 Presidential helicopters and more than 40 private jets, many of which feature gold plated interiors.”
The reports are based on an interview given by Stanislav Belkovsky to Die Welt, also described here.
Some other related links about Putin’s associations with the oligarchs:
Roman Abramovich once had close and privileged ties to Putin.
Abramovich fell out with one-time associate Berezovsky but stayed friendly with Putin.
Oligarchs like Abramovich, Fridman, and Miller are close to Putin.
The second plundering of Russia, according to Stanislav Belkovsky
More here about Putin’s business dealings.
Corruption alleged by Boris Nemtsov, Deputy PM under Yeltsin and an Opposition leader.
NOTE: I’m going to do another post about Putin because I think I might have swallowed some disinformation put out. I didn’t realize that the $70-75b. figure only came from that interview, because I saw it repeated by another investigator, but I’m wondering now if there is some disinfo in all this.
ORIGINAL POST
It’s been interesting to me to see the right regarding President Putin as some kind of Christian hero
Even Bill Lind has joined the chorus.
It’s certainly true that Putin says a lot of things that conservatives want to hear.
He’s outfoxed the Bolsheviks of the US State Dept.
But, as I’ve pointed out before, there’s plenty of evidence that Putin himself is beholden to the right wing of the New World Order.
One can accept the secession of Crimea as a relatively peaceful process and an understandable reaction to the US’s own belligerent posturing and meddling in the region, but it doesn’t follow that one should then swallow the narrative of Patrick Buchanan that Putin stands for Christianity.
These are deep waters. Nothing is as it seems. Anyone who subscribes to black-and-white narratives can be easily manipulated by the powers-that-be.
A lengthy article on the Russian Orthodox church since the fall of communism argues that the Moscow Church was completely under the Soviets and acted as an agent of the KGB; that the transition to “democracy” in the 1990s was only a transition to criminality and a change in rhetoric not substance; that there is little real orthodoxy left under the Sovietized Orthodox Church; and that simony, occultism, paganism, and ecumenism reign in the present-day Russian church, not traditional belief.
The blog La Russophobe has a list of what it calls “Putin murders” – assassinations of civil society figures – journalists and activists.
That list would be the Russian equivalent of the Clinton body count.
In India, The Hindustan Times points out that no world leader annoys America’s belligerent leadership more.
But the enemy of my enemy is…sometimes….just another enemy:
The red flags are there to see:
1. Vladimir Putin to revive Soviet Hero of Labor award (Daily Telegraph, Dec 11, 2012)
2. Vladimir Putin compares Lenin to holy Christian relics (Daily Telegraph, Dec 12, 2012)
I am going to retract this assessment of Putin’s net worth. The reason is that the origin of the figure comes from an interview by a Putin biographer, Stanislav Belkovsky, in Die Welt, who claims Putin has never sued him. The estimate seems to be based on Belkovsky’s book on Putin’s finances and his research as head of a Moscow think-tank. It’s not improbable, given Putin’s career as a close associate of several oligarchs, himself a KGB chief, and allegedly involved in corrupt dealings following the death of Yeltsin, who passed on power to him.
However, I went back to look more closely and came across a retraction by the Economist of one of Belkovsky’s claims, on threat of suit.
($75 billion $40-70b, apparently from shares in companies including his 4.5% shares in Gazprom revenues). That makes him the richest man on earth
[Lila, added on 4/8): He is said to own shares in several other companies, the total of which at market valuation in 2007 was $40b. I assume the $70-75 is accounted for by the valuation since then, but I didn’t calculate it myself.]
4. Vladimir Putin’s Jewish embrace: Is it love or politics?
QUOTE: “Putin has carefully cultivated relationships with Russia’s many subgroups and regions as a means of projecting his government’s authority.”
QUOTE: “Under Putin, harsh laws have led to a crackdown on ultranationalist groups that once had flourished in Russia.”
QUOTE: “Putin may be good for Jews, but he’s bad for Russia,” said Michael Edelstein, a lecturer at Moscow State University and a journalist for the L’chaim Jewish newspaper.”
QUOTE: “Freedom of expression has been severely restricted and politically motivated prosecutions remain widespread under Putin, according to Amnesty International’s 2013 report on Russia.”
QUOTE: “The preferential treatment of Chabad by Putin’s government “is creating a monolithic Jewish institutional life and preventing grass-roots development, which is the real key for Jewish rejuvenation,” said Michael Oshtrakh, a leader of the Jewish community of Yekaterinburg.”
5. Putin targets foes with zombie guns, which attack victim’s central nervous system
‘Such high-tech weapons systems will be comparable in effect to nuclear weapons, but will be more acceptable in terms of political and military ideology.” (Exactly the same rationale used by the CIA to justify “torture-lite,” radiation weapons, microwave weapons, etc.)
