Who is Kirill Shamalov? Putin's ex-son-in-law allegedly bought $380M stake in petrochemicals firm for just $100
Photos of the wedding of Russian President Vladimir Putin's younger daughter have been leaked and are doing the rounds online even as a report claims that the strongman’s former son-in-law bought a $380 million stake in a Russian petrochemicals firm for $100 just after the wedding.
Kirill Shamalov bought a stake in petrochemicals giant Sibur at a hugely reduced rate months after marrying Katerina Tikhonova, Putin’s 34-year-old younger daughter from his former wife Lyudmila, in 2013, according to a report filed by iStories that does investigative journalism. Their marriage ended in 2018.
Such high secrecy is maintained over Putin’s private life that Moscow has never confirmed the identities of his daughters although Washington has named Shamalov as the Russian president’s son-in-law and a member of Russia’s "billionaire elite".
The leaked photographs of the wedding of Shamalov and Tikhonova at the Igora ski resort in Russia in 2013 broke Putin’s taboo over not sharing details of his family life. Putin’s opposition has slammed the deal. Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny called the deal a "$380 million wedding gift" to accuse the Putin regime of indulging in corruption. The Kremlin defended the president’s family saying the investigations into Putin’s family were “lies that are unable to reach their goal”.
The report also said that Shamalov had purchased a 3.8 percent stake of the company valued at $10 billion, which means the market value of his shares was around a whopping $380 million. The $100 that he allegedly paid would have been 3.8 million times less than his estimated market value.
According to many, the deal might have made Shamalov the youngest Russian billionaire at the age of just 32. The chemicals giant did not contest the terms of the deal but said there were "no exclusive conditions for Shamalov", according to a report in Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, also an investigative reporting body. “The conditions of the purchase … didn’t differ from the conditions of purchases by other managers,” said Dmitry Konov, the company’s chairman.
Who are Shamalov and Tikhonova?
Shamalov, who was born in March 1982, is a businessman and former economic adviser to the Russian government. He is the younger son of Nikolai Shamalov, a shareholder in Rossiya Bank, which is considered by US officials as the personal bank of the Russian elite. He studied at Saint Petersburg State University where he got a degree in jurisprudence.
In 2018, the Trump administration targeted more than 30 Russian government officials, oligarchs and business entities for sanctions citing “the Kremlin’s malign agenda” and it included Shamalov, who also received a loan of more than $1 billion from the state-owned Gazprombank.
Also, Paradise Papers revealed in 2017 that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has an interest in Navigator Holdings, which earns huge annually transporting gas for Russian energy firm Sibur. However, a commerce department spokesperson told MEAWW that Ross never met or engaged with Shamalov. In a report published in November 2017, the BBC quoted a commerce department spokesperson saying Ross "recuses himself from any matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels" and "works closely with Commerce Department ethics officials to ensure the highest ethical standards".
The US administration also said previously that Shamalov's investment in Sibur saw his fortunes improving drastically. “Within 18 months, he acquired a large portion of shares of Sibur, a Russia-based company involved in oil and gas exploration, production, processing and refining,” the Treasury Department said.
In 2018, Shamalov got separated from Tikhonova and reportedly married Zhanna Volkova. He allegedly lost 50 percent of his wealth because of the separation. Tikhonova, too, has made a financial fortune as some of Putin’s wealthy friends have backed her, a 2015 report by Reuters said. Though Tikhonova’s identity was not confirmed earlier, a senior Russian figure revealed to Reuters that she uses the surname Tikhonova.
Along with her former husband Shamalov, the 34-year-old Tikhonova, an acrobatic dancer, would have corporate holdings worth about $2 billion, as per the estimates that financial analysts told Reuters. “That wealth stems mainly from a large publicly disclosed stake in a major gas and petrochemical company that Kirill acquired from Gennady Timchenko, another longtime friend of Putin,” the report said.
The report claimed that the couple has among its holdings, a seaside villa in France’s Biarritz, estimated to be worth almost $3.7 million. That property was also reportedly acquired by Shamalov from Timchenko, a commodities trader.
Tikhonova is also known to be doing well in academia and runs a couple of publicly funded projects at Moscow State University. A Reuters examination of public documents also showed that Tikhonova has signed contracts worth several million dollars from state-owned bodies for work at the university to be conducted by organizations that she directs. There is no indication, however, that Tikhonova made any personal gain from this work, the Reuters report added.
The revelations about Putin’s former son-in-law will certainly boost his opposition after the recent reports that the 68-year-old Russian president could quit next month because of deteriorating health conditions. Putin’s close aides though have rubbished such speculations.