Poisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny claims in a new, viral video that Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly the owner of a lavish multi-billion dollar palace built with fraudulently obtained money.
The video report detailing the allegations was released by Navalny’s team on Tuesday, two days after the dissident was sentenced to 30 days in prison after returning to Moscow. Wednesday it had already been viewed more than 35 million times.
Navalny, in the footage, claims that Putin allies, including oil chiefs and billionaires, paid for the construction of the $ 1.35 billion Black Sea Palace, the BBC reported.
“[They] built a palace for their boss with this money, ”says Navalny, according to the report. He added that it was built “with the largest bribe in history.”
The Kremlin fired back on Wednesday, denying that Putin owned the palace.
“These are all absolutely baseless claims,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, the Moscow Times reported, citing Interfax. “This is pure nonsense.”
Peskov said the palace “has nothing to do with the president or the Kremlin, so we don’t have the slightest need to be interested,” the report said.
The video claims the palace is equipped with a casino and an underground ice rink.
“It has impregnable gates, its own harbor, its own security, a church, its own licensing system, a flight ban and even its own border checkpoint,” Navalny said, according to the BBC.
“It is a separate state within Russia. And in this state there is a single, irreplaceable Tsar: Putin, ”he says.
Navalny was taken into custody Sunday night after flying home for the first time since he was poisoned last summer.
His detention was ordered by the Moscow Prison Service in connection with alleged violations of a suspended prison sentence in an embezzlement case he claims was fabricated.
The dissident fell into a coma on August 20 during a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow. Two days later he was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a hospital in Berlin.
Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, showed that he was exposed to a Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.
With pole wires