Putin’s 2018 election campaign used stolen funds from embezzlement case that led to regional official’s imprisonment, investigation finds
A new investigation from the Russian election watchdog Golos has revealed that the misappropriated money in a major 2018 embezzlement case that led to a former official’s imprisonment was spent on Vladimir Putin’s reelection campaign. Furthermore, the campaign failed to report the “contribution,” which exceeded the legal donation limit — an offense that should have led to Putin’s removal from the race under Russian law. Meduza lays out the report’s key insights.
In February 2024, Elena Lopaeva, the former deputy prime minister of Russia’s Perm region, was convicted of embezzling 67.7 million rubles ($730,000) from a charity organization called Assistance — 21st Century. A judge sentenced her to four years in prison and fined her 500,000 rubles ($5,380).
According to a new investigation from the independent Russian election monitoring movement Golos, Lopaeva revealed during her court proceedings that the money she allegedly embezzled was spent on Vladimir Putin’s 2018 presidential campaign. According to the former official, she even received a thank you card from Putin’s team for her “efforts” to help the campaign.
At the same time, however, no donation from the charity was recorded in any of the Putin campaign’s financial statements. “A blatant financial violation on such a scale should have led to the current president’s removal from the election,” the Golos investigation asserts.
Under Russian law, a person running office can finance their election campaign only from their official election account. If the candidate violates this rule and spends more than 20 million rubles ($250,000) from an external source, the law calls for their removal from the race.
Assistance — 21st Century was established in the Perm region in 2010 by filmmaker Pavel Pechenkine. The energy corporation Lukoil contributed money to the organization in exchange for tax benefits: the interest earned from the deposited funds was supposed to go towards community projects in the region.
From 2014 to 2019, according to state prosecutors, the charity received 4.8 billion rubles (around $52 million) in donations, and its total turnover amounted to over 22 billion rubles ($237 million). In 2017, Elena Naidanova was named the foundation’s director, while simultaneously serving as the financial director for the reelection campaign of acting Governor Maxim Reshetnikov. Pechenkine left the foundation in 2021, after realizing something was “amiss,” according to Golos.
During Lopaeva’s trial, the case attracted attention primarily due to revelations about embezzled funds being spent on the personal needs of then-Governor Reshetnikov.
Meanwhile, in August 2023, former charity director Elena Naidanova, who fled Russia after becoming embroiled in the case, told one local news outlet that the organization’s resources were also used to covertly finance election campaigns. According to her, 134 million rubles ($1.4 million) from the foundation were spent on Putin’s 2018 presidential run.
“This happened because United Russia [the country’s ruling party] didn’t provide funds for the campaign,” Naidanova claimed. “I don’t know — ask United Russia why they didn’t bother to set up a campaign headquarters and get funding from Moscow [...] and why they placed all of this on the governor, who had to make it work however he could — regardless of my feelings about Reshetnikov — even if it meant breaking the law,” she told journalists.
According to Naidanova’s testimony in court, Lopaeva said that the financing for Russia’s 2018 presidential election would be conducted using funds from the foundation under the guise of a project called “Perm Region — Moving Forward! A New Era.” The contracts for this project went effectively unfulfilled; the money was withdrawn and spent on salaries for political strategists, payments to canvassers, and other campaign activities.
Golos co-chair Stanislav Andreychuk noted in the group’s investigation that the Putin campaign has used similar schemes in other regions as well. If the scale of these fund-diverting operations were comparable to the one in Perm, he said, this suggests that more than half of the expenses for Putin’s 2018 election campaign were hidden, according to Andreychuk.
“Under normal circumstances, the Perm trial would have caused a political earthquake: a parliamentary investigation would have been launched, the FSB and the Investigative Committee would have started scrutinizing dozens of similar funds in other regions, the president likely would have resigned, and serious amendments would have been passed,” Andreychuk said.
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