“You will not catch Putin with these things. He doesn’t have cars or money… Do you think that when he retires, you will find him in Monaco, sailing a 200m yacht? For the rest of his life he’s doomed to spend quite a modest life, because the whole world knows him. The people who are trying to find Putin’s accounts — they could spend the rest of their lives but they would never find it,” Kostin said in an interview with The Financial Times newspaper published Wednesday.
In April, Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper published materials it claimed came from the Panamanian Mossack Fonseca company, exposing alleged involvement of a number of world leaders and their circles in tax havens schemes. Some individuals, including musician Sergei Roldugin, who had been reportedly close to Putin, were mentioned in the report.
Putin said there was no sense to discuss his alleged personal involvement in the offshore schemes, as his name was not even mentioned in the leaked papers.
In 2008, Putin said that he keeps his savings in VTB and Sberbank. In March 2014, the president said that he has opened an account at the Rossiya Bank, where his presidential salary would go. The announcement came after the bank was targeted by Western sanctions.