Cooperative "Ozero": How Putin used corruption to turn his gang members into the most powerful people and billionaires in Russia as early as the 1990s. 🧵1/18
The Ozero cooperative is a dacha consumer cooperative on the shores of Lake Komsomolskoye. The cooperative was founded in 1996, when Putin and seven of his friends decided to build a dacha near St. Petersburg. 🧵2/18
Putin and his friends shared a common goal: enrichment at the expense of the state and the pursuit of power. This resulted in the creation of an organized criminal group of unprecedented scale, as it was able to subjugate the #FSB, the country's main #intelligence agency. 🧵3/18
Five of the seven friends are known businessmen who all worked at the Institute of #Physics and Technology in 1990/91: Yakunin, Kovalchuk, the Fursenko brothers, and Myachin. 🧵4/18
Putin met them in 1991. They helped him carry out his first two major scams: the "commodities in exchange for food" scam and the seizure of Rossiya Bank. They gave Putin his first big money and a place to keep it. 🧵5/18
The other two, V. Smirnov and N. Shamalov, were involved in trade. Smirnov was connected to the Tambov organized crime group, and Shamalov was involved in bribes for Putin from deliveries of German medical equipment. 🧵6/18
"Raw materials in exchange for food": In the difficult times of the early 1990s, the Kremlin came up with the idea of combating food shortages by bartering with essential foodstuffs. 🧵7/18
As a result, contracts were signed with shell companies. The licenses for the export of #raw materials were issued by the St. Petersburg Committee under Putin's leadership. They, in turn, had no authority to issue these licenses. The goods with these licenses went abroad, but the food never arrived. 🧵8/18
The #cooperative didn't stop there; it was not for nothing that it was compared to organized criminal groups. Each member of the group had its own obligations; some had billions of dollars opened in #offshore accounts, while others had banks and companies transferred to them. 🧵9/18
In August 1991, the GKChP coup took place in the USSR. After its failure, the former ruling party was banned. At the same time, the party had its own bank in St. Petersburg—the "Rossiya Bank." A bank with a license, party assets, and no owner. 🧵10/18
Putin established contacts and illegally placed the bank at his disposal. At the end of 1991, Yakunin, Kovalchuk, the Fursenko brothers, and Myachin (through companies they controlled) became the new owners of Rossiya Bank. Since then, the bank has been their and Putin's joint purse. 11/18
In the 2000s, vast assets were accumulated in Rossiya Bank: Sogaz, Sibur, Gazprombank, Gazprom-Media, everything taken from #Gazprom and the budget was registered in the bank's structures. Roldugin's offshore activities were also managed from this building. 🧵12/18
The bank is headed by Yuri Kovalchuk, who later became a media mogul. He is known as "Putin's personal cashier." In 2007, one of the country's largest banks, #Gazprombank, was taken over by Rossiya Bank through a fraudulent scheme. 🧵13/18
The empire of Putin and his friends wasn't limited to these two examples, but also encompassed drug trafficking, the illegal trade in natural resources, and many other areas. In return, he received bribes in cash or shares in companies. 🧵14/18
All of his friends from the Ozero cooperative became #billionaires and influential figures in #Russia after Putin's election as Russian president in 2000. 🧵15/18
Most of them can be found on "Putin's List." The purpose of the #PutinList was to prepare #sanctions in connection with allegations of manipulation against Russia in the 2016 US presidential election and the Russian war in Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea. 🧵16/18
Many of Putin's friends from the #Ozero cooperative are now considered the main ideologists of the "special operation" to restore Russia's former greatness and its ancestral territories. 🧵17/18
Putin will never want or be able to relinquish power again. He has become a hostage to the criminal system he himself created. #PutinIsaWarCriminal 🧵18/18