From the KGB to ties with the Kremlin elite: how Vladimir Strzhalkovsky bypassed sanctions and amassed a lavish fortune

From the KGB to ties with the Kremlin elite: how Vladimir Strzhalkovsky bypassed sanctions and amassed a lavish fortune

Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a fellow member of Vladimir Putin’s Leningrad KGB circle, was involved in the tourism business and the organization of prostitution in the 1990s.

After Putin came to power, he first found himself in the government and then became CEO of Norilsk Nickel. Today, this former KGB officer and his son, who graduated from the Foreign Intelligence Service Academy, have settled in Europe.

They have built an entire holding company that includes alcohol producers in Italy, France and the Czech Republic, five luxury spa hotels in Italy and Greece, a pub in Austria and several restaurants in Moscow. Despite their enormous turnover, a significant portion of these assets either generates no profit or operates at a loss, raising suspicions of money laundering. The Strzhalkovskys have not only avoided sanctions but have also established close ties with European aristocrats.

KGB pimp

Vladimir Strzhalkovsky was born in Leningrad in 1954. In 1977, he graduated from the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute and soon began working for the KGB Directorate of the USSR for the Leningrad Region, where he remained until the collapse of the Soviet Union. During his service in the KGB, he met Nikolai Patrushev and Vladimir Putin, and these connections played a decisive role in his subsequent career.

Putin and Vladimir Strzhalkovsky

When Vladimir Putin became chairman of the Committee for External Relations of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office in 1991, Strzhalkovsky founded the travel company Neva, becoming its CEO, and headed it until 1999. In addition to tourism cruises themselves, one of the company’s areas of activity was the organization of prostitution. This became known from case No. 633, “On Pimping,” which was heard in December 1998 by the District Court in the Finnish city of Kouvola.

According to the court’s ruling, from January 1996 to October 1997, the travel company Neva organized more than two thousand trips by Russian sex workers to Valkeala and Lapinjärvi. Among the defendants charged with “organizing openly practiced prostitution by women arriving at a motel from Russia” were Strzhalkovsky’s deputy Timraliyev and Neva representative Natalia Oksa. Although the court confirmed that the company had been involved in organizing prostitution, the defendants avoided liability: Oksa allegedly “limited herself to preparing visas for tourists based on pre-submitted lists,” while Timraliyev “is not criminally liable for the actions of another person.”

Three months after Vladimir Putin was appointed prime minister, his former KGB colleague received the position of deputy minister for physical culture, sports and tourism. At the same time, judging by reports in the Finnish press, Strzhalkovsky maintained ties to the brothel business even while holding a ministerial position. In May 2000, he appointed Oksa as an independent representative of the Russian Ministry of Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism in Finland and, by the same order, transferred the ministry’s property in Finland to her management. As an investigation by Yle showed, at least two apartments formerly owned by the ministry were being used as brothels.

Strzhalkovsky maintained ties to the brothel business even while holding a ministerial position.

After Putin took office as president, Strzhalkovsky’s career continued its rapid ascent. In June 2000, he was appointed chairman of the Russian State Committee for Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism, and in July became deputy minister of Economic Development and Trade under German Gref. During Vladimir Putin’s second term, Strzhalkovsky was appointed head of the Federal Agency for Tourism, and during this period he also received the rank of Active State Councillor of the 1st class.

Not a very effective manager and a $100 million “golden parachute”

Strzhalkovsky’s most profitable position was that of chairman of the board of OJSC MMC Norilsk Nickel, which he held from August 2008 to December 2012. Analysts noted that his main function was not managing the company but lobbying the Kremlin on behalf of Vladimir Potanin’s interests. Potanin initially shared the asset with Mikhail Prokhorov and later with Oleg Deripaska, who bought Prokhorov’s blocking stake. Strzhalkovsky himself was privately called a “tourist” at Norilsk Nickel’s enterprises. This was not only because of his previous work in the tourism industry, but also because he preferred to run one of the country’s largest industrial enterprises without leaving Moscow and had virtually no influence on its operational activities.

