In 2017, a Cyprus-based offshore company called Pimodo invested 3 million euros ($3.25 million) in 10 residences at the five-star Salinas Sea Resort in the Atlantic Ocean archipelago nation of Cape Verde. The money for the investment was provided by the Russian agricultural-trading firm Agrotorg Tulsky, an affiliate of Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank), which the Russian government created in 2000 to support the agricultural sector.
Agrotorg Tulsky then purchased Pimodo itself in April 2018, meaning that the bank set up to develop Russian agriculture became the owner of luxury housing in a remote country known for its white sand beaches and as “an important transit hub for South American cocaine moving to Europe,” according to the U.S. government.
The Cape Verde resort purchase opens a window into an elite realm of Russia’s opaque leadership circles, Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian-language investigative unit, has found. And the brightest star in this particular constellation is Dmitry Patrushev, the 46-year-old Russian deputy prime minister who is the eldest son of presidential aide and former Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. The younger Patrushev has been tabbed by experts as a leading candidate for a successor if President Vladimir Putin, 71, relinquishes power -- though there’s no sign he plans to anytime soon.
“The biggest plus” of Dmitry Patrushev as a potential successor “is his combination of silovik and civilian. Thanks to his father, the chekist corporation will perceive him, if not completely as ‘their own,’ then ‘socially close,’” wrote political consultant and former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov, using Russian terms that refer to senior officials with military or security backgrounds. “At the same time, most of society -- tired of militaristic rhetoric and the endless hunt for enemies -- won’t be frightened by his ‘epaulettes.’”
The main minuses for Patrushev, Gallyamov continued, are the scandals surrounding him and his unpalatable image as a “fortunate son.”
'New Nobility'
Nikolai Patrushev, 73, has known Putin since the 1970s and is one of the most trusted members of the president’s inner circle, as well as one of the most hawkish and anti-Western. A career KGB and Federal Security Service (FSB) officer, Patrushev succeeded Putin as FSB director when the ailing President Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin prime minister in August 1999, a quarter-century ago. Patrushev sent both his sons, Dmitry and Andrei, to the FSB Academy.
In 2000, Patrushev published a memorable article defending the “arrival in the highest echelons of power” of KGB stalwarts like himself and Putin and denouncing supposed attempts to “demonize” them as a threat to democracy. He described them as “strict pragmatists” selflessly guarding the country from enemies foreign and domestic.
They were, he asserted, Russia’s “new nobility.” Like traditional nobilities, this one is in some cases hereditary.
Dmitry Patrushev has made a dizzying career under Putin. At the age of 32, he became the chairman of Russian Agricultural Bank, Russia’s fourth-largest bank in term of net assets. At 40, he was named minister of agriculture, while this year, at 46, he was made deputy prime minister overseeing the agro-industrial complex, natural resources, and the environment. He regularly attends Kremlin meetings with Putin.
As might befit a member of the “new nobility” in Putin’s increasingly nationalistic, anti-Western, and isolated Russia, Patrushev does not spend the New Year’s holiday abroad, but rather with close friends and family at his vacation home a couple hundred kilometers north of Moscow in the Tver region, a source close to the Patrushev family who asked not to be named due to safety concerns told Systema.
The home is officially the property of Patrushev’s common-law wife, television personality Marina Artemyeva. Artemyeva is also the official owner of Patrushev’s estate outside of Moscow and two apartments in the elite Zolotoi residential complex near the Kremlin. According to Systema’s estimates, she officially owns property worth about $31 million.
Studying the history of the Tver region dacha, comparatively modest by the standards of other members of the Putin elite, enabled Systema to uncover a number of apparent insider deals and manipulations that led from that plot on the banks of the Volga River to Cape Verde, off Africa’s Atlantic coast. And all these deals were connected to Russian Agricultural Bank, which to this day remains within Patrushev’s purview.
None of the people mentioned in this story responded to Systema's requests for comments.
On The Volga
On November 21, 2022, Patrushev, then agriculture minister, hosted the opening of a poultry farm in the western Siberian Tyumen region. A video link connected governors and business representatives from the Moscow, Kaliningrad, and Kursk regions. Putin participated virtually from the Kremlin. One of the participants whom Putin lauded by name was Sergei Novikov, the owner of the agrobusiness Agropromkomplektatsiya.
Novikov, 64, started his empire on the foundation of a collective farm in the Tver region shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The company with the tongue-twisting name started out with 200 head of cattle and 2,000 hectares of land.
Today, the conglomerate raises some 40,000 cows and 1.3 million pigs on more than 100,000 hectares of land, an area about 17 times the size of Manhattan. It is one of Russia’s top three dairy producers and seventh in pork production. Its 2023 revenues came to about $1.9 billion.
In a 2020 interview, Novikov was explicit about the role Patrushev played in the meteoric growth of his company.
“We began working with Russian Agricultural Bank in 2006,” he said. “But the big breakthrough and serious development of our business began in 2010 with the arrival of the new team of D.N. Patrushev.”
Systema has calculated that during Patrushev’s time as chairman of the bank, from 2010 to 2018, it extended 35 billion rubles ($1 billion) in credits to Novikov’s company. A full 21.3 billion rubles ($609 million) of that total came in 2014 alone. The money helped the firm get through a serious outbreak of swine flu that swept a dozen Russian regions in 2013. Small farmers at the time accused the authorities of failing to help them and of colluding with major agrobusinesses instead.
