In Search of Putin's Money

In Search of Putin's Money

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Ratings: 6.47/10 from 55 users.

In Search of Putin's MoneyVladimir Putin was elected to serve as Russia's president for another six years. To his supporters, such as those we encountered celebrating at an election night government rally in Moscow, Putin is a hero, the strong man who brought order to Russia after the chaos of the Yeltsin years.

They love his carefully cultivated image: the horse-riding, judo black-belted, stand-for-no-nonsense action man who has taken the country back to its rightful place on the world's stage.

But elsewhere in Moscow that night, under the watchful eye of state security and police, Putin's political opponents gathered to express their disapproval.

Disappointed by the result after enjoying a surprising late surge in the anti-Putin camp in the weeks before the poll, many of them said that his years at the top of Russian politics had seen the country's reputation become synonymous with cronyism and corruption, and that with Putin at the helm inner cliques have been allowed to run Russia for their own benefit and personal gain.

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Konrad
Konrad
4 years ago

Have you ever done such a "documentary" on the Bush family???

Fareed the brown bullshitter
Fareed the brown bullshitter
6 years ago

"A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth."
~ G. Goebbels (Joseph Goebbels), Propaganda officer for Adolf Hitler

Fareed Zakaria has been a Putin conspiracy theorist for a long time and has certainly furthered his career by doing so. He has not had any success in trying to make Putin look bad in public, so it makes sense that he would just devote more time to spreading stories about him in such a venue. Here is Fareed getting his comeuppance from Putin at an international conference.

Getting back to your question, this CNN video is simply one more of his attempts to craft and control the image Westerners have of Putin, and of Russia. It starts with wildly inflammatory statements like Hillary Clinton saying “He was a KGB agent. By definition, he has no soul!” and then it repeats the same evidence-less claims still being used today, like “Putin is worth over $200 billion dollars.” These statements are mixed into a montage of military parades and Russian police manhandling protesters just to make sure that you get the point.

Let’s just take those two examples.

“He was a KGB agent. By definition, he has no soul!” Interesting point from the woman who cackled and laughed about killing Osama bin Laden and who was directly involved in pushing the operations leading up to the bloodbaths of Libya and Syria, which have killed at least a million people and created millions of refugees. Pretty soul-less stuff in my book, by the way. (But it works well visually in the video, especially if you are a typical “boob-toob” couch potato and have the critical thinking capacity of a gerbil.)

First of all, his time in Dresden, East Germany was in a “local intelligence office” and there has never been any indication that he had a 007 type career there, or played the role of assassin certainly, because Dresden was a “backwater” and not a Geneva or Paris or Berlin. Secondly, he was there for 5 years and rose to be assistant to the director. That does not sound like the career path of someone who was always in the field. He most certainly had to be involved with field work, but it seems that that work was pretty routine spy stuff and mainly counter-intelligence like trying to “turn” CIA or German agents or steal technological data. Hardly ethical work, to be sure, but certainly not activities that require you to be soul-less. (This type of work is the CIA’s bread and butter, by the way, so glass houses and all of that.)

He was however a real KGB agent, which is why Clinton’s comment plays so well. Take a tablespoon of truth, add assorted unsubstantiated claims and assertions, and then shake it, don’t stir.

The fact is, no one but Putin and the KGB know what he was assigned to do during that time period. Let me repeat that, no one but Putin and the KGB know what his assignments were during that period. We do know however, that he got married and had the first of two daughters and that he and his family moved back to Russia after his 5 year posting in Dresden.

“Putin is worth over $200 billion dollars.” Please see my answer to a previous question for a detailed examination of this claim. Doug Jackson's answer to Russian President Valdamir Putin is the richest, most powerful and has assets worth billions. What will happen to them when he dies?

A brief summary of that answer is this: The claim that Putin is worth billions all goes back to an interview in Die Welt (a German paper) with a toady of the Russian oligarchy who claimed, but never presented any evidence for his claims, that he knew how much Putin was worth and he estimated it as “$40-$70 billion”. That’s it. One person claiming that he knew, but not a shred of evidence ever presented to back those claims. (*This is true for the claims about the Russians hacking the American election as well!)

Thanks to the veracity and ethics in journalism today, that estimate has risen to $200 billion but still without any evidence and usually only the article in Die Welt mentioned as a source.

Fareed’s career is going well, as is the career of any journalist or talking head today who expounds on this theme (Rachel Maddow; the willingness to tell lies for your career crosses all political lines.) and is willing to repeat those lies ad infinitum.

The following quote is attributed to Goebbels, but I have seen other sources quoted too, and it sums up 90% of what is being said about Putin and Russia in western media today….