Potanin and Vladimir Strzhalkovsky

The “tourist’s” compensation was not merely generous, but also one of the highest in Russia. Strzhalkovsky received $400,000 a month, as well as two types of bonuses. The first was $3 million a year if the company did not incur losses, while the second was calculated based on the annual increase in the value of Norilsk Nickel phantom shares registered in Strzhalkovsky’s name.

Sources at Vedomosti estimated these bonuses at up to $25 million a year. RBC gave a similar estimate, putting Strzhalkovsky’s total income for 2009 at between $17 million and $25 million. While Strzhalkovsky was receiving record payments, the authorities of the single-industry city of Norilsk were refusing to repair its worn-out infrastructure in an attempt to reduce the budget deficit.

At the 2009 weighted average exchange rate, Strzhalkovsky could have received approximately half a billion rubles a year at Norilsk Nickel. At the same time, the mayor of Norilsk refused to repair two worn-out collectors and provide street lighting on Krasnoyarskaya and Ordzhonikidze streets in order to save 99.6 million rubles from the city budget.

Despite the record payments to top management, Norilsk Nickel’s development lagged behind other Russian companies. Analysts interviewed by Vedomosti noted that during Strzhalkovsky’s four years at the helm, the company increased in value by 11.6%, while the MICEX index gained 42% over the same period. Yet despite his modest achievements, Strzhalkovsky received the largest severance payment in Russian history. His “golden parachute” amounted to $100 million, which was only slightly less than 10% of Norilsk Nickel’s dividend payments for that period.

How a bank in Cyprus linked the chekist to Trump’s circle

The hundreds of millions of dollars received at Norilsk Nickel brought Strzhalkovsky to the position of deputy chairman of the board of Bank of Cyprus — against his will. The former security officer placed at least half of his payout in a family account at Cyprus Popular Bank (Laiki). But his further plans were disrupted by the 2013 banking crisis.

In May, following a decision by the Cypriot authorities, most of the assets and loans of Laiki Bank were transferred to Bank of Cyprus. Soon, this bank itself underwent restructuring as part of the Cyprus bailout agreement with international creditors. More than 20,000 bank customers who had deposits of more than 100,000 euros became owners of 81.4% of its shares after 47.5% of their uninsured savings were converted into equity at a rate of one euro per share.

Thus, Strzhalkovsky became deputy chairman of the bank’s board and head of its risk committee. Whether this was a coincidence or not, among the bank’s other major shareholders were four people who had been subjects of investigations directly or indirectly linked to Donald Trump.

Among the bank’s other major shareholders were four people who had been subjects of investigations directly or indirectly linked to Donald Trump

One of them was Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, a subject of an investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller over a suspicious deal involving the purchase of a mansion. In 2004, Trump bought a property with a mansion in Florida for $41 million. When he urgently needed money at the height of the 2008 crisis, Rybolovlev bought the mansion from him — not at a discount, as would have been logical at the peak of the crisis, but instead for more than twice as much, paying $95 million. In doing so, Rybolovlev saved Trump from bankruptcy (the Russian businessman later resold the property at a loss for $30 million).

Another major shareholder of the bank, who also brought Strzhalkovsky onto its board of directors, was American billionaire Wilbur Ross. He had worked with Russia since the 1990s as a board member of the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund, promoting the interests of American businesses in the Russian Federation. He specialized in distressed-asset deals, one of which was the Cypriot bank.

Ross was associated with numerous scandals and was very close to Trump. Wilbur was his economic adviser during his first presidential campaign, and after Trump’s victory, Trump made him Secretary of Commerce — which, for a lover of trade wars, was one of the key positions.

Another member of the board was Maxim Goldman, representing Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova. Vekselberg later turned out to be one of the donors to Trump’s campaign. The FBI investigated Vekselberg’s numerous suspicious ties to Trump: for example, it turned out that Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Vekselberg’s companies for “consulting services.”

