What is the Russian asset tracker and why are we publishing it?
Today, the Guardian and its reporting partners are launching the Russian asset tracker, the most comprehensive audit yet published of wealth held outside Russia linked to some of the country’s all-powerful oligarchs and officials.
We have examined the ownership of 145 assets, worth more than $17bn, comprising real estate, yachts, private jets and shares in businesses. The information, which dates from 2020 to the presentand serves as a snapshot in time, was assembled in collaboration with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Süddeutsche Zeitung and 25 other news outlets.
The project was conceived in February, as the armed forces of the Russian Federation were massing near the borders of Ukraine. It begins with a list of 35 individuals named last year by the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny as “key enablers and beneficiaries of the Kremlin’s kleptocracy”. At the time, Navalny was urging tougher sanctions to curb Vladimir Putin’s influence.
Three weeks after the invasion, 27 of those individuals are subject to sanctions in the US and Europe. A further seven have been blacklisted in Canada. They are, in the language of the UK sanctions legislation, alleged to be “obtaining a benefit from or supporting the government of Russia”.
The Navalny list includes four of the wealthiest oligarchs, plus heads of state-controlled banks and energy companies, prominent broadcasters, spy agency chiefs, ministers, political advisers and regional governors. Over the coming weeks, the Russian asset tracker will expand to cover a wider group of sanctioned individuals.
Many have denied they are close to Putin or benefit from his regime. For now, however, their assets are frozen, they cannot be sold or used to generate a
Read more on theguardian.com
