The Tsar's Palace: Putin's Wealth



How Vladimir Putin acquires his luxuries, and how they're hidden from the world.

Officially, Vladimir Putin is not a rich man. On paper, he owns the following: an 800 square foot apartment, a trailer, two cars and a modest salary of $140,000 a year. In reality, he is one of the richest men on Earth. If you like our content, become a patron to get our exclusive premium episodes, plus our public episodes ad-free.

After the intro, Sandra has a few things to say to Justice Samuel Alito regarding the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion about overturning Roe vs Wade. Then we move into Putin’s wealth: he also has yachts, mansions, gold toilets and expensive watches. 1

There's also the palace on the Black Sea coast that is still under construction, revealed to the world in drone footage by Alexei Navalny before his imprisonment. It features a hockey rink, a vineyard on the grounds of the adjacent property, its own border checkpoint, its own self-enforced no-fly zone, a casino, and of course a hookah bar with a stripper pole and an ancient Greek Orthodox church moved to the site brick by brick. FSB are the title holders. 2

Western billionaires use the same methods as oligarchs to hide their wealth from taxation. We discuss a couple of good examples, for instance the case of Suleiman Kerimov, who owned several Russian banks and also the country's largest gold mining company, Polyus Gold. Kerimov's wealth was hidden behind a Swiss accountant who even used his town's local tattoo artist to send wire transfers between shell companies, to the tune of about $700 million dollars. Most of Suleiman’s wealth came from his investment in Gazprom, a Russian gas company, to the tune of about $21 billion. 3

There's also the case of a few Harvard economics professors who tried to rip off the Russian banking system by taking over the clearing bank for the entire Russian economy with a $400,000 dollar loan from a dentist uncle in Idaho.  It all ended in hurt feelings, fraud charges, and tears. But they did gain money in the end by investing in Gazprom. 4.

We also discuss some of Sandra's personal stories about Lada cars, Boris Berezovsky, loans for shares during Yeltsin's admin, and the scam auctions which set all of this in motion from her home country of Romania back when the Soviet party fell apart and Nancy Pelosi’s historic visit to Kyiv, meeting Volodymyr Zelensky.

Also included: Kursk, Ozero dachas, Yeltsin, Roman Abramovich, novichok, Scarface, gold toilets, Trump, KGB, Alina Kabayeva, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, Luiza Rozova, Sergei Roldugin, Boris Rotenberg, Svetlana Krivonogikh, Timchenko, Kolbin, Kovalchuk, Panama & Pandora Papers, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.


1. Mike McIntire. Why Tracking Putin’s Wealth Is So Difficult. The New York Times. April 2022. 

2. Inside 'Putin's Palace'. Radio Free Europe. January 2021. 

3. James Oliver, Nassos Stylianou and Steve Swann. Hidden Wealth of One of Putin’s 'Inner Circle' Revealed. BBC. April 2022. 

4. David McClintick. How Harvard Lost Russia. Institutional Investor. January 2006. 

You must be logged in and have a username in your profile to view comments.