The board of directors was headed by another person linked to Vekselberg — Renova Management AG director Josef Ackermann. He is notable not only as a Vekselberg associate, but also as a former director of Deutsche Bank. During Ackermann’s tenure as chief executive from 2002 to 2012, Deutsche Bank committed a number of financial violations, the largest of which involved laundering $10 billion in Russian money through offices in New York, Moscow and Cyprus. For these violations, the bank was fined more than $670 million in 2017. And one of the bank’s major clients turned out to be... Donald Trump: his 2016 financial disclosures showed that he had loans from Deutsche Bank totaling $364 million, with repayment due in 2024.

There are no former chekists

Strzhalkovsky’s subsequent appointments showed that he maintained ties both with Putin and with another former colleague from the Leningrad KGB — Nikolai Patrushev. In 2015, Strzhalkovsky joined the supervisory board of Rosselkhozbank. Sources at Kommersant explained this by his acquaintance with Patrushev Sr., whose son Dmitry was chairman of the bank’s board. Documents submitted by the candidate for the supervisory board position also revealed that he held the position of Rosatom’s special representative for the development of nuclear technologies in African countries.

In 2019, PASMI drew attention to the fact that the children of Patrushev and Strzhalkovsky owned neighboring cottages in Gelendzhik. The Patrushevs’ neighbor and owner of a three-story, 449-square-meter cottage with a cadastral value of more than 20 million rubles was Wanda Vladimirovna Strzhalkovskaya, a primary school student who was 9 years old at the time.

In 2016–2019, Strzhalkovsky headed the All-Russian Physical Culture and Sports Society (VFSO) Dynamo. Since its founding by Felix Dzerzhinsky in 1923, Dynamo has remained a club of Soviet and later Russian security and law-enforcement structures. Teams representing employees of the FSO, FSB, SVR and MVD compete in its events, while regional Dynamo societies are headed by heads of regional FSB or Main MVD departments. Nikolai Patrushev is also a member of Dynamo’s board of trustees.

A spy son with a Nazi bent

Strzhalkovsky’s son and a key holder of his assets, Evgeny Strzhalkovsky, is also a professional intelligence officer. He was born in 1980 and graduated from the Academy of the Foreign Intelligence Service (military unit 21247) in 2001, received military ID No. 007203 and began working undercover at Vnesheconombank (a typical arrangement for SVR officers).

As can be seen from the flight database, in 2007 several other SVR officers traveled on the same booking with him — Svyatoslav Kobyakov, who initially worked undercover at RIA Novosti and later at the Russian Ministry of Economic Development’s trade mission in Argentina, and Evgeny Sokolov (military unit 33949), who also worked undercover at VEB and later headed the “alcohol-Nazi-fan-hooligan-role-playing group” “Morgil,” a company controlled by the SVR/FSB. The term “Nazi” is not an exaggeration: the group’s ideology was expressed in the “theory of golimstvo” and involved dividing people into full-fledged, or “normal,” individuals and “golimtsy,” which included, for example, Tolkienists and against whom the use of violence was encouraged.

Popular blogger from the historical-reenactment community Klim Zhukov describes his acquaintance with Strzhalkovsky as follows: “...It all started at the unfinished maneuvers of the ancient Romans on the Karelian Isthmus, where we gathered to beat up the Romans and the role-players who had joined them… Zhenya headed ‘Morgil,’ which was known by almost everyone, if not everyone: this lively club made its living by going to role-playing events and beating people.”

Evgeny Strzhalkovsky in armor

The “Morgil” training sessions resembled those of paramilitary formations, where team members were trained in fencing and combined it with hand-to-hand combat techniques using improvised weapons. Apparently, it was thanks to Strzhalkovsky Sr.’s connections that his son’s friends could use these hand-to-hand combat skills with impunity both in festival fights and outside them.

