From pimping to a $100 million golden parachute: how Putin’s KGB associate Vladimir Strzhalkovsky built an empire in Europe

Vladimir Strzhalkovsky is a name that means little to the general public. But it was he, a former KGB officer and friend of Putin and Patrushev, who became the protagonist of one of the most fantastical stories about the evolution of the post-Soviet elite.

The Insider reported this.

According to The Insider, Vladimir Strzhalkovsky began his career in the Leningrad KGB, where he became close to two future heavyweights of Russian politics, Patrushev and Putin. This friendship became the key to his incredible rise.

After the collapse of the USSR, Strzhalkovsky remained relevant. In 1991, when Putin became head of the St. Petersburg mayor’s committee for external relations, Strzhalkovsky became director of the travel agency "Neva." Tourism was merely a façade: according to Finnish court documents, the company organized mass trips of sex workers from Russia to Finland. The court found the case to be prostitution, but no one was punished.

How to make millions

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A year after Putin became prime minister, his former KGB colleague found himself appointed deputy minister of sports and tourism. Moreover, his old ally, Natalia Oksa, became the ministry’s representative in Finland—and again ran brothels, this time using state property. The Finnish press reported on apartments owned by the ministry being used as brothels.

In 2008, Strzhalkovsky transitioned to business, becoming the head of Norilsk Nickel’s board. He was a purely political appointee: he had little management involvement, lived in Moscow, and never visited the company’s operations. However, he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, as well as annual bonuses of up to $25 million. In 2012, he resigned with a record-breaking "golden parachute" of $100 million.

He transferred hundreds of millions of dollars earned at Norilsk Nickel to Cyprus . A banking crisis erupted there in 2013, and some depositors, including Strzhalkovsky, received shares in the Bank of Cyprus.

As the authors of the investigation note, even after leaving government service, Vladimir Strzhalkovsky remained closely connected to the Russian security elite. In 2015, he joined the supervisory board of Rosselkhozbank, where key positions were held by people from the circle of Patrushev, his longtime KGB acquaintance. Strzhalkovsky also represented Rosatom in Africa as a special representative.

Family ties grew stronger—Patrushev and Strzhalkovsky’s children became neighbors in an elite residential complex near Gelendzhik. And from 2016 to 2019, Strzhalkovsky headed Dynamo, the main sports association of Russian security forces, traditionally closely linked to the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Son-spy

Strzhalkovsky’s son, Evgeny, followed in his father’s footsteps, graduating from the Foreign Intelligence Service Academy and working undercover at Vnesheconombank. At the same time, Evgeny led the aggressive military-historical reenactment group "Morgil," which combined neo-Nazi ideology with hooliganism.

The club’s ideology divided people into "normals" and "Golims" (for example, Tolkienists), who were allowed to be beaten. The group staged attacks on other roleplayers and trained as a paramilitary unit, with fencing, hand-to-hand combat, and aggressive tactics.

Evgeny Strzhalkovsky. Photo: The Insider

The most famous incident was the 2002 attack on participants of the Blinkom-3 role-playing festival in St. Petersburg: two were beaten, and one was shot in the head several times with an air rifle. The Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to open a case; one was only opened after social services workers appealed to the prosecutor’s office.

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The Alcohol Empire in Europe

The family later built a veritable alcohol empire in Europe. Evgeny became a citizen of Monaco, headed the offshore structure Thesauro Praetor, and acquired distilleries in France and Italy, as well as breweries in the Czech Republic.

Their key assets include the La Scarpa distillery in Piedmont (with a total vineyard area of 5 hectares, the price per hectare can reach €3 million), the vermouth producer Monte Carlo, and the Czech brewery Svabin. The ownership structure is complex, involving offshore companies, front men, and intermediary companies.

In the UK, Evgeny owns two alcohol companies. In Scotland, he purchased a 12-room mansion with a garden and 250 acres of woodland for £4 million. The castle is located near the Loch Striven refuelling station, strategically important for the British and American navies.

A bar in Vienna is also registered to his son, and his mother and Vladimir’s ex-wife, Natalia Strzhalkovskaya, manages restaurants and pubs in Moscow. Her assets include a beer restaurant, bars on Kuznetsky Most, Nikolskaya, Myasnitskaya, and Malaya Bronnaya streets, and the Fiorentini bistro.

Strange hotels

Vladimir Strzhalkovsky’s second wife, Irina, a former employee of the Russian Presidential Property Management Department, can now be considered the mistress of a European hotel mini-empire. She owns the V-Hotels Group chain, registered in Cyprus, with luxury spa hotels in Italy (Abano Terme) and Greece (Corfu), registered through a complex network of offshore companies.

She owns at least six large hotels valued at tens of millions of euros, and Irina herself is a citizen of Cyprus and the holder of a Montenegrin “golden passport . ”

Despite the hotels’ scale and standard, their official finances appear suspicious: the companies report meager profits or losses, while regularly receiving multimillion-dollar loans from structures linked to Irina and offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands.

The total amount of such infusions exceeds 66 million euros. All accounts are held at the Bank of Cyprus, where Vladimir Strzhalkovsky himself previously held a position. All this points to the possible use of the hotel chain for money laundering and legalization.

Chekists among the nobility

As noted in the investigation, it was not difficult for Vladimir and Yevgeny Strzhalkovsky to enter the circles of true European aristocracy.

Evgeny entered Monaco’s aristocratic circles through sport: he headed the local branch of the HMBIA historical fighting federation and became close to Prince Albert II, who personally presented prizes at tournaments. Participation in this circle, the authors suggest, helped him obtain Monaco citizenship and legalize the Monte Carlo liquor brand.

Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, however, set about restoring "historical justice" and officially acquired a noble title for himself. Their family belonged to the Polish gentry and was mentioned in the list of families in the "Highly Approved Armorial" of the Kingdom of Poland.

In 2005, the recent KGB employee received "hereditary nobility" from Maria Romanova (from the Hohenzollern-Romanov line), and in 2009 he became a Knight of the Order of St. Anne.

As the publication notes, neither Vladimir, Evgeny, nor Irina are subject to Western sanctions. They freely manage their assets, sell alcohol, manage hotels, participate in international tournaments, and travel on luxury yachts.

Needless to say, The Insider writes, how Russian intelligence agencies could benefit from a network of European hotels, connections within European aristocracy, a ready-made money laundering infrastructure, and an experienced escort business organizer. But despite the various red flags, the family of Russian spies feels perfectly comfortable in Europe.