7. Putin is alleged to have been a Royal Arch Mason who trained with MI6, according to The Big Breach, a memoir by a disgruntled MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson.
The relevant material is summarized at this blog.
8. 9/11 insider job “impossible to conceal” says Vladimir Putin (Russia Today, August 2, 2011)
Why does Putin deny that 9/11 could have been an intelligence coup?
Perhaps, because he himself came to power in just such a KGB/FSB coup and has too many skeletons in his own closet…
Perhaps, because one way to fight the opposition is to lead it….
Hi Lila,
If is surely fascinating to believe that Putin is in the billionaire boys club, that he owns 4.5% of Gazprom. If true, I couldn’t have guessed it even as a Jeopardy question.
How factual is it really? My interest was piqued and I wanted to verify just that fact before I probed into other items in your list.
Here is the wiki page on Gazprom:
Begin Quote
Gazprom was created in 1989 when the Ministry of Gas Industry of the Soviet Union transformed itself into a corporation, keeping all its assets intact. The company was later privatised in part, but currently the Russian government holds a majority stake. In 2011, the company produced about 513.2 billion cubic metres (18.12 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas, amounting to more than 17% of worldwide gas production. In addition, Gazprom produced about 32.3 million tons of crude oil and nearly 12.1 million tons of gas condensate. Gazprom’s activities accounted for 8% of Russia’s gross domestic product in 2011.
End Quote
The following snippet is from Gazprom’s own website, the investor section:
gazprom.com/investors/stock/
Begin Quote
Gazprom’s equity capital
Shareholders Stake, % as of December 31, 2012
Russian Federation 50.002
Represented by:
Federal Agency for State Property Management 38.373
Rosneftegaz 10.740
Rosgazifikatsiya 0.889
The Bank of New York Mellon (Depositary bank of OAO Gazprom’s ADR Program) 26.955
Other registered entities 23.043
End Quote
The first line shows the share owned by the state, the Russian Federation, 50.002%, to be the majority stake holder.
The last line, Other registered entities, is evidently opaque. If Putin owns 4.5% of the company, surely he would be in that category, so I thought. And especially if he is the president and former Prime minister of the Russian Federation and in office continually for close to fourteen years (or thereabouts), they must list the assets of their president to ensure that other Gazprom partners and affiliates (listed by name in the financial report) know there is no malfeasance going on. So I took a look at their 2013 financial report to see if that category is expanded further:
gazprom.com/f/posts/55/477129/gazprom-2013-09m-ifrs-en.pdf
First of all, glancing through the 38 page report, I did not see an expansion of that Other registered entities. Just in passing, I noted on page 26, the stock equity numbers:
Begin Quote
Equity
Share capital
Share capital authorised, issued and paid totals RR 325,194 as of 30 September 2013 and 31 December 2012 and consists of 23.7 billion ordinary shares, each with a historical par value of 5 Russian Roubles.
Treasury Shares
As of 30 September 2013 and 31 December 2012, subsidiaries of OAO Gazprom held 739 million and 724 million, of the shares of OAO Gazprom, respectively, which are accounted for as treasury shares. The management of the Group controls the voting rights of these shares.
End Quote
Note the first data point: 23.7 billion ordinary shares, each with a historical par value of 5 Russian Roubles. Total market capitalization is 23.7 x 5 = 118.5 billion Russian Roubles.
If the numbers you reported from this website for Putin’s ownership, 4.5% of Gazprom stock, of a 50 percent state owned company, were correct, that leaves Mr. Putin with 118.5 x 4.5% = 5.33 billion Russian Roubles in asset from Gazprom.
Today’s exchange rate of RUB against the US Dollar from Bloomberg
bloomberg.com/quote/USDRUB:CUR
USD-RUB 35.6783 Price of 1 USD in RUB
So Putin’s 5.33 billion RUB at that exchange rate is equal to 5.33 / 35.6783 = 149 million US dollars!
Unless I did the math wrong, and I do feel a bit groggy today, that’s what I get, his net stake in Gazprom being less than 150 million US dollars. That’s assuming that the presumption of a private individual as the president of Russia owning a share of that magnitude in a state owned corporation is even correct. How is Mr. Putin a billionaire, let alone 75 billion worth?
Since I could not even verify the first item on your list which imputes NWO stooge status to Putin, I won’t bother verifying anything further. If the charge of billionaire was made against Boris Yeltsin or Mikhail Gorbachev, I can believe that data. Both are indubitably assets of the financial oligarchy, Gorbachev even openly pursuing the world government agenda. Yeltsin may have been just a stooge and though did not appear very bright, he along with Gorbachev bettered themselves through the Russia’s “liberation” from the Soviet Union.
