It is a verdict that may seem trivial at best. A court of first instance in Zurich found four Russian bankers guilty on Thursday (March 30th) of failing to carry out the necessary checks on the origin of funds deposited in two bank accounts in 2014 and 2016 by Sergei Roldugin, a Russian cellist.

The penalties imposed are relatively light: no jail and fines will have to be paid only if the bankers are once again not very observant in the next two years.

Putin's 'best friend'

However, this decision touches on a very sensitive point for Switzerland: "it was a question of whether the country deserved its reputation as a sanctuary for the dirty money of the Russian elite," says the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

And not just for the first oligarch to come. It was the shadow of Vladimir Putin and his legendary fortune - the true amount of which no one knows - that hung over this trial.

Sergei Roldugin, who was able to deposit more than 45 million euros in two accounts in Switzerland without causing the slightest excitement among the bankers prosecuted, is not only known for his mastery. He is the "cellist of Putin" and above all a close friend of the Russian president. So much so that he is considered to be "best friend" of the head of the Kremlin, says the British daily The Guardian.

"This proximity to Vladimir Putin was considered anecdotal until 2016," said Stephen Hall, a specialist in Russian politics at the University of Bath (southwest England). But the Panama Files revelations — about large-scale tax evasion organized by law firms in Panama — gave it a whole new stature. Sergei Roldugin became overnight "Vladimir Putin's portfolio" and one of the central figures in the gigantic operation to conceal the Russian president's fortune.

"He plays a special role [in these financial arrangements, editor's note] because he is one of the few who has the confidence of Vladimir Putin," said Tyler Kustra, a specialist in corruption issues at the University of Nottingham.

A trust that stems from a relationship that began more than 40 years ago "by an episode bordering on illegality," Sergei Roldugin said in a 2014 interview with a local Russian newspaper in the city of Kazan.

Cupid for Putin

In 1977, the young man, then 26 years old, did his military service in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), a city where he knew no one. One evening he decides to illegally leave the military training camp to party in town. To help him, he contacts a colleague of his brother who, like the latter, aspires to be a KGB agent. This is the future Russian president whom Sergei Roldugin affectionately calls Volodia, the diminutive of Vladimir, to this day.

The two men will follow radically different professional trajectories, which will not prevent them from remaining very close. It was also Sergei Roldugin who introduced his friend Lyudmila Shkrebneva, the future Mrs. Putina.

Vladimir Putin chooses his favorite cellist to become the godfather of his first daughter, Maria, born in 1985. "In 'First Person' [the autobiography that Vladimir Putin wrote in 2000, editor's note], Sergei Roldugin is the friend name that comes up most often," said the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an international consortium of investigative journalists that has studied the musician's case.

In the galaxy of those close to Vladimir Putin, Sergei Roldugin detonates: "He is one of the only ones to give the impression of not having taken advantage of his proximity to the Russian president to enrich himself," says Stephen Hall.

He just obtained the right, in 2006, to open and direct a House of Music in St. Petersburg in a prestigious royal palace of the nineteenth century. "I have an apartment, a job, a car and a dacha, but I don't own millions of dollars," he told The New York Times in 2014.

This is both totally false and perhaps just as true. It all depends on the real beneficiary of the nearly two billion dollars that passed through accounts and company coffers in the name of Sergei Roldugin, according to the Panama Papers revelations.

The cellist is even one of the minority shareholders of Rossiya Bank, the "bank of Putin and his relatives", according to the US authorities who in 2014 put it on the list of entities hit by sanctions following the annexation of Crimea. A small participation whose value is estimated at several million dollars, says the Guardian.

The money raised by the companies officially managed by the concert artist was used both for "small" pleasures, such as buying yachts or a ski resort, but also to acquire shares in strategic companies, such as Video International, Russia's No. 1 TV advertising company.

"Sanctions not up to" the challenge

Has the cellist accustomed to international tours secretly built a small economic empire? US authorities do not believe him and have officially called him Vladimir Putin's "guardian of fortune" in 2022.

He seems to be part of "a small number of relatives that Vladimir Putin uses as a front man to hide his fortune," says Tyler Kustra. It would be all the more valuable for the Russian president "as he is almost the only one who has not climbed the political ladder or become a businessman, which protects him from the blows of possible rivals," said Stephen Hall.

The trial in Zurich of the four bankers could therefore very well concern part of Vladimir Putin's personal fortune. The court's decision to convict them would be significant because it would signal that bankers in Switzerland can no longer accept money linked to Russia without taking a closer look, says the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

But, "the sanction imposed is far from being up to the challenge and will probably not divert illegal Russian financial flows from Swiss banks," says Tyler Kustra. For this expert, "these bankers have, at best, preferred to ignore the origin of money that, most likely, belongs to a bloodthirsty leader and they deserve to pay much higher fines or go to jail. Not to get away with a simple call to order."

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