AL JAZEERA (Qatar), RADIO SVOBODA NOVAYA GAZETA (Russia), SUNDAY TIMES (UK)
MOSCOW – Vladimir Putin, comfortably back in the Russian presidency, presents himself as a humble, down-to-earth man of average means.
But rumors about his wealth, and the secrecy surrounding it, have been circulating for years, as far back as his time as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, when he signed a deal to export raw materials in exchange for food for the nearly starving city – food that never materialized, as this Radio Svoboda article alleges.
Last November, the Sunday Times published an investigation that put the combined net worth of Putin and his close friends at $130 billion – more than twice as much as the wealth of Mexico’s Carlos Slim, the richest man on earth according to Forbes.
This video from Al Jazeera looks at all the rumors and accusations together, using much of the same information as a blog post from Novaya Gazeta, to build a story around hints of extreme wealth behind Russia’s most powerful man.