But for Putin, I have the reverse data. That this man is really a Russian patriot and appears to be quite antithetical to the NWO as imagined by the financial oligarchy. Putin’s biggest contribution to Russia has been to diligently pursue the pragmatic reversing of the looting of the Russian state treasury and national assets through neo-liberal privatization and theft of a nation which was witnessed in the 1990s. Soros’ name is prominently featured in it, as are some Israelis’. Putin made many enemies…. for him putting his national interest first!
Please let me know if you can verify Putin’s net worth directly from his own nation’s disclosure of what their president’s officially disclosed assets are.
If Mr. Putin is really a 75 US billion dollar man, well, that changes a few things in the calculus of hegemony, principally his self-interest which now appears a lot easy to trade for Russia’s national interest.
This is interesting to me for several reasons, the foremost of them being Russia’s national interest being antithetical to world government, which permits altogether different moves to be played on the grand chessboard than the ones unilaterally planned by the western financial oligarchy and its grand masters. See these reports:
[1] From Balance of Terror to Unilateral Terror on the Grand Chessboard!
http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/04/balanceof-terror-tounilateral-terror.html
[2] Hegemony is as old as mankind! Surviving Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard
http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/09/hegemony-is-as-old-as-mankind.html
I would like to learn if I misperceive so that I may revise my understanding of the strategy to survive on the grand chessboard as it stands today. From what I have understood, Russia is a thorn on the oligarchy’s side, and not their asset or stooge.
Thank you,
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
April 08, 2014
Comment for: http://mindbodypolitic.org/2014/04/05/vladimir-putin-nwos-man-in-russia/
@Zahir
Have added a paragraph or two above to address your question.
The figure should be $70b, I think, but either way, it comes from Putin’s adversary.
I’ve noted the company in which he’s said to own shares.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-23/kerimov-rebound-from-morgan-stanley-meltdown-hits-uralkali-snag.html
Hi Lila – there are two separate persons with similar names in the Bloomberg article you cite, which to me appears more like a gossip column then journalism:
Mr. Billionaire
http://topics.bloomberg.com/vladimir-potanin/
President of Russia
http://topics.bloomberg.com/vladimir-putin/
I don’t buy any of this reportage in Bloomberg. The do not cite or quote any data which can be verified. Just a bunch of opinions… why would one believe it, just because it is “bloomberg”?
Surely, Russia, as a nation, has laws to govern its corporations and its businesses like every other nation on earth. More so as its state corporations conduct business in partnership with not just other countries, but other state-owned corporations, banks, and international lending agencies, all disclosed in Gazprom’s financial report i cited in my first comment above.
As such, I find it difficult that the Russian government itself would not clearly and most unambiguously disclose the assets of its leader — especially if he held substantial stake ownership in Russian state-owned corporations and industries (especially secretly). It spells conflict of interest. Russia is not a third rate third world country. China for instance has its military own a substantial percentage of the Chinese economy, and its leadership are all stated to be stake holders in that economy we are told. But I have also not seen any numbers from Chinese sources. Isn’t its economy and businesses also governed by its laws like America is governed by its SEC laws?
So unless all of that is state secret, there must be some basis to make any of these statements of Russia’s president’s net worth in Russian official sources directly.
No?
Thanks.
Hi Zahir,
Sorry. I only linked the one piece here. The rest is linked in the UPDATE to the piece.
The figure comes out of an interview with Die Welt by Stanislav Belkovsky, who has authored several books on Putin. That seems to have been the basis, but I think it’s seconded by another person.
It could be all disinfo, I don’t know.
I’ll redo the post and put all the links together, but for now, see above.
Thanks Lila for offering to redo it with more thoroughness — You are a good sport.
Basic fact check can often reveal a lot of lies, not all, but the low hanging fruits.
An fyi:
Here is an interesting link to how the “Deception and Credibility Experts” catch witnesses in lies in the court room – often just by basic fact checking!
eyes for lies
http://www.eyesforlies.com/
And item one this expert also states: fact check basic things that the witness claims. If these pass, then go forward, otherwise the witness has no credibility to waste further time on.
The same standard applies to journalists, scholars, think-tankers, politicians, etc. And the crierion for them also includes detecting the lies by omission. You have seen yourself how virtually every prominent journlist is exposed that way. The lies in this making of Putin into a NWO asset are mainly of commission —- far easier to catch by simple fact check than the lies of omission which can at times require considerable domain knowledge to know what is not being said.
I sure hope you come up with the accurate data so that we can sensibly guage which side of his bread Mr. Putin likes buttered.
There are no angels in this game — but if you read my article Hegemony as old as mankind which I cited in my first comment above, if Putin is on the ball, we may yet have a real match on the grand chessboard. Otherwise, it is of course only wwf wrestling.
Wherver the empirical evidence (meaning evidence that anyone can observe, verify, which is what empirical means as I am sure everyone already knows) leads us… So far, it has led me to conclude that Putin is no ordinary fellow, but an expert judo and chess master in his own right.
