German journalist who praised Putin for many years gets paid by Russian oligarch
Pravda Ukraine
Hubert Seipel, a German journalist, documentary filmmaker and writer, who made a film about Putin and wrote two best-selling books about him, received hundreds of thousands of euros from offshore companies associated with Putin’s oligarch Aleksei Mordashov.
Source: the Russian outlet called Vazhnye Istorii, which participated in the investigation into the leak of Cypriot legal documents within the framework of the international investigative project Cyprus Confidential.
Cyprus Confidential is a global investigation based on the leak of 3.6 million documents from six Cypriot companies involved in registering firms and consulting. It was conducted by 270 journalists from 69 media outlets under the auspices of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the German Paper Trail Media.
The Russian outlet notes that two books by Seipel about Putin, called Putin: Inner Views of Power (2015) and Putin’s Power: Why Europe Needs Russia (2021), were published in several languages and became bestsellers, with tens of thousands of copies sold.
And Seipel’s documentary called I, Putin. A Portrait (2012) was nominated for the German Television Award for Best Reportage.
Quote: “The area of competence of Seipel is Russia. It is understandable: according to Seipel, not only he studied Russia for many years as a researcher, but he also talked with the Russian president ‘nearly hundred times’,” writes Vazhnye Istorii, noting that Seipel was repeatedly accused of a lack of criticality regarding what he heard from Putin.
Secret financial arrangements have linked Seipel for years to companies close to Russian oligarch Alexei Mordashov.
According to documents at the disposal of the publication, in 2018, Seipel signed a “sponsorship agreement,” which was supposed to bring him at least €600,000. Under the agreement, this amount was allocated to create and popularise a book about the “political climate in Russia.” This book ended up being Putin’s Power: Why Europe Needs Russia, published in 2021 by the respected Hamburg publishing house Hoffmann und Campe.
Additionally, in the documents prepared for signing, there is a handwritten note “similar to the agreement concluded in 2013: Putin’s biography.”
“Obviously, for the preparation of Seipel’s previous book, Putin: Inner Views of Power, a separate agreement was concluded for a separate amount [of money]. Readers could not find out about sponsorship agreements and a possible conflict of interests of Seipel – not a word was said about them in the books. The publisher of both bestsellers did not know about them,” reads the response of Hoffmann und Campe to the request from Vazhnye Istorii.
Details: It is noted that the sponsor was hiding behind the dummy corporation De Vere Worldwide Corporation from the British Virgin Islands, which belongs to Igor Voskresensky, one of the directors of Power Machines, an engineering giant owned by Russian oligarch Alexei Mordashov.
Another one of Mordashov’s employees, Dmitry Fedotov, the long-term head of the legal department of the metallurgical giant Severstal, owned by the oligarch, signed the sponsorship deal as a witness.
Money for payments to Seipel came to De Vere Worldwide from offshore companies, the beneficiary of which was Mordashov himself: in 2018 and 2019, two offshore companies transferred a total of €610,000 to De Vere Worldwide. After each such transfer, De Vere sent money in favour of Seipel.
Asked by Paper Trail Media by phone about De Vere Worldwide’s activities, Voskresensky said he didn’t remember such a company and hung up. Fedotov and Mordashov did not respond to requests.
Alexey Mordashov is a regular in the Russian list of billionaires, which is compiled by Forbes magazine. In 2021, the oligarch even headed it with a fortune of almost US$30 billion (this year, he is ranked fifth). He was called one of the sponsors of the construction of Putin’s palace near Gelendzhik. Mordashov’s structures also owned large stakes in Rossiya Bank (also known as Putin’s Friends Bank) and the National Media Group (NMG), which controls a significant part of Russian television broadcasting and the media market as a whole.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Mordashov came under Western sanctions.
Answering a question from Paper Trail Media, Seipel admitted that books about Putin were sponsored by a Russian billionaire, but he does not believe that this will somehow discredit his work.
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