In public, Russian President Vladimir Putin has an aversion to gambling. However, according to leaked pictures, which allegedly depict the president's palace on the Black Sea, his personal feelings can be completely different.
The images are part of an investigation published Tuesday on YouTube and the blog of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. They seem to show that the lavish $ 1 billion palace includes a casino, a strip club and a gaming room with slot machines and slot machines.
According to the Kremlin critic Navalny, the palace was paid for with funds that Putin's inner circle had stolen from the Russian state. In his two-hour YouTube video, which was viewed three million times within two hours of being posted, Navalny called it "the biggest bribe in the world".
Fake accusations
An anti-corruption activist was arrested on his return to Russia from Germany at the weekend. Navalny accuses Putin of ordering a poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok in August, an attack he barely survived.
On Monday, a Moscow judge sentenced Navalny to 30 days in prison for violating probation for embezzlement, which could now lead to years in prison. Navalny says the accusations are fabricated and politically motivated.
In 2009, as part of the "suppression of corruption", Putin promptly closed all casinos, card clubs and slot machines in Russian cities, declaring gambling a "social catastrophe".
He then pressured the legislature to pass legislation to deport all gambling establishments to four remote economic zones.
At the same time, huge sums of money flowed into the construction of the Black Sea Palace, as revealed by an open letter from then-exiled whistleblower businessman Sergei Kolesnikov to then-President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010.
According to the letter, these were private investment funds to finance health contracts and other projects.
Private city
Navalny's pictures show a richly decorated casino hall, decorated with board games. The mansion also has a theater and an underground skating rink, and there are vineyards and even a church on site.
"There are impregnable fences, its own port, its own guards, a church, its own licensing system, a no-fly zone and even its own checkpoint on the border. It is a completely separate state within Russia, “Navalny says in his video, which was recorded before his arrest and subsequently released.
"This is the most secret and guarded facility in Russia," he adds. "This is not a country house or residence – this is a whole city, or rather a kingdom.“
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday that all of Navalny's claims were false.
Vladimir Putin's casino in a secret palace with slot machines: pictures first appeared on Casino.org .
