Putin’s Monte Carlo mystery, secret money and swanky real estate

MONACO — The apartment hangs over the blue waters of the Mediterranean beneath the Monte Carlo casino of James Bond legend. In the harbor below, royals, moguls and oligarchs float by in iceberg-size yachts.

There is little about the humble background of Svetlana Krivonogikh to indicate that she had the means to acquire property overlooking this playground for the world’s elite. The Russian woman reportedly grew up in a crowded communal apartment in St. Petersburg, and held jobs that included cleaning a neighborhood shop.

But previously undisclosed financial records combined with local tax documents show that Krivonogikh, 46, became the owner of the apartment in Monaco through an offshore company created just weeks after she gave birth to a girl. The child was born at a time when, according to a Russian media report last year, she was in a secret, years-long relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Krivonogikh’s luxury unit at the Monte Carlo Star is revealed by documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with The Washington Post. The documents, known as the Pandora Papers, expose her ownership of a shell company in the British Virgin Islands, as well as her use of a Monaco financial services firm that simultaneously worked for one of Putin’s billionaire friends.

The files do not indicate where she got the money to pay for an apartment that cost $4.1 million in 2003, and is probably worth far more than that today. But the transaction coincided with a period when Krivonogikh was allegedly in a relationship with Putin and amassing an astonishing portfolio of assets in Russia, according to Proekt, an online Russian investigative outlet that exposed her alleged link to the Kremlin leader and has since been outlawed in Russia.

A Kremlin spokesman dismissed that report when it was published last year. But details about the apartment bolster its core claim — that after Krivonogikh began her reported relationship with Putin, she accumulated assets often linked to his close associates in some fashion.

Before the Proekt report, Krivonogikh’s ties to Putin’s inner circle had surfaced but not caught public attention. Bank Rossiya disclosed in 2010 that she was one of its biggest shareholders through her company OOO Relax. The St. Petersburg-based bank would later be subject to sanctions by the U.S. Treasury, which labeled it the “personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation.”

Krivonogikh has not spoken about her alleged relationship with Putin or her remarkable accumulation of wealth.

But her daughter, who turned 18 this year and goes by the name Luiza Rozova, has fueled speculation about her paternity in interviews, capitalizing on the attention to build a growing online following. In pictures, Rozova bears a striking resemblance to the Russian president, and she has acknowledged that likeness even while refusing to confirm or deny that Putin is her father.

No father is listed for Rozova on official Russian documents obtained by Proekt and reviewed by The Post. But those documents do record a middle name, “Vladimirovna,” that is a patronymic meaning “daughter of Vladimir.” On her Instagram account, which has more than 83,000 followers, she gives her name as “rozova luiza v.”

Krivonogikh did not respond to requests for comment sent to her through her St. Petersburg-based businesses, Bank Rossiya, her daughter and the Monaco financial services firm. Efforts to reach Krivonogikh at three residential addresses associated with her were not successful.

A Kremlin spokesman did not respond to a request for comment submitted by the ICIJ on behalf of The Post and other partner media organizations in the Pandora project.

The clues connecting Krivonogikh to the Monaco property are contained in the massive new repository of financial materials. The Pandora documents include spreadsheets, memos, invoices and emails obtained from law firms, accounting offices and trust administrators that operate in some of the world’s most permissive financial jurisdictions. The trove contains over 11.9 million documents, more than those exposed five years ago in the Panama Papers, a similar collection of files that triggered scandals and reforms.

The records illuminate the hidden financial maneuverings of world leaders, billionaire investors, celebrities, athletes and other elite clients. The cache provides a particularly expansive view of how many of those most loyal to Putin have grown exorbitantly rich and stashed assets abroad, even as the Russian president has disparaged the West and called on Russian elites to keep their capital at home.

The files show, for example, that media executive Konstantin Ernst obtained a stake in a lucrative real estate deal after winning the Russian leader’s praise for helping to stage the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The project involved converting Soviet-era cinema complexes still owned by the state into private shopping and apartment developments. Ernst’s partnership has not been disclosed publicly but is detailed in Pandora documents related to the project.

In a written statement, Ernst confirmed his involvement in the real estate venture but denied that it was “compensation for the Olympics 2014.” He did not address other questions submitted by The Post, the ICIJ and other media partners but said, “I haven’t committed any illegal actions.”

Other documents show that Herman Gref, the head of Russian state-owned Sberbank, held more than $50 million in cash and loan receivables offshore for his family using accounts in Samoa, Panama and Singapore, despite serving as the most prominent public face of Russia’s state banking system.

Singapore authorities flagged transactions involving Gref and two of his Russian colleagues, according to an audit report by the Monetary Authority of Singapore included in the Pandora files, and later fined the financial firm handling Gref’s assets $1.1 million for failing to comply with anti-money-laundering rules. A spokeswoman for Singapore’s monetary authority said the firm paid the fine and has taken remedial actions to address the failures.

Gref declined to comment through a Sberbank spokeswoman.

Overall, the materials reinforce the depiction of Russia as a country where an elite close to government power make millions of dollars and safeguard that personal wealth using opaque financial structures overseas.

Five years after the Panama Papers revelations, the new files show that rather than retreat from the use of offshore accounts, wealthy Russians and their money managers have sought to become better at hiding their assets. In one passage, a lawyer who represented two of Putin’s longtime friends warned a Panamanian firm not to repeat the blunders that led to the leak named for that country.

“You are obliged to keep secrecy for our clients,” the lawyer wrote in a 2016 message, “and to not make feasible at all a second Panama Papers story.”

A trail of documents

Those involved in arranging the Monte Carlo purchase for Krivonogikh took measures that ensured that her name and status as owner did not appear on public records.

On April 2, 2003 — almost exactly a month after Krivonogikh’s daughter was born — a shell company called Brockville Development Ltd. was incorporated on the Caribbean island of Tortola, according to records in the Pandora trove. Months later, Monaco property records show, that shell company purchased the apartment in Monaco for 3.6 million euros, about $6 million in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation.

The building is “highly sought-after with the world’s wealthiest,” according to online promotional material from a Monaco real estate firm. The complex’s “light and airy” apartments boast “spacious terraces ideal for al fresco dining or watching some of the world’s most luxurious superyachts sail in and out of world-famous Port Hercules,” the firm writes.

The harbor of Monte Carlo, where a woman who reportedly was in a secret relationship with Putin has a luxury apartment.

A hallway at the Monte Carlo Star in Monaco, where Svetlana Krivonogikh became the owner of a luxury apartment through an offshore company created weeks after she gave birth to a girl in 2003, when she reportedly was in a secret relationship with Putin.

The Pandora files do not show precisely when Krivonogikh became Brockville’s “beneficial owner,” a term…