Best wishes,
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Hi, a followup:
From the website: http://winterpatriot.com/node/829
Vladimir Putin Vs The Oligarchs
Fri, 03/21/2014 – 04:19 — james
“Here are four videos focussing on Vladimir Putin. The first two are very short and give an amusing insight into the man. The third and fourth videos are parts 1&2 of the documentary, “The Unknown Putin”. It details the dire situation Russia was in following the predations of the jewish oligarchs and the corruption and incompetence of the Yeltsin government.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ux3oiWELIQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flC—s2moA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCU4C6ajgBI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRSVNPQKDkM
“james” the winterpatriot also has a series of detailed essays on that website on “Why Russia”, and Russia’s apparent challenge to the Western oligarchy under Putin’s leadership. I haven’t read these essays (may not even get to them) but from a quick scan they appear to argue the prima facie facts that Putin is a) no pushover, b) working in Russia’s greater self-interest rather than his own, and c) a real antagonist rather than a mere WWF wrestling partner.
The real question to examine deeply however, is this:
Is that overt Russian antagonism towards Western hegemony also part of empire’s own Hegelian Dialectic, just as fashioning both Nazi Socialism in Germany and Jewish Communism in Russia to pitch both nations not only against each other but also against Western Capitalism in order to fashion and foment the first of the three world wars of the twentieth century (where the Cold War lasting over 40 years is labeled World War III by Western intelligence); or, is that overt show of antagonism genuinely antithetical to the Western oligarchic designs of continuing on with making pretexts for World War IV today?
Russia under Putin cannot fall easy victim to the engineered Hegelian Dialectic — for only a foolish nation run by imbeciles would be bitten twice by the same bug which previously cost it 20-50 million of its precious Russian lives.
But if the Russian opposition to the Western oligarchy is genuine, then the first thing any sensible person like Putin might have done was to deconstruct the Big Lie of 9/11, or minimally, challenge it as the Big Lie.
Putin, as you also point out in your article, has not done that in the calculus of chess on the grand chessboard.
Nor has Putin made any real full spectrum alliances with China and Iran to pragmatically subvert the full spectrum encirclement of Russia, but which Putin is also overtly striking out against with his micro chess moves.
As already explored in my 2008 analysis “Hegemony is as old as mankind” cited in my previous comments above, why has Putin not made the obvious macro moves?
Again, in the order of real impact, just these two will undo unilateral imperial mobilization of the United States:
1) confront the Big Lie of 9/11
2) announce full spectrum NATO-like military and Economic alliances for full spectrum deterrence on the grand chessboard with China and Iran.
A return to something like the Warsaw Pact of yesteryear but without the ideologic religion umbrella of communism, is the key to survival from one-world government becoming a full fait accompli.
That omission of Putin is therefore most significant. The easy explanation for that omission that Mr. Putin is part of the globalist’s world government agenda merely fattening his purse in narrow self-interest may be appealing to some minds, but it isn’t to mine. It is a blatant red herring which may very well have been deliberately cultivated for the intent of introducing confusion in the public mind, what Cass Sunstein called “beneficial cognitive diversity”.
I see Putin as a grandmaster playing the grand chessboard with some skill. And I see him as genuinely being interested in a multipolar world rather than the unipolar one which he inherited as the president of Russia.
He has said so time and again. Here is Putin’s relevant statements from the 2007 Munich Conference on Security Policy ( quoted in: http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/08/georgia-russia-its-aclassic-brzezinski.html )
“The history of humanity certainly has gone through unipolar periods and seen aspirations to world supremacy. And what hasn’t happened in world history?
However, what is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.
It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.
And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.
Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.
I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s – and precisely in today’s – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation.”
As onlookers and outsiders no one can really know what is the real deep thinking behind Putin’s omissions. Nevertheless, it begs more accurate analysis to at least understand his obvious omissions to the first order.
We have seen your take that he might be their asset Lila. I hope you can tackle this question from the other side in your redo as well — that Putin is a free and patriotic agent of Russia and the Russian Federation. But if so, then explain the egregious omissions.
Thanks.
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
April 15, 2014
Continuation of comment for
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2014/04/05/vladimir-putin-nwos-man-in-russia/
@Zahir,
Don’t have time to read your entire comment though I am fascinated by the whole issue.
I guess I have been burned so many times whenever I’ve taken a high-profile public figure at face value that I’m not inclined to believe people on the world stage, just for that reason.
If you’ll hold your horses, I’ll come to it.
Right now, I’ve my hands full in the (un)real world.
It was the long piece on the Orthodox Church and its present control by the state that got me worried.
But the author is himself a convert.
Recently, a major figure in the Men’s Rights community on the web showed himself to be some kind of disinformation monger.
So, I tend to be suspicious.
But bear with me, while I get some work done.
Best
Lila