Strzhalkovsky Sr.’s connections allowed his son’s friends to use their hand-to-hand combat skills with impunity both in festival fights and outside them

The most notorious criminal episode involving “Morgil” was the beating of participants at the “BlinKom-3” role-playing festival, which took place in December 2002 at a school in St. Petersburg’s Vasileostrovsky District. Members of “Morgil” beat two participants, while one of them was shot several times at point-blank range with an air rifle, leaving pellets lodged in his skull. According to the victims, members of “Morgil” threatened to kill them if they went to the police. Even after a complaint was filed, the Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to open a criminal case, which was initiated only after employees of the City Center for the Prevention of Neglect and Drug Addiction among Minors appealed to the prosecutor’s office.

An alcohol empire in Europe

Strzhalkovsky Sr.’s “golden parachute” and the tens of millions of dollars earned during his time at Norilsk Nickel eventually turned into an entire alcohol holding in Europe, registered in his son’s name. Evgeny Strzhalkovsky became a citizen of Monaco and the main holder of the family’s foreign assets. A key link in this system was the anonymous Monegasque company Thesauro Praetor SAM, whose name translates from Latin as “treasurer.” The president and majority beneficiary of this company is Strzhalkovsky Jr.; this is confirmed by the registration documents of the French company The Leeward Rum Company Limited. Through Thesauro Praetor SAM, Strzhalkovsky owns a number of companies in Austria, the United Kingdom, Italy and France.

In the United Kingdom, Strzhalkovsky owns Maison Eugène René UK Ltd, through which he owned two other British firms, both liquidated in 2024: Northern Seas Trading Ltd, registered in Glasgow, and Sandbank Distillery Ltd. The latter intended to revive a whisky distillery at Holy Loch in Argyll, Scotland, and even registered the Lamont brand, but was dissolved in 2024 without ever producing a single bottle.

The name of the whisky refers to another British property owned by Strzhalkovsky Jr. In 2017, he acquired the 12-room Knockdow mansion on Scotland’s Cowal Peninsula, which had belonged to the Lamont clan. The purchase price was £4 million, including the ornamental gardens surrounding the castle and 250 acres of woodland. As British journalists noted, the property is located near the little-known but strategically important Loch Striven refueling station, which is important to the British and American navies operating in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

Until recently, Evgeny’s business partner in the alcohol industry was one of Britain’s most promising wine experts, Liam Stevenson. Liam is the youngest expert to have passed the exam for the Master of Wine qualification, which is held by only 425 people worldwide. In 2024, he received two business awards at once: the O2 Entrepreneur of the Year Award and IWC Regional Merchant of the Year. Among Liam’s businesses is Global Wine Solutions, one of the world’s leading suppliers of premium alcohol to superyachts.

Until December 2024, a quarter of the company’s capital belonged to Evgeny Drozdov, a nominee of Strzhalkovsky, while another 6% was owned by Caroline Ann Madeleine Aldrin, who was also a director of the company and Strzhalkovsky’s authorized representative in the Monegasque firm. In October 2024, these stakes returned to Stevenson, and Aldrin stepped down from her position. Strzhalkovsky and Stevenson also jointly owned the Half Moon Bay Rum brand, under which premium gin and vodka were produced in California. In an Instagram post dated February 14, 2025, Liam mentioned that, in addition to his foreign businesses, he had advised projects involving an unnamed vineyard and an unnamed retail business in Russia itself, but was forced to end the cooperation (after The Insider contacted him, he deleted the post).

And while in the United Kingdom the family of the former chekist had to dispose of the property it had acquired, their business is thriving in continental Europe. One of Strzhalkovsky’s notable alcohol assets is the French company Maison Eugene Rene France, which he owns through the same Monegasque firm, Thesauro Praetor. The company produces vermouths under the Monte Carlo brand. The firm itself is registered in Burgundy, while its production facility is located in Monaco, where Italian wine from Piedmont is combined with “distillates of aromatic plants from the city of Grasse, the world capital of perfumery.”

Another French company owned by Strzhalkovsky, Gundibald Vignobles SCEA, is also registered in Burgundy, a region home to some of France’s most expensive vineyards. The co-owners of Gundibald Vignobles are father and son Boillot, who own one of Burgundy’s famous wineries, Domaine Henri Boillot.

