Why is the US targeting Putin’s daughters, Katerina and Maria?

WASHINGTON, April 6 (Reuters) – The latest round of U.S. sanctions against Russia includes two new targets: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters, Katerina and Maria, who U.S. officials believe are hiding Putin’s wealth.

Putin’s daughter, Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova, is a technology executive whose work supports the Russian government and its defense industry, according to details of the US sanctions package announced on Wednesday.

His other daughter, Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova, runs government-funded programs that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin for genetic research and are personally overseen by Putin, the United States said.

“We have reason to believe that Putin, and many of his cronies and the oligarchs, hide their wealth, hide their assets, with family members placing their assets and their wealth in the American financial system, and also in many other parts of the world,” a senior US administration official told reporters.

“We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members, and that is why we are targeting them,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Reuters could not immediately reach Putin’s daughters, their representatives or the Kremlin for comment.

The sanctions announced Wednesday also include the daughter and wife of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The United States has also banned Americans from investing in Russia and attacked Russian financial institutions and Kremlin officials, in response to what President Joe Biden has condemned as Russian “atrocities” in Ukraine. Read more

Russia denies intentionally targeting civilians and says the images of the bodies in Bucha, north of kyiv, were staged to justify further sanctions against Moscow.

Moscow says it is involved in a “special military operation” designed to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine. Ukraine and Western governments reject it as a false pretext for Russia’s invasion.

The extent of Putin’s wealth is a sensitive issue in Russia. Last year, the Kremlin denied that he owned an opulent palace on the Black Sea, as opposition politician Alexei Navalny alleges in a video that drew a large audience on YouTube. Read more

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in February that the sanctions introduced against Putin himself were meaningless.

“(Putin) is quite indifferent. The sanctions contain absurd claims about some assets,” Peskov said. “The president has no more assets than he has declared.”

But US lawmakers believe otherwise.

“Putin and his oligarchs keep their dirty money in nations of law by buying mansions, mega yachts, works of art and other high-value assets,” US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said a few weeks ago, introducing legislation that offered money in cash. rewards for information leading to the seizure of assets held by sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

ROCK ‘N ROLL DANCER

Putin’s daughters, who the United States says help him hide his wealth, have never publicly confirmed that the Russian leader is their father, and he has refused to answer questions about them.

A 2015 Reuters investigation detailed the connections and influence Katerina, a rock ‘n’ roll acrobatic dancer, has on the next generation of Moscow’s elite. (For the story, see: https://reut.rs/3ubo3kR)

“Katerina, 29, described herself as the wife of Kirill Shamalov, the son of Nikolai Shamalov, a longtime friend of President Putin,” the report says. “Shamalov Sr. is a shareholder in Bank Rossiya, which US officials have described as the personal bank of the Russian elite.”

As husband and wife, Kirill and Katerina held corporate holdings worth about $2 billion, according to estimates provided to Reuters by financial analysts. This was in addition to other properties and assets.

Putin’s eldest daughter, Maria, studied biology at Saint Petersburg University and medicine at Moscow State University, according to the Reuters investigation. She is also heavily involved in genetic research work, which Putin has described in the past as a field that “will determine the future of the entire world.”

According to Russian and Western media reports, Maria married Dutch businessman Jorrit Joost Faassen.

She was pursuing a biomedical career specializing in the endocrine system in 2015, as a doctoral candidate at the Research Center for Endocrinology in Moscow, and co-authored a book on “idiopathic growth retardation” in children, according to the Reuters report. .

Her husband used to work for Gazprombank, a large lender with strong ties to the elite around Putin, the report noted. Estimates for her assets and holdings were not immediately available.

Reporting from Nandita Bose in Washington; Edited by Heather Timmons and Jonathan Oatis

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