Rumours about Wladimir Putins tremendous “oligarchesque” personal wealth are surrounding the informal king of Russia since an interview of the german newspaper “Die Welt” with the independent political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky (read the full interview here) in November 2007. The estimations of his wealth are beyond recognition and would make every oligarch envious if even a portion of it would be really on Putins saving book .
Belkovsky claimed that Putin posseses a stake of 4.5 % of Gazprom, 37 % of of the shares of Surgutneftegaz and roughly 75 % of Gunvor, an oil trader based in Switzerland with profits of $ 8 billion in 2007 (figures from this guardian article). All together he should be loaded with roughly $ 40 billion. Not bad for a stint of 8 years as the Prime Minister.
So, what does all this has to do with Wikileaks?
Last december, Dr. Kolesnikov, former employee of the “Putinfund” and now whistle-blower, published a letter on corruptionfreerussia.com, addressed to the Russian Prime Minister Medwedejew, in which he outlines in detail how corrupt Putin and his business fellows are. According to Kolesnikov his business friends “donated”, in example, the sum of $ 1 billion to build a palace for the former prime minister.
It took only a few weeks till someone leaked pictures of the mansion to RuLeaks.net who published them on their website in January (direct link to the pictures). RuLeaks.net, who originally started as a Russian language translated version of Wikileaks, operates now as the whistle-blower site for Russia and intends to publish original content. According to the Moscow Times, the people behind RuLeaks.ru are members of the Russian Pirate Party whose aim it is to “clean up the state”. Even there is no evidence that the palace belongs to Putin or his associates, the website enjoys a great popularity with 80.000 hits a day since the pictures were published.
In a state were critical journalists do not have a very long half-life period and the media is widely controlled by the Russian state, the Internet and anonymous whistle-blower platforms like RuLeaks.ru are a huge opportunity to publish and spread critical opinions and material which unmasks the corruptive elite of Moscow. Even the stone seems to be rolling slow and Russia is a flat country, at least Wikileaks and RuLeaks.ru got the ball rolling.
Links:
Russian whistle-blower RuLeaks.netRussian Times article on RuLeaks.net
Article by the Washington Post on Kolesnikovs tale
Written by Leaker3
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