But Evgeny’s most expensive foreign asset is located in Italy, in Piedmont. Through the Maltese company Winocracy Holdings Ltd, he owns the Svabin brewery. Although representatives of the brewery denied to The Insider that any connection with Thesauro Praetor continued, there are grounds to believe that subsequent transactions were merely intended to conceal the real beneficiary. The brewery is now owned by Romanian citizen Ivan Marchiuc, born on April 6, 1975. According to the corporate documents of the related company Taiseiko Operations s.r.o., Ivan until recently went by the surname Marchuk, held Russian citizenship and was registered at an address on Nakhimovsky Prospekt in Moscow.

Like Strzhalkovsky, Marchuk is passionate about military-historical reenactment. From 1998 to 2011, Ivan headed the military-historical clubs “Put Mecha” and “Ivakiri” and is one of the co-founders of “Sengoku,” an association of Japanese-culture reenactors. Dozens of Marchuk’s friends on the social network VKontakte are directly connected to Strzhalkovsky.

For example, Ksenia Oya is an administrator of the International Association of Historical Medieval Battles (HMBIA), which is associated with Evgeny Strzhalkovsky. Vitaly Gryzlov was captain of the Bear Paw team, which competed in the Buhurt Prime group tournament in Monaco, and received awards from Strzhalkovsky. In 2020, the “Sengoku Jizai” association, of which Marchuk is a member, received a diploma from the “Valor of the Ages” organization, whose vice president is the same Evgeny Strzhalkovsky.

In addition to Ivan Marchuk, until 2022 Svabin’s management included another reenactor with a Russian passport, Ivan Borovikov, as well as his mother Natalia. Evgeny Strzhalkovsky himself, registered on Instagram under the username duguay__trouin, remains a follower of the Czech brewery.

Bars and restaurants of the Strzhalkovsky family

Through the same Thesauro Praetor, Evgeny Strzhalkovsky owns Trinity Irish Bar near Karlsplatz.

Assets in Russia are registered in the name of Evgeny’s mother and Vladimir Strzhalkovsky’s first wife, Natalia Ivanovna Strzhalkovskaya. Until May 2018, Natalia owned a stake in a St. Petersburg yacht club: she held a 30% stake in Russian Yachting LLC. Strzhalkovskaya’s involvement coincided with a period when the yacht club’s two other co-owners — vice president of the All-Russian Sailing Federation Vladimir Loginov and founder of the “XXXX” restaurant chain Dmitry Sokolov — complained to various authorities about an attempted corporate takeover of their business.

Today, Natalia Strzhalkovskaya is a restaurateur who owns establishments in some of Moscow’s most luxurious locations. Through the company “Fitz,” she owns The Michael Collins beer restaurant on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Sean O’Neill pubs on Kuznetsky Most and “Dublinetz” on Nikolskaya, De Torino bars on Myasnitskaya and Tomi Negroni on Malaya Bronnaya, as well as the Fiorentini bistro on Lev Tolstoy Street.

The Strange Hotels of the Strzhalkovsky Family

But the most important figure in the structure of the Strzhalkovsky family’s foreign assets is his second wife — Irina Vladimirovna Strzhalkovskaya, née Kochergina. In 2003, she worked for the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Network of Presidential Hotels and Health Resorts of Rus,” which was later transformed into the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “President-Service” of the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation.

Her current life is also connected with hotels, but in a fundamentally different capacity. She is the owner of the V-hotels Group, presumably named after the first letter of Vladimir’s name. The parent company, V-Hotels Group Limited, which Irina herself owns and manages, is registered in Cyprus, while its luxury hotels are located in Italy and Greece. Irina is also a citizen of Cyprus and the holder of a “golden passport” of Montenegro.

In Italy, Irina owns three luxury spa hotels in the resort area of Abano Terme, 10 km from Padua: Premiere Abano, President Terme and Terme Antoniano. The five-star Premiere Abano has 112 rooms, and the building was completely renovated in 2021 in order to “create a new impression of luxury.” Ten minutes away is another five-star hotel, President Terme, with spa areas, a swimming pool and two restaurants. The more modest four-star Terme Antoniano boasts 165 rooms and a thermal park with five swimming pools.

Since 2016, through the aforementioned companies Terme Antoniano S.P.A. and President S.R.L., Irina has owned an undisclosed stake of up to 50% in an Italian company operating three spa hotels in the same resort town of Abano Terme: Hotel Quisisana Terme, Hotel Terme Salus and Hotel Atlantic Terme.

Publicly, V Hotels describes itself as an international company whose shareholders include Russians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Cypriots, Swiss and Italians. In practice, however, the owner of the group’s hotels is Irina Strzhalkovskaya. For example, in Premiere Abano S.R.L., Strzhalkovskaya directly owns 89%, while another 11% is held by her through the Cypriot company Namtok Limited. In President S.R.L., Irina directly owns 23%, while the remaining 77% belongs to her through another Cypriot company, Vocis Investments Limited.

In Greece, the V-Hotels chain owns two hotels on the island of Corfu. They are owned by the Cypriot company Bolentaco Limited, whose sole shareholder is Irina. Panorama Sidari is located a ten-minute walk from the coast of the Ionian Sea. The three-star hotel complex has 180 rooms in 12 buildings. Almyros Beach Resort & Spa already has the familiar five-star rating, a luxury level and a beachfront location, and it also consists of 12 buildings with 180 rooms. It is difficult to estimate the value of these assets, but the amount is likely to be in the tens of millions of euros.

Irina is a director of the HMBIA leadership: Evgeny Galushin is the organization’s vice president, Irina Kamaeva is responsible for PR, and Ksenia Oya handles administrative matters. Sergei Myasishchev, Evgeny Strzhalkovsky’s former coach, whose trainees are known for unsportsmanlike fighting techniques and rule violations, became head of the marshals’ committee and oversees fighters’ compliance with the regulations.

Strzhalkovsky himself is content with the modest role of head of the Monegasque organization. Its honorary representative is Evgeny Drozdov, head of the investment department of Strzhalkovsky’s “treasury,” Thesauro Praetor. Control over both organizations is only an intermediate goal: HMBIA intends to join the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) by 2026.

Participation in the historical sport apparently helped Strzhalkovsky establish closer ties with Albert II, Prince and head of state of Monaco, who personally presented prizes to tournament winners. Among those who received an award was, for example, Alexander Nikitin, deputy head of the specialized department of the Federal Bailiffs Service Directorate for the Nizhny Novgorod Region, who competed for the Nizhny Novgorod club “Bern.”

Prince Albert II of Monaco (far right) and Evgeny Strzhalkovsky (center) at the Buhurt Prime tournament in 2019

Perhaps his acquaintance through the historical sports club influenced the ease with which Strzhalkovsky was granted a Monaco passport, while his vermouth production obtained the right to use a liquor trademark. The Monte Carlo brand is actively protected by the state and is managed by the specially created public company Monaco Brands.

Strzhalkovsky Jr.’s love of costumes and armor is expressed not only through fencing but also in cinema. Evgeny is one of the producers of the Russian fantasy series “Eterna.” It is an adaptation of the book “Reflections of Eterna” by writer Vera Kamsha, which was scheduled to be released in July 2025. The filming of “Eterna” brought together an all-star cast, including Anton Rogachev (“Heavenly Team,” “Abnormal,” “The End of the World”), Viktor Verzhbitsky (“12,” “Night Watch,” “The Turkish Gambit”), Viktor Dobronravov (“The Little Soldier,” “Eugene Onegin,” “World Champion”) and many others.

One of the film’s producers is Mikhail Kitaev, a partner of Artem Gabrelyanov, the son of propagandist Aram Gabrelyanov. Kitaev and Gabrelyanov Jr. are co-founders of the Bubble studio, which released a series of films about Major Grom, glorifying the image of Soviet law-enforcement officers — in short, fitting partners for the son of a chekist.

Yaroslav Fokin
Корреспондент