Leak of Sibur mails about Putin published

Russia's largest petrochemical company, Sibur, has long been
associated with President Vladimir Putin. His old friend, oligarch
Gennady Timchenko, acquired a significant stake in the company
in 2011. And his former son-in-law made headlines when it was
revealed that, after marrying Putin's daughter, he picked up a
17-percent stake in Sibur that made him a billionaire.
Now, for the first time, leaked emails show that the company spent
large sums on a villa linked to the president - with top-level
employees not even understanding why.
The house is a stately mansion on the Gulf of Finland known
as Villa Sellgren. In 2016, TV channel Dozhd reported that it had
become a vacation destination for Putin.
In an independent investigation, opposition leader Alexei Navalny
made the same claims, and pointed out that a banner near the villa's
entrance identified it as a recreation center for Sibur. He suggested
that the Sibur sign was a way of covering up Putin's use of the
villa.
Villa Sellgren (above). A Sibur banner near the entrance to the
villa, highlighted by Alexei Navalny in a 2017 investigation.
A leak of emails from the company obtained by OCCRP provides
new evidence that his hypothesis was correct.
Sibur, it turns out, agreed in 2012 to pay over $1 million per year to
rent the villa from its owner, Oleg Rudnov, an old friend of Putin,
through a property management company called Nogata. But the
petrochemical giant was not actually allowed to use the facilities,
and some of its senior executives remained mystified by the
arrangement, the emails show (https://bit.ly/3tSoMHb).