Yuri Kovlachuk — Vineyards

Yuri Kovalchuk, a friend of Vladimir Putin from St. Petersburg, was interested in Crimean winemaking. First, a company called Yuzhny Proekt (“Southern Project”) owned by his Rossiya Bank, purchased the Novy Svet champagne factory. It then bought the oldest and most famous enterprise in Crimea, the Massandra Winery.

The value of its vineyards alone was estimated at billions of euros.

In addition to production facilities, Massandra owns about 10,000 hectares of land and the world's largest collection of wines, listed in the Guinness Book of Records. The Crimean authorities put Massandra up for auction for only €64 million, while the value of its vineyards alone was estimated at billions of euros.

Entities associated with Yuri Kovalchuk also purchased dacha no.1, also known as Wisteria, a complex that was once a top summer destination for Kremlin officials.

Rossiya Bank also took control of Simferopol International Airport. in 2016, the Crimean authorities signed an investment agreement, transferring it to the Simferopol International Airport company with the promise of building a new terminal. The beneficiaries of the company are Yuri Kovalchuk and his partner Oleg Zhestkov. In addition, the Belbek airport in Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea, was transferred to their control.

Arkady Rotenberg - Resorts

Another of Putin’s friend from St. Petersburg, Arkady Rotenberg, focused on tourism. At auctions, he received the four largest resorts complexes in Crimea, all of which were sold for knock-down prices. A couple of years after the tenders, Rotenberg admitted that the complexes were under his control, and promised to invest about 15 billion rubles ($211 million) in their reconstruction.

Rotenberg also acquired the communications operator Krymtelecom. He was probably interested not so much in the operator's business but in the 105,000 square meters of its premises and 22 hectares of land. Another Crimean state-owned company, Krymtekhnologii, was also taken over by a company close to Rotenberg. It owned 20 hectares of land and 78,000 square meters of premises at the time of privatization.

Gazprom - Dachas and hockey clubs

Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom acquired Yakov Zhukovsky's dacha (a country home) “New Kuchuk-Koy." The estate had previously belonged to the Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

In 2016, the Foros sanatorium was also "sold" to the Federation of Trade Unions of Tatarstan. There was a row between the new owners of Foros and local residents because of building development of the Forossky Park, where the complex's buildings are located.

In the park, the construction of a children's sports base for the Ak Bars hockey club began after centuries-old trees were felled. The main sponsor of the project is the oil company Tatneft, which belongs to the government of Tatarstan.

Vladimir Vikhlyantsev - Metallurgy and railroad switches

The Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov owned two factories in Crimea — the Kerch Switch Plant (that produced railroad switches) and the Kerch Metallurgical Plant (that produced enamelware).

The Crimean authorities decided to “save the factories from bankruptcy” and nationalized them by merging them into the state-owned enterprise Kerch Metallurgical Plant, which was sold to the Moscow Company Promstrelkom in 2020. It belongs to Vladimir Vikhlyantsev, who has worked in both the prosecutor's office and in the private sector, including insurance companies.