The rector’s wife, Putin’s friend, became the second richest woman in the Russian Federation
Forbes Women magazine published a ranking of the richest women in Russia. The second place in it was taken by Tatyana Lytvynenko – the owner of more than 20% of the shares of the Fosagro holding, which produces mineral fertilizers. Her fortune is estimated at 2.8 billion dollars.
The publication “Agentstvo. Novosti” reports that the shares of “Fosagro” were transferred to Tatiana Lytvynenko in May 2022 by her husband Vladimir. He holds the position of rector of St. Petersburg Mining University. It is known that he is close to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Lytvynenko headed the academic council where Putin defended his PhD thesis in economics in 1997. In 2000, 2004 and 2012, he managed Putin’s election campaigns.
In the mid-2000s, experts who reviewed Putin’s dissertation came to the conclusion that a significant part of its text was plagiarized. In an interview with Radio Svoboda, Lytvynenko’s daughter Olga claimed that her father wrote the dissertation for Putin, and he, as the head of the academic council, contributed to the successful defense. In 2018, she also said that her father, whose fortune was estimated at a billion dollars at the time, was Putin’s “shadow cashier” and controlled corrupt schemes for the purchase and sale of mining enterprises.
Olga Lytvynenko takes the 16th place in the list of the richest heirs in Russia. However, it is not known whether she will be able to inherit something from her parents. Olga has been living abroad for a long time and talked about bad relations with her family, including because of political disagreements.
After Russia’s armed invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Lytvynenko was put on the sanctions lists of Ukraine and the United States. Kyiv believes that Lytvynenko obtained the shares of “Fosagro” through corruption with the participation of Putin himself.
- In 1997, Vladimir Putin defended his candidate’s thesis on the topic “Strategic planning of the reproduction of the mineral resource base of the region in the conditions of the formation of market relations (St. Petersburg and Leningrad region)”. According to independent analysts, 16 pages out of 20 of the key part were taken either verbatim or with minimal changes from the studies of strategic planning classics by William King and David Cleland.
- Tatyana Lytvynenko is not the only Russian woman to whom a billion state was transferred after the start of the war. One of the richest Russians, Alexey Mordashov, gave a controlling stake in the gold mining company Nordgold to the mother of his children, Marina Mordashova. She took fourth place in the new ranking of the richest women, Forbes Women estimated her fortune at 1.85 billion dollars.
- In early 2023, the founder of the gas company “Novatek” Leonid Mikhelson transferred his share in the company “Optima” to his daughter Victoria (seventh place, a fortune of 1.2 billion dollars). This company, according to the latest published data, owned 2.3% of Novatek’s shares.
