Sergei Roldugin, the cellist who looks after Putin’s fortune

Issued on: 02/04/2023 – 16:01

On the face of it, the court case looks rather tame for this era: a Zurich court found four Russian bankers guilty on March 30 of failing to carry out the necessary checks on the origin of deposits into two bank accounts by Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin in 2014 and 2016.

The sentences imposed were light: no jail time and fines that only come into effect if the bankers break the law again over the next two years.

However, the Roldugin case was ultimately about a much bigger question: whether Switzerland deserves its reputation as a “sanctuary for the Russian elite’s dirty money”, as German paper Suddeutsche Zeitung put it.

One of the most sensitive questions in Russian politics also hung over the trial: Putin’s legendary wealth, the precise extent of which remains a mystery.

‘One of very few people Putin trusts’

Roldugin – who deposited more than €45 million in the two accounts – has long been referred to as “Putin’s cellist” or even “Putin’s best friend”.

“Roldugin’s closeness to Putin was just a kind of anecdote until 2016,” said Stephen Hall, an expert on Russian politics at Bath University. But that year the Panama Papers’ revelations about the vast tax evasion engineered by Panama-based law firms showed just how significant a figure Roldugin is. At that moment it became clear that Roldugin is a key figure in the operation to hide Putin’s fortune.

“Roldugin has quite a particular role because he’s one of very few people Putin really trusts,” said Tyler Kustra, an expert on corruption at Nottingham University.

This trust stems from a relationship fostered more than four decades ago, with what Roldugin himself called an “episode bordering on illegality” in an interview with a local Russian paper in Tatarstan province.

In 1977, a 26-year-old Roldugin did his military service in Leningrad (now St Petersburg). He didn’t know anyone there. One night he decided to leave military training camp to party in Leningrad. So he contacted a colleague of his brother’s, who happened to be a KGB agent. That colleague was one Vladimir Putin, the man Roldugin still affectionately calls by the diminutive, “Volodya”.

Putin and Roldugin went on to follow radically different professional paths – but that didn’t get in the way of their friendship. Indeed, it was Roldugin who introduced his friend to Lyudmila Shkrebneva, who became the first Mrs Putina in 1983 (they announced their divorce in 2013).

Putin chose Roldugin as the godfather of his first daughter, Maria, born in 1985. In “First Person”, a book of interviews of Putin by several journalists published months after he became president in 2000, Roldugin’s is the name that comes up most frequently. Roldugin was allowed to open and run a “Musical House” in an opulent 19th-century palace in St Petersburg in 2006.

Among Putin’s circle of trusted friends, Roldugin is “one of very few who doesn’t look like he’s taken advantage of his closeness to the president to line his own pockets”, Hall pointed out. 

“I don’t have millions,” Roldugin told The New York Times in 2014.

In a way, Roldugin’s statement could be both true and false; it depends on the real beneficiary of the nearly $2 billion that the Panama Papers found had flowed through accounts in his name.

Swiss action ‘not nearly enough’

The cellist is even a minority shareholder in Rossiya Bank, which US authorities say is the personal bank of Putin and his family, and which Washington targeted with sanctions after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Roldugin’s small stake is likely worth several million dollars. 

The money controlled by companies Roldugin manages has been used for personal luxuries like yachts and a ski resort, as well as shares in strategic businesses like Video Internationale, Russia’s biggest TV advertising company.

The money controlled by companies Roldugin manages has been used for personal luxuries like yachts and a ski resort, as well as shares in strategic businesses like Russian TV advertising companies.

But many don’t believe that this cellist has built up a small business empire all on his own – including US authorities, who accuse him of looking after Putin’s secret fortune.

Roldugin seems to be “one of a small number of people Putin uses as fronts to hide his fortune”, Kustra said.

Hall noted that Roldugin is “almost the only close ally who isn’t either a businessman or a political operative” – so his lack of personal ambition outside of cello-playing makes him all the more valuable to the Russian president.

The Swiss court’s decision this week to convict the bankers is very significant, because it means that bastion of financial secrecy will no longer be able to accept money linked to Russia – including Putin’s personal fortune – without subjecting it to scrutiny.

Nevertheless, the penalty imposed is “nowhere near enough and will likely fail to end Swiss banks’ role as a destination for illegal Russian financial flows”, Kustra lamented.

“These bankers have, at best, decided to ignore the provenance of money that most likely belongs to Putin – and they deserved to pay much higher fines or go to jail,” he concluded.

This article was translated from the original in French.