Henriette Bauer
Henriette Bauer
8 years ago

In case that the rumours that are commented and spread worldwide are right and there is any hidden money, then it would be important to track that money down one day and give it back to the nation or its legal owners. There are rumours saying that the wealth of Putin could be an estimated 200 Billion US- Dollar.

cabdi karim
cabdi karim
9 years ago

please stop putn's affairs

Chomsky
Chomsky
9 years ago

Documentary - Dictionary. com
1.
Also, doc·u·men·tal [dok-yuh-men-tl] Show IPA . pertaining to, consisting of, or derived from documents.
2.
Movies, Television. based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story, etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements.

A scary fail on both accounts. So what is strange to me is that this "documentary" got made.
Next documentary should be that Putin is actually Hitler and that Hitler is actually an alien. Yes,.... I even got a title for you.

Alien Hitler Putin

hell hole
hell hole
11 years ago

im quite surprised's the reporter isn't dead like Anna Politkovskaya

killer316
killer316
11 years ago

wiki leaks omg you made a documentry with nothing -just guess work and if he was the richest man in the world and if he did it by legit means then who cares... the point of his leadership was to put russia back on top and hes done that so why the bitching....my guess is this is a propaganda movie for the party that cant get in to power
and if he is proven to be just an average man then thumbs up mate nice job

Damian Sidoruk
Damian Sidoruk
11 years ago

By the way every organisation that starts with Al is CIA.. Aljazeera Alquaida, Al khavachi, and other scum organbisations .. you watching news every day , but you don't even know how Alquaida flag and logo looks like.. and what flags and logos are the so called free syrian army wearing?? What flags and logos were hang over all benghazi and tripoli after they raided gadaffi ?? And we still send our troops, to support Al-CIA-da in overthroving the goverment .. all of the rebels in syria are non syrian citisens, and most of them don't even speak the language.. Yet tehy call themselves Free Syrian Army with black alquaida flags all over the place and american weapons they try to overthrow goverment kill civilians and blame it on syrian goverments.. you see a video like this, think again coz it's designed to brainwash a lie in to ur brain.. Al jazeera is not worth watching. You want news, watch Young Turks if you want a laugh, and Russia Today if you want serious news and comments.

Damian Sidoruk
Damian Sidoruk
11 years ago

Dude Al Jazeera is now owned by the CIA and the CIA tell em what to tell the world .. all the videos that suposivly came from osama bin laden were aired on al jazeera and don't forget who bin laden really is .. his true nam is Tim Osman hired by the cia and long dead before the 9/11.. you don't belive it look it up :) .. Probably many of you still don't realise that Tim osman was working for the CIA and cia's job is to start covert wars and overthrow goverments, and nothing else. So who really is al jazeera osama bin laden and finally this movie. It's a CIA propaganda .. US goverment stole more money then anyone in the world, but somehow they blame putin!

Tolobajnr S. Lumumba
Tolobajnr S. Lumumba
11 years ago

Don't trust Al Jazeera.

Vladimir Bogdanov
Vladimir Bogdanov
11 years ago

No doubt in my mind Mr. Putin could have all the money and power claimed in this video if not some more. The mentality of people like him is that he has to be on absolute top, the pinnacle of everything. He couldn't live by being 2nd in wealth nor power.

yahoo-DJAOTAWECLZ3X5UHFQNRFFHAXE
yahoo-DJAOTAWECLZ3X5UHFQNRFFHAXE
11 years ago

love the castle, my only suggestion is to use sea water in the moat surrounding it, since sea water acts like a algaecide.

Roger Gordon
Roger Gordon
11 years ago

Russia is a Great nation and deserves better for sure. And Putin did made the stop after all to CIA practices in Russia. Finally The Phoenix is raising up from its ashes. Russia will be powerful as never before and will make the big difference in New World Order. No such on Pole rule will exist thanks to Russia. People need to understand that Russia is not aggressive nation. It was misled with people which created CIA. And believe me after Putin after his stabilization you will see new people but for now the situation is very hard and for that you need a hard man. When all speculators will be bashed away from the surface from our planet then it will happen. Remember that our planet is going into another paradigm and it will be very soon when we find peace in us all.

Imightberiding
Imightberiding
11 years ago

This is an absolutely absurd & obviously biased, targeted attack on Putin. Come on people. Doesn't everyone know about the obscene wealth that the U.S. presidents as well as heads of state from almost all other nations have.

This is so incredibly silly & a total waste of time. Of course he's wealthy. He's the bloody leader of a nation.

It is common knowledge that the President's salary in the U.S. is a huge cut in regular reimbursements to the elected President at any given time. They are all multi millionaires & accustomed to earning millions annually, not a couple hundred thousand.

$160 000.00 for watches is to me an unbelievable sum. To a wealthy millionaire it is nothing. Why is any one surprised to find out that the leader of one of the world's largest nations is extremely wealthy? Of course he is.

