Prigozhin dealt in many fake passports
Gold bars, pistols, fake ID cards: several items belonging to the Wagner boss were seized during a search.
During a search of Prigozhin’s office, several fake passports were found, among other things.
Photo: Telegram (@Meduza)
even before Wagner’s forces retreated on Saturday Russian authorities announced they had searched Prigozhin’s office in St. Petersburg. Local online newspaper “Fontanka” reported that the authorities found five kilograms of gold and US dollar cash, six pistols, five kilograms of unidentified white powder and several fake passports from Prigozhin.
The newspaper published photographs of the items found, but later deleted them after Prigozhin’s retraction. However, other media have already picked up the information and reposted the photos and done more research in the past few days.
Names on fake passports can be assigned to multiple people. For example, the personal details of “Dmitri Geiler”, whose name can be seen on one of the fake passports with Prigozhin’s passport photograph. According to Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE / RL), a person with this name was a patient at the Sogaz clinic in St. Petersburg. The hospital is connected to Putin’s eldest daughter, Maria Vorontsova. According to the radio station, Geller has been classified as a “Super VIP” in the hospital’s database. “It is now clear that this ‘super VIP’ agent was in fact Yevgeny Prigozhin,” wrote RFE/RL radio. In addition to Putin’s close circle, Wagner fighters are said to have been treated at the hospital.
The paper goes on to say that the identity of the “real Geller” could be assigned to a man who was looking for a job as a driver in 2017 for 40,000 rubles (about 650 francs in 2017) a month. The newspaper published a picture that supposedly shows the “real Geller” in front of his car. “It is interesting in this case that Prigozhin was apparently trying to find a man who vaguely resembled him in at least some respects,” wrote RFE/RL journalist Mark Krotov.
Another fake passport is believed to belong to Prigozhin’s former look-alike. The passport photograph does not show Prigozhin, but rather a man who vaguely resembles him. According to Krotov, this is Leonid Krasavin, who has the same date of birth as Prigozhin. As the today closed independent media portal “Open Media” first mentioned in 2021, Leonid Krasavin changed his name to Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2020. After that, Prigozhin’s look-alike made trips to Lithuania twice. According to Open Media, it was reportedly a special Russian operation to check how Lithuanian counterintelligence was doing.
The company’s identity card was also found in French under the name “Sergey Ivanov”. According to the SOTA news agency, the certificate belonged to a “security specialist” and was issued by a company called “Sewa”. SEWA is based in the Central African Republic. There, the company is responsible for “protecting” Wagner’s activities in the country. The company is subject to sanctions in the United States. Be in the Central African Republic Approximately 2,000 suspected Wagner mercenaries.
According to Fontanka, a total of $47.4 million in cash was found. Prigozhin confirmed over the weekend that the money belonged to Wagner and said it was intended to pay family members of the deceased mercenaries.
Now it also became clear where the money found came from: which from the Kremlin. In a speech on Tuesday, Putin admitted for the first time that Wagner was “funded entirely by the Russian state.” From May 2022 to May 2023 alone, the state paid the Wagner Company 86.262 billion rubles (about 1 billion francs) in payments and bonuses. “The authorities will investigate how the money paid to Wagner and his boss was spent,” Putin added.
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