In April 2013, about a year before Russian Agricultural Bank began doling out massive credits to Novikov’s group, the agrobusiness Korovinskoye left the holding. It was taken over by a businessman named Andrei Aleshkov, an old schoolmate of Dmitry Patrushev’s. In 2016, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe, Patrushev’s bank gave Aleshkov a loan of 1.89 billion rubles ($54 million) to build the Praim-Taim residential complex in Moscow.
There are other indications that Korovinskoye had come under Patrushev’s wing. The company’s new general director, Ivan Pleshakov, and its new phone number were both connected to a company called Trial, a supplier to the state’s emergency reserve fund, Rosreserv, which the investigative journalism website Proyekt tied to the Patrushevs in a 2023 investigation.
Korovinskoye, in addition to raising cattle, owned an idyllic swathe of land on the banks of the Volga in the Tver region, just north of Moscow. This is where Dmitry Patrushev’s vacation home now stands. Later in 2013, the trees had already been cleared from about 3 hectares of the land, an area a bit larger than Red Square. According to images captured on Google Earth, construction was under way in 2014.
By 2016, the work was nearly completed and, in addition to residences, one can identify outbuildings, lawns, a football field, a boat dock, and a swimming area. Around the same time, Korovinskoye began shedding other plots of land, most likely for far less than market value. In 2016, the firm recorded revenues of 11 million rubles ($160,000), while the land it sold was worth at least five times as much.
Two of the four plots were formally transferred to Novikov. However, a source close to the Patrushev family said the family regularly spent the New Year’s holidays there. In 2023, Novikov transferred the plots to the Patrushevs, according to documents examined by Systema.
The other two Korovinskoye plots were transferred to entrepreneur Andrei Sadovsky, who still owns them.
'Recreation And Sport'
The owner of the poultry plant that Putin and Patrushev opened in November 2022 was a man named Naum Babayev. His agrobusiness, Damate, is one of the world’s largest producers of turkeys and, according to the company’s website, Russian Agricultural Bank was instrumental to its growth.
Over the years, Patrushev’s bank handed Babayev’s companies more than 70 billion rubles ($1.2 billion). In addition, Babayev was repeatedly allowed to take over some of the bank’s distressed assets under attractive terms.
“It turned out that we became Russian Agricultural Bank’s janitor in the Penza region,” Babayev joked in a 2020 interview with the Russian Forbes magazine.
In 2020, the bank allowed Babayev to take over his bankrupted main competitor, a firm called Yevrodon.
Until 2018, the bank’s department on distressed assets was headed by Dmitry Sergeyev, an important figure in Patrushev’s inner circle. Sergeyev and Babayev have long-standing business ties, while Sergeyev’s wife and oldest son also have partnerships with Babayev.
Patrushev and Sergeyev have been acquainted at least since the mid-2000s, when they were both top managers at the state-controlled VTB Bank. Sergeyev became Patrushev’s deputy at VTB, his first deputy at Russian Agricultural Bank, and, later, a deputy minister at the Agriculture Ministry.
In 2019, Sergeyev was named head of the Unified Grain Company (OZK), which is a state agrocorporation that operates the country’s grain infrastructure and is controlled by the Agriculture Ministry. At least one Telegram channel has referred to Sergeyev as Patrushev’s “right hand.”
According to Systema’s source close to the Patrushev family, Dmitry Patrushev’s family sometimes vacations with Sergeyev’s, and Sergeyev has a vacation home not far from Patrushev’s. The man who took over the plots adjacent to Patrushev’s, Andrei Sadovsky, turned out to be Sergeyev’s brother-in-law.
In March 2023, the Tver region forestry authorities ordered the auction of a plot of forest adjacent to Patrushev’s land. Sergeyev won the auction at the starting price of about 209,000 rubles ($2,700) and won control of 2 hectares of forest for 49 years.
The forest has already been taken under control and cleared of many trees, according to images on Google Earth. According to the terms of the lease, the plot can be used for “recreation and sport.”
In 2018, Russian Agricultural Bank’s subsidiary took over the Cypriot offshore company Pimodo and its investment in the Cape Verde resort complex. Pimodo was represented by Montenegrin businessman Stela Kolman, according to the Cypriot corporate registry. Kolman had business connections through the Montenegrin firm Open Investment with former Russian Agricultural Bank manager Ivan Chepovoi. Chepovoi, in turn, was Sergeyev’s deputy at VTB Bank and worked under Sergeyev again in the distressed-assets section of Russian Agricultural Bank. Now, Chepovoi is Sergeyev’s deputy at OZK.
This arrangement lasted until 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and it became necessary to shield Russian assets abroad. Three weeks before the February 24 invasion, Pimodo was sold to another offshore shell company called Fiosal Ventures. According to the Cypriot corporate registry, Fiosal Ventures has indirect corporate ties with Novikov’s Agropromkomplektatsiya.
“Our best colleagues, the honor and pride of the FSB, don’t do their work for the sake of money,” Nikolai Patrushev claimed in his “new nobility” article in 2000. “They all look different, but there is one very special characteristic that unites all these people, and it is a very important quality: It is their sense of service.”
