Two years after the start of the war in Ukraine, the judicial battle in France against individuals close to the Russian government continues to make progress. According to a statement from the Paris prosecutor's office to Le Monde, judicial authorities have decided to seize two more properties. While these are not the most luxurious properties ever seized, they are symbolic because they are linked to the direct circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of these properties is the "Villa Souzanna" in Anglet, in the Basque region, which was graffitied with anti-Putin slogans such as "F*** Putin", "Victory to Ukraine!" and "Putin mafia" two days after the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. Described in the press as the property of Lyudmila Putina, the wife of the Russian President from 1983 to 2013, the Art Deco-style villa 300 meters from the Dunes beach is officially owned by a real estate company controlled by Artur Ocheretny.
Ocheretny, who has been married to Putina, 20 years his senior, since 2015, bought the Basque property in 2013 for €5.4 million but paid a further €3.5 million for renovations. "There is nothing in Ocheretny's past that explains how he could have come to own such an important piece of real estate," the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) wrote in a 2017 investigation.
