Where the Russian justice system has failed to step up to the plate, the Financial Times has taken up the slack:

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Documents from Mr Kolesnikov, together with a Financial Times investigation, help to lift the veil on the history of Bank Rossiya, whose shareholders include several men with close links to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s supreme leader, including the son of his cousin. Yury Kovalchuk and Niko­lai Shamalov, two of its biggest shareholders, were co-founders with Mr Putin of a lakeside dacha enclave outside St Petersburg.

These men from Russia’s second city are seen by many businessmen and bankers as the core of a new generation of Putin-era oligarchs, combining wealth with links to the country’s top leadership just as their predecessors during the Boris Yeltsin years had done. This is despite Mr Putin’s pledge nearly 12 years ago to eliminate oligarchs as a class.

Now that Mr Putin plans to return as president in elections next March, after four years as prime minister under President Dmitry Medvedev, claims of a new system of crony capitalism are under scrutiny.

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The paper trail Mr Kolesnikov has disclosed to the FT appears to show for the first time how two Bank Rossiya shareholders – Mr Shamalov and Dmitry Gorelov, a former KGB colonel – received via an offshore company funds originally donated for equipment for St Petersburg hospitals, just as they bought their bank stakes.

The documents then appear to show that these same funds and offshore companies may have helped finance the first in a string of Bank Rossiya acquisitions of financial assets from Gazprom, the state-controlled gas producer. Some investors allege the deals that followed were quasi-privatisations that helped to drain billions of dollars in value out of a gas group that had come to symbolise Russia’s commodities-fuelled resurgence. Bank Rossiya rejects this as “nonsense”, saying its growth is due to its professional management and successful strategy as a universal bank. The bank’s assets stood at Rbs274bn ($8.9bn) by October 1, up from Rbs6.7bn at the start of 2004 – a compound annual growth rate of more than 60 per cent.

Read the full article at the Financial Times.

The website cites the newspaper Kommersant, which Ponomarenko spoke to about the sale. The businessman said his holding company had obtained two companies – Lazurnaya Yagoda and Idokopas – that control the incomplete palatial complex.

A source knowledgeable about the deal said it was worth 350 million USD.

Kommersant was unable to reach Shamalov, a personal friend of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the owner Ponomarenko said agreed to sell him the property.

Businessman Sergei Kolesnikov, who first alleged the palace was being built with public money for Putin’s personal use, said the transfer of ownership is only a disguise and the intended purpose of the complex hasn’t changed.

Putin’s press secretary Dmitri Peskov told Kommersant the prime minister had nothing to do with the construction – not while he was president and not in his current position.

“It’s possible that the sellers were influenced by all of this press, I don’t know,” said Ponomarenko. “In general, there’s a rule – buy when there’s a scandal and sell when the news is good.”

For his part, Ponomarenko said he was simply investing money obtained from his $2 billion sale of the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port last year.

The article did not elaborate on what exactly was meant by the fact that the complex had been sold as a hotel.

Whatever hang-changing the Black Sea palace may go through, strong evidence remains that Putin is somehow involved. Besides the evidence laid out in Kolesnikov’s open letter to President Dmitri Medvedev at the end of last year, documents have emerged showing that Chief Vladimir Kozhin of the Office of Presidential Affairs actually signed the documents authorizing the construction in 2005, when Putin was still president.

The photographs were published by Ruleaks, a group of self-proclaimed “activists from the Pirate Party of Russia and Russian-speaking activists from other Pirate Parties around the world.” The activists organize the translation of classified documents released by Wikileaks into Russian and the publication of those and other materials on the Ruleaks website.

On a page titled “Photographs of ‘Putin’s Palace’ in Praskoveevka on the Black Sea,” several dozen photographs show a gigantic Italian-style villa, complete with colonnades, balconies, and an enclosed park with a fountain. The interior is extravagantly decorated with frescoes, elaborate chandeliers and a wealth of marble and gold trim. The palace appears to be fully furnished and includes a desk bearing the Russian coat of arms; it is identical to the desk in the prime minister’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence.

This is the first time that high-quality photographs of the villa have been published. It was previously visible from satellite imagery and photographs taken from far away, but the building’s high security made it impossible to get up close. The newly-released photographs appear to have been taken by an on-site worker.

