- A new video from Alexei Navalny’s FBK Foundation accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of building a $ 1 billion private palace raised by corruption.
- According to the FBK, Putin financed the 17,691-square-foot palace on the Black Sea through a bribe-for-access scheme.
- Navalny was arrested when he arrived in Russia on Sunday. He returns home after an assassination attempt in August last year.
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Alexei Navalny, the arch-critic of Vladimir Putin, accused the Russian president of building a secret $ 1 billion coastal palace funded by a bribery-for-access scheme.
Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, or FBK, on Tuesday released a comprehensive report and a nearly two-hour video in which Navalny describes a palace built near Gelendzhik on the Black Sea.
The FBC said its report was based on interviews with contractors, blueprints and publicly available documents. The Kremlin dismissed the report as ‘pure nonsense’.
Navalny was arrested when he arrived in Russia on Sunday. He has returned for the first time since being poisoned in August in an attempt to take his own life.
Navalny accused Putin of ordering the hit. An investigation by a consortium of journalists found that the hit was carried out by agents of the Russian FSB security agency.
In the video, the FBK said that Putin had been secretly building the 17,691-square-foot palace since at least 2014.
Watch the full video here. It is in Russian but is available with English captions.
Russian presidents have built an official residence on the Black Sea called Bocharov Ruchey near the city of Sochi.
But the Gelendzhik Palace is Putin’s own, the FBK said.
“It’s not a country house. It’s not a cottage. It’s not a dwelling. It’s an entire city, or rather a kingdom,” Navalny said in the video.
Referring to blueprints, official documents and aerial photographs, the FBK stated that the palace and grounds are impenetrable fences, a harbor, a church, an airport, a border point, a wine cave, a theater, a gym, a swimming pool, an “aquadisco” and an ice hockey rink.
“It’s like a separate state in Russia,” Navalny said. “And in this state there is a single and irreplaceable tsar: Putin.”
Putin in December in Moscow.
Aleksey Nikolskyi / AP
According to the FBC, the palace costs 100 billion rubles, or about $ 1.3 billion, and is funded through a corruption scheme in which Putin’s inner circle pays the president for access and influence.
Work on the palace was kept secret, the FBK said.
“Thousands of people working there are being banned from bringing even a simple cell phone with a camera,” the report said.
It added: “Oncoming cars are being inspected at various checkpoints using mirrors and video cameras. Luggage racks and glove compartments are being searched.”
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A Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Navalny’s report on Wednesday. “These are all completely unfounded statements. It’s pure nonsense and a composition, and there is nothing else there,” Peskov told reporters, according to the state-run Interfax news agency.
He said the palace ‘had nothing to do with the president or the Kremlin, adding:’ Therefore, we do not want the slightest desire to be interested in this. ‘
Navalny and its anti-corruption foundation have been a thorn in Putin’s side for years.
Russian authorities have repeatedly tried to close the foundation, with some success, accusing Navalny of fraud in an attempt to silence him.