The team of the Russian opposition leader Navalny spoke about the luxurious life of the wife of Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov.
She spent hundreds of thousands of euros on vacations, jewelry and outfits, and her bills were paid by a firm associated with construction in Mariupol.
The investigation is based on the e-mail data of the official’s wife, the gossip heroine of the 2000s, Svetlana Ivanova.
In October, her husband Ivanov was included in the list of EU sanctions. Svetlana did not fall under the sanctions and in early December, apparently, she visited her daughter in Europe again.
Navalny’s team claims to have gained access to 8,000 Ivanova’s letters over 12 years, which contained “bills, house plans, documents for yachts and villas, receipts for antiques and jewelry, details of parties and thousands of photographs.”
Navalny is convinced that Ivanova’s bills for jewelry and repairs were repeatedly paid by other people or companies. Among them are firms associated with Olimpsitistroy, a major contractor of the Russian Defense Ministry, building residential buildings in the captured and destroyed Mariupol.
In addition, one of the companies associated with Olympcitybud and paying the Ivanovs’ bills for repairs owns a country house with an area of almost three thousand square meters in the Tver region on the banks of the Volga. At the same time, it was Ivanova who received the technical plans of the house from the architects by mail.
The wife of the Deputy Minister of Defense wrote on Instagram about love for the motherland and quoted a clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, at least in the past she held an Israeli passport and, together with her ex-husband, owned an apartment in Tel Aviv, which she did not report on her income declaration as the wife of an official. All her children do not live in Russia, Navalny’s associates found out.
In March 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ivanova traveled to France, where her daughter lives, and the UK, where her son is studying.
She also visited the Paris store of the jeweler Joel Arthur Rosenthal and bought clothes worth eight thousand euros in a Prada boutique. In the summer of 2022, the Ivanovs filed for divorce (at the same time, Navalny’s associates, according to them, did not find evidence that they were really divorced).
Who is Ivanova
Svetlana Zakharova (maiden name of the heroine of the investigation) married Timur Ivanov in 2009. Prior to that, she was the wife of businessman Mikhail Manievich.
At least in 2010, the Ivanovs began to travel to the Cote d’Azur every August and rented expensive villas and yachts. From 2013 to 2018 – this is the period, according to Navalny’s associates, they carefully studied according to Ivanova’s letters – the family spent at least 850 thousand euros on renting villas in Saint-Tropez. Another 250 thousand euros went to yachts.
In addition, in 2011, the Ivanovs bought a 2001 Rolls-Royce Corniche, registering it with a company in Luxembourg. The car cost 120 thousand euros, its restoration is another 75 thousand.
There is just a private moment here. The 120,000 euros paid for a Rolls-Royce vacation pay, at the 2011 exchange rate, is about five million rubles. At the same time, we have a certificate of Ivanov’s income for the same year, which he brought to the court, nowhere else officially. And according to her, his income is 112 thousand a month. 1.3 million a year, and Rolls-Royce for five, the investigation says.
In addition, Ivanova bought expensive clothes (in particular, Dolce & Gabbana dresses worth from 52 to 94 thousand euros), jewelry (including a ring for 104 thousand dollars) and antiques (in particular, a set of glass birds for seven thousand Euro).
In 2018, she celebrated her birthday in Istanbul, which cost 178 thousand euros. 2021 Ivanova’s birthday was celebrated in the family house on Rublyovka. Singer Grigory Leps and press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov came. In the same year, the Ivanovs, Peskov and his wife Tatyana Navka traveled together to Altai. On this trip, Leps also sang to them.
In 2020 alone, Ivanova, according to Navalny’s team, spent more than 109 million rubles. Of these, 90 million went to buy out half of the apartment of her ex-husband’s family. The housing is located in the center of Moscow on Povarskaya Street – not far from the 1st Zachatovsky Lane, where, as Project previously reported, the Ivanovs rented housing.
They also, according to the Navalny and Project team, have a mansion on Rublyovka and a 19th-century noble estate on Prechistenka. The cost of each of these properties is about 600 million rubles. The mansion is registered to the “Russian Federation”, the estate – to the firm of the driver Timur Ivanov. Rolls-Royce Ghost cars for 17 million rubles and Gelendvagen cars for 20 million rubles were issued on it.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.