VLADIMIR Putin’s gymnast lover allegedly pocketed a staggering £63million in “leftover funds” from the construction of the tyrant’s £1billion Black Sea mega-palace.
A bombshell probe claims cash that should have been accounted for after the despot’s lavish lair was built instead flowed straight into charities run by Alina Kabaeva – widely believed to be Putin’s secret partner.
Kabaeva, 42, is a former Olympic gold medallist long rumoured to share two sons with Putin, born in 2015 and 2019.
The explosive findings come from the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), set up by late opposition hero Alexei Navalny.
The vast estate near the resort town of Gelendzhik was first exposed by FBK in 2021.
Putin and the Kremlin deny the clifftop compound belongs to him.
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On paper, it is owned by a firm called Investment Solutions, allegedly buried in a web of shell companies.
But bank records reportedly showed Investment Solutions received loans from offshore entities in the British Virgin Islands, with the money filtered down the chain to fund construction.
When work wrapped in 2023, investigators claim 6.5 billion rubles – around £63million – was left sitting in excess.
According to the new FBK investigation, that eye-watering “surplus” was then donated to two non-profits controlled by Kabaeva.
Some £29million allegedly went to the Alina Kabaeva Charitable Foundation, which publicly supports female athletes, runs a gymnastics festival and helped restore a church in occupied Crimea.
But Navalny’s team claims the charity‘s actual spending amounted to only tens of millions of rubles – with the rest reportedly parked in a deposit account.
The remaining £34million was funnelled to another Kabaeva outfit, Heavenly Grace.
That organisation reportedly splashed £288,000 at the Imperial Peterhof luxury watch factory, according to independent outlet Meduza.
Cash also went on gymnastics camps in the Novgorod region – which FBK claims were a cover so Putin and Kabaeva’s children could “play with others their own age”.
The bulk of the money, however, was allegedly stashed away, earning a reported 435 million rubles – roughly £4million – in interest in 2024 alone.
Navalny’s group concluded the charities were nothing more than “slush funds” used to finance Putin and his secret family’s lifestyle “under the guise of philanthropy.”
The Gelendzhik mega-mansion has long been compared to a James Bond villain’s hideout.
One construction worker claimed it featured “a balcony hanging over the sea” where the owner could sip wine from palace stocks.
Before a revamp, it allegedly boasted a striptease stage and pole-dancing hookah hall.
A May 2024 FBK probe found the palace had since been remodelled to include a church, complete with a wooden throne reportedly made for Putin, plus sacred icons and images.
Three of Putin’s close associates – former classmate Viktor Khmarin, lawyer Nikolai Egorov and businessman Ilham Rahimov – are said to be shareholders in the official owner.
The palace cash storm erupts just weeks after Putin made a rare admission about his private life.
In a cringeworthy end-of-year Q&A, the divorced dictator was asked if he was in love.
“Yes,” he replied.
“That answers the final part of your question.”
He refused to name the mystery woman, but speculation instantly swirled around Kabaeva.
It comes as the Kremlin tyrant was accused in December of secretly grabbing an ultra-luxury £100million palace at Cape Aya in occupied Crimea – originally built for ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
The sprawling compound reportedly includes a private hospital, operating theatre, cryochamber and gold-plated bathroom fittings.
The main house measures almost 97,000 square feet, with a second cliffside building hidden beneath landscaped gardens.
There is also a private promenade, pier, artificial white-sand beach and helipad.
Financial records examined by Navalny’s team reportedly show the same funding network used for the Gelendzhik estate was also behind the Crimea complex.
Putin’s secret love life
by Juliana Cruz Lima, Foreign News reporter
VLADIMIR Putin has lived a double life of secrets, sex and secret children with a string of women, a bombshell book has claimed.
In The Tsar Himself: How Vladimir Putin Deceived Us All, exiled Russian journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin lift the lid on the 72-year-old dictator’s hidden harem.
They expose a web of affairs that stretches from strip clubs and student dorms to the gilded palaces of Monte Carlo and Moscow.
At the heart of it all is Svetlana Krivonogikh, a former shop cleaner whose life changed overnight when she caught Putin’s eye in 1999.
Four years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Elizaveta – now known as Luiza Rozova – who bears what one investigative reporter called a “phenomenal resemblance” to the Russian president.
Even facial recognition experts found a 70.44 per cent similarity between the two.
Her birth coincided with Svetlana’s transformation from struggling worker to multimillionaire.
In 2003 she snapped up a £2.9 million flat in Monaco, and leaked Pandora Papers later revealed a fortune of more than £78 million, including luxury properties and a yacht.
But Putin’s wandering eye didn’t rest there.
Enter Alina Kabaeva, the gymnast once dubbed “Russia’s most flexible woman”.
Fresh from Olympic gold in 2004 and a nude photoshoot for Maxim, Kabaeva was introduced to Putin by her coach, Irina Viner – the wife of billionaire Alisher Usmanov.
By 2006, the pair were lovers, and just a year later, Kabaeva’s former boyfriend, singer Murat Nasyrov, died in a suspicious “fall” from a fifth-floor balcony.
The Kremlin’s fury at any mention of Putin’s private life was laid bare in 2008, when a Moscow tabloid reported that he and Kabaeva were to wed.
Putin railed against reporters for sticking their “snot-ridden noses” into his affairs – and the paper was swiftly raided, its editor forced out, and the publication shuttered.
Kabaeva, now 42, is believed to have two sons with Putin – Ivan, 10, and Vladimir, 6 – though the Kremlin insists on secrecy, even giving the boys the false surname Spiridonov and erasing records of their existence.
She was rewarded handsomely for her loyalty: in 2014, Putin installed her as head of National Media Group on a reported £7.7 million salary, and she also holds a major stake in Bank Rossiya.
The lovers were even seen wearing matching wedding rings at the Sochi Olympics, where Kabaeva lit the torch – by then known as Russia’s “secret First Lady”.
