Putin threatens cash cut to cellist friend’s kids foundation

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday threatened to cut millions of dollars in state funding for a children’s foundation chaired by his cellist friend Sergei Roldugin, named by the Panama Papers as head of an offshore empire.
Roldugin was said in the Panama Papers — leaked in April — to be the owner of a vast offshore empire that apparently controlled some $2 billion.
Putin denied any corruption, insisting his friend only spent money on musical instruments including a Stradivarius cello.
Tatiana Golikova, the head of the national audit chamber, on Wednesday told Putin at a meeting that the Talent and Success foundation headed by Roldugin had received 384 million rubles ($6 million) in state money in 2016 but by October had only spent 15.5 percent of it.
Roldugin is the chairman of the board of the foundation which runs a children’s educational centre in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, according to its website.
Putin responded in comments posted on the Kremlin website: “They took three hundred (million) but only 15 percent is being used,” saying that either the foundation is not yet fully operational or “it doesn’t need so much money”.
“In that case we’ll direct (the money) to other objectives. We have ways to allocate this money in the social sphere,” Putin added.
Nevertheless, RBK business daily reported Wednesday that the foundation was set to receive more than 1 billion rubles between 2017 and 2019 according to a draft budget drawn up by the parliament’s sports and youth committee.
Roldugin “will flood the whole country with cellos”, joked Sergey Aleksashenko, a former deputy chief of Russia’s Central Bank, on Twitter.
Russia is experiencing the longest recession of Putin’s 16-year rule, due to lower oil prices and Western sanctions and is scrambling to plug a widening budget deficit.
The Panama Papers leaked by a law firm in April revealed that Putin’s associates, notably Roldugin, “secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies”, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Since then Roldugin has become a more high-profile figure and played at a concert in May in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra after it was recaptured by regime forces.