Vladimir Putin’s ‘women’ given properties

A little-known Russian businessman from St Petersburg has provided properties to multiple women who share one common theme: Russian president Vladimir Putin.

One of the women is Putin’s younger daughter; two are close relatives of a woman Russian media have reported to be Putin’s girlfriend — though the president has strongly denied any relationship.

A fourth is a student who posed for a calendar celebrating the president’s birthday. All of the properties are in upmarket gated complexes in and around Moscow.

Public records show Grigory Baevsky, a 47-year-old business associate of a friend of Mr Putin, sold or transferred the properties to three of the women. In the other case, Mr Putin’s child, Katerina Tikhonova, used the address of a flat owned by Mr Baevsky as her own when registering a new company.

The connections add to the picture of individuals in Mr Putin’s wider circle and the way these people blur the lines between public and private business.

Last year, Reuters reported that Ms Tikhonova, who holds a senior position at Moscow State University, is personally advised by some of Mr Putin’s oldest friends. She is also married to Kirill Shamalov, son of billionaire Nikolai Shamalov, an associate of Mr Putin’s. Mr Baevsky has worked as an aide to another close friend of Putin, his judo partner, Arkady Rotenberg.

Public records show that companies co-owned by Mr Baevsky have benefited from state construction contracts worth at least 6bn rubles (€78m) in the past two years.

Mr Baevsky has previously attracted little attention. His connection to Mr Putin was uncovered by investigative journalist Roman Anin, who was conducting research for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an East European media network.

Mr Baevsky is a former property manager for a state company in St Petersburg. In 2006, he founded a dacha cooperative near the city with Arkady Rotenberg and Rotenberg’s brother Boris, public records show.