Vladimir Putin’s daughter’s wedding photos have been leaked as a report claims his son-in-law bought a $380million stake in Russian petrochemical firm for $100 after marrying her.
Kirill Shamalov, 38, bought the stake in petrochemicals giant Sibur at a massively reduced rate months after marrying Putin’s younger daughter Katerina, 34, according to the investigation by iStories.
Putin’s private life is so secretive that the Kremlin has never even confirmed the identities of his daughters, although the US government has named Shamalov as Putin’s son-in-law and a member of the country’s ‘billionaire elite’.
The photographs from Shamalov and Katerina’s the three-day nuptials at Igora ski resort in 2013 break Putin’s taboo over never revealing details of his family life.
Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny branded the deal a ‘$380 million wedding gift’, intimating high level corruption.
Responding to the latest reports, the Kremlin said the investigations into Putin’s family were ‘lies that are unable to reach their goal’.
Katerina Tikhonova (left), an acrobatic dancer widely believed to be Vladimir Putin’s younger daughter, married businessman Kirill Shamarov (right) in 2013 and he is reported to have bought discounted shares in a petrochemicals firm soon afterwards. In 2018, reports said the pair had split, and Shamarov was linked to socialite Zhanna Volkova (pictured with Shamarov)
The investigative report said that Shamalov had bought a 3.8 per cent stake of a company valued at $10billion, meaning the market value of his shares was around $380million.
However, the $100 that he allegedly paid would have been 3.8million times less than this estimated market value.
The deal was thought to have helped make Shamalov the youngest billionaire in Russia at the age of just 32.
Only months earlier he was believed to have married Katerina in a ceremony held under tight security at the ski resort.
Until now Katerina is best known as a former high-kicking ‘rock’n’roll’ dancer who moved on to spearhead a major new Russian artificial intelligence initiative.
Her marriage came to an end in 2018 when Shamalov became involved with ‘seductive socialite’ lover Zhanna Volkova, who has close connections to London.
The investigative outlet said details of the transaction had come to light via a leaked trove of emails which included Shamalov’s own correspondence.
Lavish property also came to the newly-wed pair including a 4.5 million euros Biarritz mansion, and a property near Moscow where the renovation came to almost eight million euros, the emails indicate.
The chemicals firm did not deny the terms of the deal, but said there were ‘no exclusive conditions for Shamalov’, according to the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
‘The conditions of the purchase… didn’t differ from the conditions of purchases by other managers,’ said company chairman Dmitry Konov.
But iStories claimed that other managers had paid far more substantial sums for their stakes in the petrochemical firm.
Vladimir Putin, pictured in Moscow today, keeps his private life secret and little is known about his friends or family
Shamalov’s investment in Sibur was previously reported by the US government in 2018, which said his fortunes had ‘drastically improved’ after his marriage and named him on a list of 17 ‘oligarchs’.
‘Within 18 months, he acquired a large portion of shares of Sibur, a Russia-based company involved in oil and gas exploration, production, processing, and refining,’ the Treasury Department said.
After buying more shares from another Putin associate, Shamalov ‘joined the ranks of the billionaire elite around Putin’, US officials said.
The Russian president divorced his wife Lyudmila in 2013, but his private life is scarcely mentioned by most of the Russian media, with little known about his family.
The Kremlin website says that Putin’s older daughter Maria was born in 1985, and Katerina in 1986.
Putin has previously said: ‘I have a private life in which I do not permit interference. It must be respected.’
The disclosures are the latest embarrassing attack on the Kremlin from opposition or independent media outlets in Russia.
Another revealed the identities of an alleged former Putin lover and his ‘love child’, a high school graduate now aged 17.
Yet another – a tax leak – revealed the high salary earned by Putin’s supposed partner Alina Kabaeva, 37, a former Olympic gold medal winning gymnast.
There have also been unsubstantiated rumours on Putin’s health, and claims his inner circle want him to quit next year.
Putin’s spokesman today refused to comment on the disclosures.
‘We are still not commenting on such stories,’ said Dmitry Peskov.
‘We have said in the past that such information drills would continue, we are – and were – aware of it.
‘Usually it’s just rumours — often the ones that are not true at all — cobbled together, sometimes well, sometimes not so much. And we treat it as such.’
He made clear he expects the attack on Putin to continue and that he is ‘more or less’ aware of who is behind it.
He did not give details but said: ‘I won’t say their names. It suffices us to know who they are.’