I don't necessarily agree or support the notion of political leaders & wealth in congress but that's the way of our wonderful world. How much do the Presidential candidates spend campaigning just to get elected in the U.S. before they spend millions over the 4 years in office just to live & exist on a daily basis. This speaks nothing of political & financial connections that most certainly guarantee financial freedom for generations to follow that 4 year posting.

As I said, I don't particularly agree with this amount of ridiculous wealth but it is a given with most other national leaders, so why the beat-down of Putin? He's rich. Who knew?

Pysmythe
Pysmythe
11 years ago

Greed is not good. And it is going to sink this world and EVERYONE in it, if something is not done about it. It is not the end-all, be-all; it is not the "reason we are here," in my view. It is NOT our morality: We are not on this planet "to make money". It is not about the accumulation of more material sh-t and power than the next guy, for the sake of THAT, and that if he should slip down and die, it is therefore no concern of ours. It's about GIVING A SH-T ABOUT THAT NEXT GUY, and trying to do what can and should be done to help raise him up to achieve his fullest potential, especially if his circumstances or his intellectual capacity should be less favorable than ours, even if only because that will be good for us, too, in the long run. AND... it is about helping to care for those who, for whatever reason, have great difficulty taking care of themselves: Children, the elderly, the mentally ill, etc. (I swear, I think many of the wealthy look on the accumulation of money as the accumulation of I.Q. points, and, of course, people being what they too often are, just about everyone wants to be the smartest guy in the room.)

I mean... none of these are new ideas, right? Most everyone could agree with the gist of them in a civilized world. Even many of the wealthy... And yet, what do you see being done more and more? People who have accumulated what they have refusing to pay back into a system that afforded them the opportunity to make it in the first place. These tax-havens, loopholes, etc., have created very significant gaps in the finances of the economies concerned, and yet we hear very little, or nothing, about it in the media.

I wonder why that is?

[ Yeah, it's me. :) It's a "Rembrandt does Stalin as mugshot". ]

Roger Gordon
Roger Gordon
11 years ago

Yeah Great let the infowar begin :D

Roger Gordon
Roger Gordon
11 years ago

I say just this. There wouldn't be anyone better for Russia then Putin! Period. What does Obama own?! What about wall-street?! Screw AlJazeera they are owned by US Zionists anyways.

Dean Edgington
Dean Edgington
11 years ago

Russians must wonder which god they have offened most. Under Tsarist rule they had it bad, under Communism they had it bad and now, under Putin they have it bad also. Poor fukers.

alans
alans
11 years ago

I don't have a problem with Putin. Cant the guy have horses, yachts and caviar for his work?

Robert Elliot
Robert Elliot
11 years ago

Despite mountains of hot, steaming propaganda to the contrary, Putin is immensely popular with the Russian people because he actually represents their interests, as opposed to the interests of a handful of super-rich psychopaths as is the case in virtually every Western country. Don't you think it's time we the people demanded a leader like Vladimir Putin?

oQ
oQ
11 years ago

The simple word *trust* is dying, trust is on it's deathbed plugged with money iv that will not save it. That we know!

By the way Trust is also synonyme with cartel, business, corporation, institution, group, multinational organization, syndicate, pool, megacorp, monopoly.Those are quite healthy, or is that wealthy?

Why, how, where, who...that we don't know and quite possibly never will before it gets worse.
1i

David Ewer
David Ewer
11 years ago

I'm sure Putin is everything this film suggests and more. The rich elites in all nations do the same - they offshore their ill-gotten gains.

lakhotason
lakhotason
11 years ago

Corruption? In Mother Russia? I am shocked! Shocked I tell you!

Rolands
Rolands
11 years ago

Isn't Mr. Putin doing the same stuff all the most worlds country leaders do? Steel the wealth of their country? There were major problems in voting a new president and you can find documentary videos about that on youtube (where 1 person drops 10 voting tickets e.g. and other all caught on tape).
I have no problem in believing that he is supper rich.
Have to say that I dont like Al Jazeera because it feels in pocket of USA which i dont trust as much as to Russia (same box different piece of cookie).

dewflirt
dewflirt
11 years ago

Liked the credits, Giacometti meets Escher :) Think I might have seen this before, or are they just going over old ground? He's rich, powerful and corrupt, shocking! Russia has a delicious history of fairy tales, maybe Putin is just creating his own. Not much different from any other country, say one thing and do another. They just care less about hiding it all, More brazen. I kind of like brazen. Funny little character. Is he married? I like horses and yachts..... ;)

emp12345
emp12345
11 years ago

I wouldn't trust Al Jazeeera any more as I would trust Putin. In fact, I would trust Putin instead of Al Jazeera. Al jazeera are buddies of the USA. And can you trust the USA? Noooooo way!

Glen Hale
Glen Hale
11 years ago

Got the right surname Putin in his pocket , like Made off with others millions.