Ruleaks underwent a DDoS attack shortly after the photographs went live on January 18, making it temporarily impossible to access the website.

The organization stipulates that it cannot confirm that the residence belongs to Vladimir Putin: “We are not prepared to confirm whose palace this is, we are only publishing photographs of the facility itself.”

The photographs come one month after St. Petersburg businessman Sergei Kolesnikov sent an open letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev alleging that a palace “for the personal use of the Prime Minister of Russia” was being built on the Black Sea. “To date this palace costs over $1 billion U.S., mainly through a combination of corruption, bribery and theft.” Kolesnikov goes on to painstakingly detail the corrupt business dealings and theft of state funds that culminated in the creation of this complex. After publishing the letter, Kolesnikov reportedly went abroad and is waiting for the president’s reaction.

The newspaper Vedomosti was able to connect with Kolesnikov and verify his claim to the allegations. Judging by the text of his letter, Kolesnikov is the former business partner of two of Putin’s friends, Nikolai Shamalov and Dmitri Gorelov. The newspaper was able to confirm that Shamalov and Gorelov did indeed have a partner named Sergei Kolesnikov. Formally, the palace belongs to Shamalov, but Kolesnikov asserts that it is intended for the prime minister. “If this palace is Shamalov’s, then why is the state spending its own money to build him roads and electrical lines?” Kolesnikov said to Vedomosti.

Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, denied that the prime minister had any connection to the Black Sea complex. Shamalov and Gorelov did not respond to inquiries from Vedomosti.

See the full set of photographs on Ruleaks.net.

Click here for the Sergei Kolesnikov’s letter to the Russian president.

According to Dymovsky, the rallies are meant to support five Russians involved in three different criminal suits: two young men and a young woman from Novosibirsk who have been sentenced to 2-5 years in prison for supposedly beating 20 police officers at once, despite their claims that they themselves were the victim; Oleg Ivanov, a regional leader in Omsk who was charged with fraud, violence against a government authority, and abuse of authority after allowing Dymovsky to legally reside in his region; and Krasnodarsky Krai businessman Sergei Kolesnikov, who says that his business has been illegally taken away from him by the local police.

“I want to speak out in defense of real people, not abstract parrots,” said the former officer.

Dymovsky said that iterations of the June 12 rally will be held in Omsk, Novosibirsk, and the Krasnodarsky Krai, and also most likely in the cities of Volgograd, Novorossiysk, Samara, Sochi, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. Where precisely Dymovsky himself plans to be that day, he didn’t say.

“Wherever it’s going to be more difficult, that’s where I’ll go,” he said.

Dymovsky added that he’s currently negotiating with a variety of social and political organizations to help coordinate and support the events. In particular, he said, opposition leader and Solidarity bureau member Garry Kasparov has promised to support the initiative. Solidarity Executive Director Denis Bilunov said that bringing his opposition movement and Dymovsky together was a “positive trend.” The ex-major was a featured speaker at Solidarity’s May Day celebration earlier this month.

The plans for the June 12 rally come a month after Dymovsky’s latest video message on April 12, when the ex-major called for Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to establish order in the country by November 12, 2010, or face an angry mob on Red Square. While Dymovsky’s original video last November gained widespread media coverage, the ex-major said in April that a media blockade had forced him to resort back to the online video format instead of holding a press conference. The April video has been viewed on YouTube more than 100 thousand times in the past month, in addition to the number of people who viewed it on his website.

Aleksei Dymovsky was fired from the Novorossiysk police soon after posting two videos online that detailed corruption he witnessed within his agency. After fleeing to Moscow in response to threats to himself and his family, Dymovsky held a highly-attended press conference and revealed that he had secretly recorded more than 150 hours of audio in support of his allegations. He was arrested in January on trumped-up charges of fraud, which were dropped in April. His messages have spurred dozens of similar videos from other Russian police officers, state prosecutors, and other government workers from all over Russia. Many people who have come forward to help Dymovsky have found themselves persecuted for their actions. Neither President Medvedev nor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have publically acknowledged Dymovsky’s existence.