The French site Mediapart said that a small group of men, no more than 30, bound by ties of friendship, the intersection of interests or the desire to acquire wealth, are the ones that govern Russia and its economy.
And all of these men - as mentioned by MediaPart - were companions of President Vladimir Putin, either in childhood, at university, or in the ex-Soviet intelligence, or collaborators with the mayor of St. Petersburg in the nineties.
"I have a lot of friends but few of them are really close," Putin says in the book in which he introduced himself to the Russians when he was first elected president in March 2000, when his interlocutors asked him about his friends. "I have never betrayed me nor betrayed them."
The site commented that any businessman who wants to do business in Russia cannot do so without protection, and they call it a "roof" or "krish", and to be safe under this roof must pay the price for his place, noting that Putin, as an official in the municipality of San Petersburg, then as president of Russia is this roof.
Huge companies in the field of energy, banking, transportation and public works were distributed - as the writer says - to Putin's friends, and government bids that suddenly inflated these enormous fortunes were poured into them, and in return, these friends became Putin's wealth and guaranteed the financing of his regime.
Among these friends, the site chose to review 6 personalities, which it believed represented the weight of the team and the backbone of the financing system.
1. Arkady Rothenberg .. a childhood friend
Billionaire Arkady Rottenberg and his brother Boris were Putin's childhood friend, and they shared a love of judo with him, before this friendship took another dimension after Putin became president of Russia.
The two brothers Arkady and Boris Rothenberg are now worth $ 2.7 and 1.4 billion, respectively. They have created a group of 6 construction companies specializing in pipelines and gas pipelines, and its main customer is Gazprom, who are also the main shareholders of SMB. SMP Bank).
In the Sochi Olympics, the Rothenberg family won good bids, as one of its companies built 17 kilometers of steep road from Sochi for $ 2.5 billion, in addition to part of the joint road from the sea to the mountain with a huge amount, and the family also contributed to the company that Adoption of the new highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Arkady Rothenberg is subject to sanctions by the European Union, and the sanctions paper states that "since March 2014, Rothenberg or its companies have obtained public contracts with a total value of more than $ 7 billion, without entering into a formal competitive process."
2. Sergey Chemezov.
Intelligence fellow
Sergey Chemezov, who was a KGB agent in East Germany and a colleague in Putin's office, is considered one of the richest people in Russia after Putin appointed him in 2007 as head of the giant Rostec, which oversees more than 700 companies.
Sergey Chemezov - who was the main negotiator for a Bastard deal between Russia and France - is subject to US and European sanctions and is close to Putin, and therefore was promoted to senior positions in state-controlled companies, according to the European Union file.
3. Nikolai Shamalov .. a friend from St. Petersburg
Nikolai Shamalov - who has known Putin since the early 1990s in St. Petersburg - has been present from 2005 until today in the Black Sea Palace case, from the choice of land to the management and financing of the property.
Shamalov was a shareholder in Petromed, which was established in St. Petersburg with the support of the Foreign Relations Committee, which Putin later chaired, and this company, through large import contracts for medical equipment, provided the first funding for the palace in the first decade of the 21st century.
Nikolai Shamalov has been subject to European sanctions since 2014, because according to the interpretations of the sanctions paper, he “exploits his relations with Russian decision-makers, and is the second largest shareholder in the Bank of Russia,” according to the sanctions paper.
4. Yuri Kovalchuk ... a friend from St. Petersburg
The US Treasury Department has described Yuri Kovalchuk as "Putin's treasurer," a key figure who can be found at all the financing junctions of the Black Sea Palace and in the entire financial system, accompanying Putin and those close to him.
The two men became friends in the early 1990s in the St. Petersburg City Council, when Putin was tasked with converting a small municipal bank into a private institution. The aforementioned Bank of Russia was born from this process, and Kovalchuk manages it and is the main shareholder in it.
Once Putin was installed in the Kremlin, Kovalchuk's business boomed. Bank of Russia acquired some of Gazprom's assets in 2004, including 50 percent of Sogaz, one of Russia's largest insurers, at undervalued prices.
The former Russian dissident Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in 2016, estimated in his reports - on Putin's corruption - that about $ 60 billion of Gazprom's assets were transferred to the Bank of Russia or to other structures controlled by Putin's friends.
Kovalchuk has a fortune - according to Forbes - $ 2.4 billion, and since 2014 he has been included in the list of people subject to European Union sanctions.
5. Gnadi Timchenko ... a friend from St. Petersburg
According to Forbes magazine, this modest and shy man is one of the largest in Russia with an estimated wealth of $ 22 billion, and his wealth is distributed among several financial sectors, such as the Black Sea Palace and vineyards, and he is the one who donates apartments to those close to Putin, according to the Anti-Corruption Fund.
Timchenko - who met Putin in the early 1990s in Saint Petersburg - entered the world of oil, from which he made a great fortune, when Russian state-owned oil companies were forced to sell their oil for export through its company, Gunfor, which was founded in 1997 and is based in Switzerland.
Tymchenko, who was not targeted by any sanctions, is the man who brought the French company Total to the Russian market, and he is a member of the Economic Council of the Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry which has become one of the most active lobbying groups to lift sanctions on Russia.
6. Igor Sechin, a friend from Saint Petersburg
The writer said that Igor Sechin is one of Putin's closest confidants, as he is his shadow, his eyes, his arms, and his brain, especially when he asks to raise the status of "ministries of power" such as defense and security.
Igor Sechin served as president of Rosneft, the state's largest oil group, for 10 years, and made it a giant at the expense of Yukos, the company of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was imprisoned for 10 years.