| birth date | October 07, 1952 (70 years old) |
| Born in | Leningrad, Soviet Union |
| nationality | Russia |
| Marital status | divorced from Lyudmila Alexandrovna Putina (since 2014) |
| Profession | Politician |
| Full name | Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin |
| Children | 2 (Mariya Putina, Yekaterina Putina) |
How rich is Vladimir Putin?
As President of Russia, Vladimir Putin is one of the most influential people on the planet. Putin is not only the richest Russian but also the richest man in Europe. But the wealth does not come from his salary as a politician, which is rather low compared to Angela Merkel or Donald Trump. The Russian President has his fingers in the biggest oil companies and thus steals considerable sums from his foreign accounts. Of course, his name does not appear in any register of shareholders. There are no official statements on this either. Vladimir Putin ‘s estimated fortune is 36 billion euros.
Putin has very powerful relationships with political and business figures. Forbes magazine published a list of Putin’s 10 most influential friends, who control six of Russia’s top ten companies. This also includes the local media group of Russia, which manages many television stations and newspapers.
Putin’s shares in oil companies:
- Gazprom – 4.5%
- Surgutneftegaz – 37%
The US Treasury Department also suspected direct access to Gunvor’s fortune in 2014 (50% through close friend Gennady Timchenko). A Gunvor spokesman in July 2020 on VermögensMagazin.de:
The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin was or is in any way involved in the Swiss-based oil trading company Gunvor is completely unfounded. We note that President Putin has no beneficial or other proprietary interest in Gunvor and has never had in the past. He is not a beneficiary of Gunvor or the Company’s activities.
How much money does Putin really have?
In early 2015, hedge fund manager Bill Browder made the claim in an interview with CNN that Putin is the richest person in the world . He claims that Putin’s fortune is said to be far higher than we had previously assumed, at an alleged $200 billion. If this claim is true, then the Russian President would actually be the richest person on this planet and would be in the ranking with more than twice as much wealth ahead of entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos , Bill Gates , Carlos Slim Helu , Warren Buffett and Co. However, we do not yet trust this claim and continue to assume an estimated fortune of 36 billion euros, as the BBC informant and political scientist Stanislaw Belkowski put it at the beginning of 2016.
The career of Vladimir Putin
The later Russian President was born on October 7th, 1952 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) as the son of two factory workers. He first attended school and then completed a law degree at the University of Leningrad and then worked as a KGB officer from 1975. He had a rapid career and was stationed in the GDR (Dresden) from 1985, where he improved his German language skills . Five years later he moved back to what was then the USSR and worked as an assistant for international affairs at Leningrad University. In the same year Vladimir Putin became an adviser to his former professor Anatoly Sobchak, who became the head of the Liningrad city parliament.
The political career now took its course. In 1994, Putin became the first deputy mayor and was Sobchak’s direct representative, accompanying several offices. When Shobchak lost re-election as mayor in 1995, Putin resigned his posts and subsequently supported Boris Yeltsin’s presidential campaign . Under Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin steadily gained higher positions in the Kremlin and was thus able to rise politically. In 1997, Putin obtained the very controversial doctorate in economics, as the doctoral thesis consisted of many copies. However, these allegations of plagiarism could never be proven.
Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin as his prime minister on August 9, 1999 . When Yeltsin surprisingly resigned on December 31, 1999, on suspicion of large-scale money laundering, Putin took over the office of Russian President until a successor was elected. As one of his first official acts, the interim president granted Boris Yeltsin impunity for his crimes and then cleaned up the Kremlin and fired some corrupt people and filled their offices with new ones.
The old and new Russian President
In the presidential elections of 2000, after the resignation of Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin won with an absolute majority of 52.9 percent and became the Russian president in the first term. Because of his harsh actions in the war against Chechnya, Putin was held in high esteem by Russian citizens. In the next elections in 2004, Putin again became president with a majority of 71% and began his second term. According to the Russian constitution, a president can serve only two terms of four years each, after which a new president must move into the Kremlin.
In 2008, Dmitry Medvedev, a friend and close confidante of Putin, became the new President of Russia and Vladimir Putin again became Prime Minister . Medvedev was more or less Russia’s four-year-old legal front man, and Putin continued to pull the strings in the background. So it was clear that Vladimir Putin would run for president again after four years (2012). However, in 2010 the term of office for the “new” future president was increased to six years.
Unsurprisingly, on March 4, 2012, Putin won the presidential election again and thus ruled Russia in his third term as president. The next presidential election followed on March 18, 2018, which he won with 76.6 percent of the vote, and on May 7, 2018 for his fourth term was sworn in. Allegations of election manipulation were raised, but these were quickly nipped in the bud. In any case, the president would have stayed in power until 2024 and would then have found a constitutional loophole again to continue to govern in the background. In preparation for this, a constitutional amendment was carried out in March 2020, which annulled the previous terms of office of the president. The constitutional amendment (78% popular approval in June 2020) allows Putin to rule for another two terms as president. He could stay in the Kremlin until 2036 and would then be 83 years old.
The possession of Vladimir Putin
- 20 palaces and residences
- 43 airmen
- 15 helicopters
- 4 luxury yachts
- 700 luxury cars
- Considerable watch collection worth over 500,000 euros
- Gigantic art collection , which is constantly being expanded
2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi
The 2014 Olympics are widely regarded as Putin’s “baby”. It should be the most expensive games of all time. With investments equivalent to 37 billion euros, it was made possible to host the Winter Games on the north-eastern coast of the Black Sea. Boris Nemtsov, opposition politician and major critic of Putin, estimated the volume of embezzlement at around 30 billion and even described the Olympic Games in Sochi as an example of mismanagement and thieving by Putin’s government and its oligarchs.