© Mash
With its supposedly lavish furnishings, long swimming pool and digital dance studio, an opulent manor said to belong to Russian President Vladimir Putin shocked viewers of a documentary made by Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.
Now, however, the very existence of its gilded corridors and plush carpets has been called into question, after a film crew from the Moscow-based Mash news channel paid a visit to the property in Gelendzhik. On Friday, the reporters released their footage on the Telegram messaging service.
Having gained unprecedented access to the site, the journalists weren't greeted by butlers or security guards, but by "an entrance without a gate," they said.
Instead of a luxurious coastal home, the channel's editor-in-chief, Maxim Iksanov, described it as "a big pile of concrete."
Surrounded by scaffolding,
the building has been only partly completed from the outside, while the interior is effectively a shell, with wires hanging from un-plastered walls. Across 16 identical rooms, bags of concrete are stacked up, with the swimming pool and much of the garden still unfinished.
Comment: Compare that to Navalny's fantasy:
Thierry Meyssan points out
the obvious:
The film begins with the biography of the president, drawing on the archives of the East German political police kindly opened by the BKA [Federal Crime Police Office]. The problem is that there is no connection between the documents exhibited and Alexei Navalny's discourse. They only contain illustrations (wish the exception of the KGB card of one of President Putin's companions).
Then the film takes us back to the palace using new images captured by a drone. Here again, these images fall short of illustrating Alexeï Navalny's point. They simply show a palace built by Italian architect Lanfranco Cirillo.
Finally, Alexeï Navalny displays blueprints, cost estimates and invoices for the Palace. The only thing they prove is that this residence is luxurious. But these facts have been known for a long time. The Russian opposition figure then claims that the property deeds are forgeries. After convoluted explanations, he purports that the building does not belong to billionaire Alexander Ponomarenko, but to President Putin, whom he calls "the richest man in the world".
Let us recall that the CIA had already accused Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat of being secret billionaires. Forbes magazine had even confirmed such accounts which, after their death, turned out to be malevolent fabrications. Thus, the CIA attributed to Yasser Arafat ownership of the PLO funds that he managed in his own name, no bank being willing to receive funds from the Palestinian resistance. Everyone who knew Castro, Arafat and their families have never had any doubts about them.
The slipshod approach of the documentary does not argue in favor of Navalny.
UPDATE: Arkady Rotenberg has come forward publicly as the
owner of the property.
Rotenberg, Putin's former judo sparring partner who sold his stake in gas pipeline construction firm Stroygazmontazh in 2019 for a sum which RBC business daily put at some 75 billion roubles ($990 million), said he bought the palace two years ago.
"Now it will no longer be a secret, I am the beneficiary," Rotenberg said in a video published by Mash channel in Telegram. "There was a rather complicated facility, there were a lot of creditors, and I managed to become the beneficiary."
He gave no further financial details of the purchase or how it had been funded.
It won't be a personal palace for Putin, Rotenberg, or anybody else, but
a hotel:
He added that he intends to use the location as an apartment hotel, once it is finished.
"I like the hotel business...and have been involved in it for several years now," Rotenberg said, adding that he owns several 'objects' throughout Russia. He explained that the site in question has a troubled financial history, but he nevertheless acquired it a few years ago, putting faith in its "gorgeous" coastal location, near the resort town of Gelendzhik.
"This project is somewhat scandalous and difficult. But mark my words, in 12 or 18 months I'll invite you to witness for yourself what beauty it will be," he told Mash editor-in-chief, Maksim Iksanov, joking that the journalist may get a discount since he already visited the property.
Which should have been an obvious guess given the details of the floor-plan revealed by Navalny. But you've got to give it to Navalny. He's good at propaganda. Even when the hotel is ready for business, many of Navalny's dupes in the West will still believe it is Putin's palace. Because good luck getting Western media to retract their breathless reports once the truth is made clear.
Comment: Some are speculating that Musk has made a few comments recently that have provoked the establishment:
Here is Musk again, today, weighing in on the market intervention by Wall Street to protect financial speculators: