Russian conductor Valery Gergiev is, in essence, an oligarch, says the site supporting imprisoned dissident Alexei Navalny, which published a highly detailed vitriolic investigation into the maestro on Tuesday.
The objective: to ensure that the latter is placed on the sanctions lists applied throughout the world following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, at the same time, to demonstrate that Gergiev would have been guilty of all the crimes of which Navalny has been accused.
“Impossible not to remember that just a few weeks ago, Alexeï Navalny was sentenced to nine years of strict regime. Alexei Navalny has been accused of raising funds for a non-profit organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, while spending them himself. There is no evidence that Navalny received a single penny from the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Navalny has not spent the money from the fund to renovate his house, order private planes, buy luxury real estate… ”write the politician’s friends, at the end of a river investigation which follows the activities and the assets by chef Valery Gergiev in Russia, the United States, the Netherlands and Italy.
A large housing stock
The splendor of Valery Gergiev’s Italian real estate heritage had been unveiled by the Corriere della Sera 1er last March. The Milanese daily estimated it at 150 million euros.
Gergiev is heir (2015), for a quarter, of the fortune of the Japanese philanthropist Yoko Nagae, famous patron of the Mariinsky theater, herself heiress of the Milanese industrialist Renzo Ceschina, who died in 1982. His real estate portfolio includes in particular around twenty of properties in Milan, for more than 20,000 square meters, as well as other treasures, among which, in the list compiled by the Corrierein Venice, “the Palazzo Barbarigo in San Vio, the Caffè Quadri and a few shops in Piazza San Marco”.
The documents revealed by the “Navalny investigation” also allege that the constitutive statements of the company belonging 100% to Valery Gergiev and managing his Venetian heritage associate Dutch citizenship with the man, which would be a revelation (officially, Russian law does not prohibit dual citizenship, except for state officials, law enforcement officials and judges).
Much more comically, one of Gergiev’s Italian grounds is said to house a restaurant called United Taste of America’s, which contrasts with the usual rhetoric of demonization of the West by the Russian regime. We will add the deed of ownership of an apartment in New York which, according to the authors of the investigation, does not appear in the declarations of the chef’s assets.
Friend of the diet
The survey also recalls that relations between Gergiev and Putin are unambiguous. “When presenting the State Prize in 2016, Gergiev said: ‘We want to help Sergei Lavrov, with whom I am also friends. As the collective ambassador of Russia, I intervene at difficult times to ensure that the understanding of the Russian leadership, in particular the president, is deeper, more direct and more sincere; to understand what Russia is today.” »
The most scathing part of the text concerns Gergiev’s relationship with his charitable foundation, whose purpose is “to strengthen and develop the socio-cultural sphere, support young performers, popularize classical music, organize charity events and concerts and promote vocational training”. This foundation collects payments from the government, oligarchs and public companies, including the VTB bank in the first place.
The goal of those close to Navalny is here to return against Gergiev, supporting documents, the arguments used to dismiss and imprison the Russian opponent. The charge is very heavy, and some associated criticisms should be taken with a grain of salt. The purchase of real estate in Russia, for example, if the maestro’s foundation owns it, is an investment guaranteeing regular income, which would be exactly the objective of an endowment fund managed as a “father of family “. This capital is thus sheltered from the vagaries of the stock market and devaluations… as if some had predicted that they were probable.