For more than a decade, Italian businessman Lanfranco Cirillo has been known as "Putin's architect" thanks to his role as the designer of a secretive and lavish estate in the Russian Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik widely believed to have been built for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But RFE/RL's Russian investigative unit, Systema, has found that Cirillo, whose assets were targeted by Italian tax authorities in 2022, is also linked to a firm involved in the construction of a luxury residence for Putin in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea -- one that now faces millions of dollars in Russian tax claims related to the project.
The tax claim against Star-Yug, the company linked to Cirillo, involves the renovation and merging of two leisure properties previously used by Soviet leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Leonid Brezhnev, respectively.
The company is suspected of tax fraud amounting to more than 500 million rubles ($5.4 million) during its work as a contractor on the residence, which Russian state TV said included cottages for the president's guests, a helipad, and a yacht dock.
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The Man Who Built 'Putin's Palace'
While Cirillo, 65, is listed as a third party in the proceedings, a Systema analysis of legal and other open-source records linked the businessman closely to Star-Yug, which also faces a $60 million claim from a unit of Spetsstroy, the state-owned construction firm that built the "Putin's Palace" estate.
But Cirillo's fortunes in Russia – to which he returned after Italian authorities accused him of smuggling, forgery, and tax evasion – have brightened in other areas.
Earlier this month, the major Russian state-owned bank Sberbank announced that Cirillo, who was granted Russian citizenship by Putin personally 10 years ago this week, had been appointed a senior vice president with the lender. Sberbank CEO German Gref welcomed him to the new team, praising what he called the Italian's "excellent sense of style."
Dacha Difficulties
In the summer of 2019, Putin stayed in Crimea longer than usual, according to a report by Russian state television on the Ukrainian peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014. The Russian president was satisfied with the renovation and merging of dachas No. 6 and No. 8 into a single presidential residence in the village of Oliva, near the resort town of Foros, the report said.
The area had undergone a massive reconstruction overseen by Spetsstroy, which, in addition to "Putin's Palace," built facilities for the Russian Defense Ministry and the state space agency, known as Roskosmos.
This lavish complex at Gelendzhik Bay on the Black Sea in southern Russia is known as "Putin's Palace."
Star-Yug, the company linked to Cirillo, was named the contractor of the renovation and tasked with "improvements" such as choosing furniture, silverware, bathroom fixtures, and other design elements, as well as landscaping and even selecting marble.
But while state television reported that Putin was satisfied with the renovation, tax authorities raided Star-Yug shortly after the Russian president's visit to the peninsula as part of an inspection covering 2016-19, when the company was involved in the reconstruction of state dachas in Crimea.
Tax officials concluded that the company had diverted funds and imposed additional taxes and penalties of 743 million rubles ($8.4 million). The company disagreed with the inspectors' findings and attempted to challenge them in court. Currently the company is challenging the matter with Russia's Supreme Court after a lower court sided with the tax inspectors.
Cirillo is listed as a third party in the proceedings, and he did not appear at any of the hearings in the case. But multiple pieces of evidence show the Italian architect is closely linked to Star-Yug.
Cirillo is cited in court documents as the owner of a warehouse near Moscow to which materials for the landscaping of Putin's Crimean residence were delivered. Furthermore, the founder and managers of Star-Yug previously worked for Cirillo, and two of his companies worked on projects in Oliva, the Crimean village where Putin's residence is located, including under a contract with Star-Yug.
GetContact, an app that links phone numbers to names they are saved under in users' mobile phones, shows that Cirillo's number was saved under the name "Lanfranco Star Yug," and in 2017 he purchased a helicopter from Star-Yug of the same brand that Italian authorities seized from one of his villas in a 2022 raid.
The helicopter cost Cirillo 30 million rubles ($520,000), while Star-Yug had purchased it two years earlier for 105 million rubles ($1.6 million), Russian court records show. The company has been in bankruptcy proceedings since 2020, around the time the tax audit began, and Star-Yug's bankruptcy trustee challenged the helicopter sale.
The Spetsstroy unit has yet to accept the work on the property performed by Star-Yug and has sought to recover $60 million from the contractor, according to court records.
This could be bad news for Cirillo, who could face liability for Star-Yug's debts.
A satellite image showing the territory of Putin's residence in Crimea in 2018, prior to the completion of its renovation.
'Collateral Victim Of The War'
The Star-Yug case is one of several difficulties with Russian authorities that Cirillo has faced in recent years.
In the fall of 2018, the Russian central bank revoked the license of Soyuzny Bank, which Cirillo owned together with Tatyana Kuznetsova, the wife of an officer with the Russian Federal Protection Service, whose mandate includes guarding Putin and presidential properties. Kuznetsova also co-owned a company that managed "Putin's Palace"
In the summer of 2019, meanwhile, a Russian court ordered the confiscation of a cottage settlement in the Moscow region from a company previously owned by Cirillo based on a complaint by Russia's Federal State Property Management Agency.
In 2021, Russian tax authorities forcibly closed Cirillo's architectural bureau, citing inaccurate information about its address. By this time, the Italian architect told Meduza that he had almost severed ties with Russia and settled in Dubai.
But he returned to Russia following the Italian criminal case. He denies any wrongdoing.
"I am a collateral victim of the war in Ukraine -- persecuted because I am known as Putin's architect." he said in a December 2023 interview with the British newspaper The Times.
At Sberbank, Cirillo is now set to oversee a division with $10 billion in investments and a staff of 36,000 employees.
"We have 137 projects in Russia, India, and China. We are building villas and hotels on the Black Sea, a resort in Siberia near the Mongolian border," Cirillo told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which said the new Sberbank executive spoke by phone while vacationing in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Systema called Cirillo a little over a week after this interview and reached him by phone while he was in Crimea. He said he was driving but was nonetheless ready for a short interview. As soon as the conversation turned to Sberbank, however, the connection was cut off.
Later that evening, Cirillo responded in English by messenger. He called himself "Russian" and criticized Italian authorities, claiming they were persecuting him for working "for the most famous Russian."
He claimed he had merely crossed paths with Star-Yug in "a coffee consultation" on general issues "many years ago." All other events surrounding Star-Yug, Cirillo said, had nothing to do with him.
Regarding his new job at Sberbank, Cirillo wrote that he works there "because I am a professional and I know my profession. Nothing else."
Sberbank did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.