Close Putin adviser revealed to have amassed vast real estate fortune by FBK investigation

Kirill Dmitriev, the long-time head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a member of the high-level delegation sent to Saudi Arabia by the Kremlin to negotiate with the US over Ukraine earlier this year, has been found to have accumulated a real estate fortune worth over €80 million during his years of state service, according to an investigation by the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) published on Tuesday. 

Dmitriev, who since 2011 has been the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, is a close adviser to Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin insider. In the 2010s, Dmitriev worked to strengthen Russian ties with Saudi Arabia, ultimately leading to the signing of the OPEC+ oil price agreement in 2016, and was active in early efforts to engage Donald Trump and his team following his election victory that same year. 

According to the FBK investigation, Dmitriev owned two properties in Russia worth a total of €4.6 million in 2011. Since then, his family has acquired at least 14 more properties, including luxury apartments in the United Arab Emirates and a villa in France. Over the same period, his total net worth has increased almost 20 times. 

The properties are controlled through an array of complex offshore ownership structures, the FBK said, including some registered to Dmitriev’s relatives. Dmitriev is married to Natalya Popova, a close university friend of Vladimir Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, according to the investigation.

In recent months, Dmitriev has enjoyed a prominent role in Russian efforts to bring about a diplomatic entente with the United States and was named Putin’s special envoy for international economic and investment cooperation in mid-February. That same month, he was appointed the youngest member of the Russian delegation to ceasefire talks in Riyadh.

Since then, he has actively discussed the potential return of Western businesses to Russia later this year, and is set to become the first senior Kremlin official to visit Washington since 2022 when he travels there for talks with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff later this week.