The family of Nikolai Patrushev - a close ally of Vladimir Putin, former FSB chief and ex-secretary of Russia’s Security Council - controls a portfolio of luxury properties valued at more than 14 billion rubles ($174 million), according to a new investigation.
The findings come from Proekt’s “Fathers and Grandfathers” series. The figure is striking even for Russia’s security elite, long accustomed to concealing wealth.
Reporters say nearly half of the assets are registered to Marina Artyomyeva, described as the secret wife of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev, Nikolai’s son. Her name does not appear in the official disclosures of the senior official, yet the investigation says about 6.5 billion rubles in assets are in her name. They include two high-end apartments opposite the Kremlin, land in Serebryany Bor and Istra, and commercial space in the Moscow business hubs “Moscow-City,” “Lotos” and “Vodny.”
Artyomyeva’s personal story is portrayed as a dramatic rise. Raised in an ordinary family and working in junior roles, she met Dmitry Patrushev in 2009. A year later she had their first child, and soon became CEO of World Fashion Channel, where she had previously been a producer. Her business fortunes accelerated after billionaire Igor Kesaev - a longtime patron and financial backer of the Patrushev family — registered a stake in the channel to her, the investigation says.
Even as WFC later dwindled into a standard Russian fashion website, Artyomyeva had already accumulated stakes in a dozen companies and acquired real estate far beyond the reach of most Russians, according to the report. She also obtained a 2% annual mortgage from Rosselkhozbank - then run by her husband — securing a €700,000 loan to buy a residence near the Kremlin, despite foreign-currency loans largely disappearing since 2014 and such terms being unavailable to ordinary borrowers.
Other family holdings are registered to additional relatives. Patrushev’s former wife, Elena, a retiree, holds about 4 billion rubles in property, including a plot in Serebryany Bor and land in Istra. Another daughter-in-law, Tatyana Patrusheva, received two houses along the Novorizhskoye Highway and three luxury apartments in the boutique residence “Krestovsky 10,” totaling roughly 2.7 billion rubles, the report says.
