Putin's Hidden Wealth

Last August, I sat down for dinner in Moscow with Stanislav Belkovsky, an estranged Kremlin insider with extraordinary political antennae. This compelling, 36-year-old Russian, a computer programmer by training, runs a think tank called the National Strategy Institute along with a news website. Amid a long discussion of Russian politics and history, Belkovsky provided his take on the main thrust of Kremlin policy today -- allowing the folks who have lined their pockets for the last seven years to cash out their winnings.

Among those folks? Vladimir Putin. Belkovsky claimed that, as part of the spoils of being president, Putin was bestowed with lucrative shares in two Russian energy companies -- 37% of Surgutneftegas and 3%-4% of Gazprom. He said this wasn't provable at the moment, but that the signal of veracity would be if that 37% went on the market before March, when Putin steps down as president. Belkovsky was sure that, given the non-transparent aspect of most Russian companies, the shares would be snapped up by another big Russian company such as Gazprom or Rosneft. If Putin does cash out, Belkovsky said, these shares would be worth some $40 billion. A nice bit of change, but not surprising for those familiar with the publicly known holdings of the presidents of the former Soviet Union's other petro-states, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. At that level in government in that part of the world, one does not retain respect among peers solely with political power -- one must also have enormous personal wealth to project the mystique that's necessary to grip the political reins in this treacherous environment.

I raise this now because Belkovsky has recently given a couple of interviews repeating his assertions, including one published in today's London Guardian. Robert Amsterdam, who is imprisoned oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky's lawyer, has concluded on his blog that Belkovsky's remarks are a "leak" reflecting a struggle among the Kremlin's wealth-holding factions. Amsterdam thinks that one of these factions must be behind this supposed leak.

There does seem to be a struggle going on, but that isn't very surprising. The same has gone on with some regularity in both Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. These fellows have a lot of spoils to fight over.

Belkovsky, a bearded bear of a man, once worked for exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Then he went to work for Putin. In other words, there is no ideology here. With Belkovsky, it's all business.

And I think there's a simple, non-conspiratorial explanation for the appearance of this material now. It's called the news cycle. Putin is on his way out as president, and there's uncertainty on the outside as to how the levers of power -- and the spoils -- will be shared. So naturally there is interest among journalists, editors and pundits about anything that would shed light.

Belkovsky's theory has simply intersected with that news cycle. This man strikes me as no one's errand boy.