Vladimir Litvinenko

Vladimir Stefanovich Litvinenko (Владимир Стефанович Литвиненко, born 14 August 1955) is a Russian academic, businessman and Vladimir Putin's campaign manager.[1] He is also rector of the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute in St Petersburg.[1]

Career

Litvinenko has been the rector of St Petersburg’s Mining Institute since the 1990s. He oversaw Vladimir Putin's dissertation work in 1996, which is alleged to include significant amounts of plagiarism and is speculated perhaps to have not even been written by Putin (i.e. that he paid somebody to write it for him). Litvinenko has been criticised for not spotting the plagiarism.[2] According to his daughter Olga, Vladimir Litvinenko himself wrote the dissertation.[3]

Litvinenko was Putin’s political campaign manager in 2000 and 2004.

On June 11, 2014, he was given an honorary doctorate by the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, Saxony, Germany.[4]

Business dealings and Wealth

Litvinenko owns a 5% share in Phosagro, a phosphate mine[1] in the Arctic.[5] The mine had been at one time partly owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky.[5] He claims that he was paid in shares for some consulting that he did in 2004 and that this "did not contradict any laws".[5] The stock is now worth about $260,000,000.[1][5] Phosagro was floated on the London Stock Exchange in July 2011 and Litvinenko was listed among its new owners.[5]

Personal life

Litvinenko has a daughter, Olga, born in 1983,[3] who used to be a member of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg.[6] In May 2010 Vladimir and his wife were looking after Olga's daughter Ester-Maria Litvinenko (born in 2009), and refused to give her back to Olga.[6] Olga has described this as a kidnapping and has instigated legal proceedings to get her daughter back. Olga describes her father as "the richest rector in Russia" and an "oligarch" ("самый богатый ректор России, олигарх"[3]). In summer 2011, Vladimir reported to the police that Olga and her other son, Mikhail, had been kidnapped and his daughter's assets were frozen.[6]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "The fabulous riches of Putin’s inner circle". The Bureau Investigates. Retrieved June 7, 2012.
  2. ↑ "It All Boils Down to Plagiarism". Cdi.org. 2006-03-31. Retrieved 2010-03-02. Clifford Gaddy: "Mr. Litvinenko -- who was directly involved in the dissertation, allegedly helped [Putin] choose the topic and was more or less the advisor for the dissertation -- is himself a member of the higher accreditation commission, which is the government-appointed body to be the watchdog over standards about degree-granting, dissertations and quality control for higher education in Russia. So it’s extra scandalous that he would be involved in this case of, at minimum, shoddiness and plagiarism, possibly something worse, which would be the literal purchase, either by money or political influence, of a dissertation by someone who didn’t actually do the work. That second point is not clear. I don’t have proof about that. All I have is proof about the plagiarism."
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Ольга Литвиненко". Ester-Maria.com. Retrieved June 8, 2012.
  4. ↑ "Rector of the St. Petersburg Mining Institute to receive an honorary doctorate". tu-freiberg.de. 2014-06-11. Retrieved 2015-03-15.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 "Midas Touch in St. Petersburg: Friends of Putin Glow Brightly". New York Times. p. 3. Retrieved June 7, 2012.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Дочь Владимира Литвиненко: У моего отца "синдром Ивана Грозного" Подробнее: http://www.rosbalt.ru/piter/2012/04/24/973803.html". Rosbalt.ru. Retrieved June 8, 2012.

External links