Putin Orders Hunt for Property of Russian Empire, Soviet Union

[Eugene]

Source: Bloomberg

Putin Orders Hunt for Property of Russian Empire, Soviet Union

Bloomberg News
Fri, January 19, 2024 at 4:16 AM EST·1 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Vladimir Putin is going on a property hunt, ordering officials to find Russian assets that once belonged to its former empire or were owned by the Soviet Union.

An order from the Russian president published late Thursday allocated funding for a state unit to conduct searches for property abroad and ensure Russia’s ownership rights are registered. The document didn’t indicate the size of the budget for the operation or what kinds of property are being sought.

While it’s unclear what prompted the order, Putin’s interest in former imperial possessions is unlikely to ease concerns about his ambitions among neighboring states after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended European security.

At its peak, the Russian Empire extended into territories of modern Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Finland. It dissolved under the pressure of World War I and the 1917 Bolshevik revolution led by Vladimir Lenin that marked the birth of the Communist state.

-snip-

Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/putin-orders-hunt-property-russian-091640990.html

Original Bloomberg link (paywall): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-19/putin-orders-hunt-for-property-of-russian-empire-soviet-union

[Duncanpup]

1. Maybe they will find the Amber Room

[AllaN01Bear]

2. snork.

[dchill]

3. "...once belonged..."

...means no longer belongs. But we're talking about a man who actually has absolute immunity, I guess.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. My guess is they're seeking the Faberge Eggs

Seems I recall Malcolm Forbes owned a few. And in the 1970s with the first loosening up of USA-USSR relations, it was fashionable for Americans to try to buy Russian religious icons as investments.

[brush]

5. Bottom line: The Ukrainian war is busting Russia and Putin is scrambling find whatever he can.

[Irish_Dem]

6. My thoughts too. Looking for change in the back of the couch.

[CanonRay]

7. Well there's Alaska

You might want to start there lol

[getagrip_already]

8. I was going to say....

Sarah Palin might want to start stacking sand bags on her back porch........

But more concretely, oligarchs everywhere better start living in basements and stop wearing underwear or drinking tea.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. We paid them for Alaska

They sold it to us because after getting their asses kicked in the Crimean war they didn't want the British (Canada) on their doorstep.

[DFW]

11. Putin could always claim Seward underpaid.

And now, he wants $20 million more— plus 157 years‘ worth of interest.

[MOMFUDSKI]

9. Gonna gather what he can for his yard sale.

The country is panked.

[DFW]

12. He's 34 years too late to grab back one of the biggest stashes

I knew an official of the post-Soviet state bank in the 1990s. I knew that „some Russians“ had been selling off hundreds of millions in old gold coins starting around 1990, but I didn‘t know the story behind them.

The Soviet Union kept their gold in five immense depots. Four of them consisted of gold bars and recently minted Soviet gold coins, sold abroad for a premium that the Soviets pocketed. But the fifth depot, hidden in the Ural Mountains, held the real treasure: the millions of older gold coins accumulated since 1917, the inception of the Soviet state. This included not only what was there in 1917.

In 1936, the Spanish Republic sent all of Spain‘s gold, including millions of old gold coins minted under the Spanish Empire in Latin America, which Stalin had promised to store for „safekeeping,“ for their socialist compatriots. But at the handover at the dock, the Soviet ship refused to hand Spain a receipt, said gracias, you guys, and confiscated Spain‘s gold in its entirety.

Then, in 1945, the Soviet Union was allowed by the allies to take Berlin, where the Reichsbank held tens of millions of old gold coins. Some of these, including 3,970 Danzig 25 gulden gold coins out of 4000 minted in 1930 (one each had been given to the 30 members of the Danzig parliament), were easy to identify, when an ex-KGB contact in Florida (once removed) started marketing them.

One group of 20,000 old American $20 gold coins minted in 1908 was put on the market by a California firm in 1998. Their first ad crowed that „this group of coins has been held intact since 1917.“ I have to assume the ex-KGB people went ballistic when they saw that, since all subsequent ads had that particular piece of information removed.

Millions of rare German (or formerly rare) German gold coins have been showing up in Switzerland, then England, and then the USA since 1990.

My friend at the Russian state bank told me that a rogue group of sly KGB guys managed to ship the whole contents of the Ural Mountains depot out of Russia as the Soviet Union was collapsing, starting already in 1990.

These coins have been distributed around the world since the early 1990s. No way Putin can gather them all back. I have „heard“ that many still remain, but I have no idea if so, or how many. There COULD be millions of them. The Florida guy was supposedly told that his children were already „too old to see the end“ of the Ural Mountains stash. If Putin thinks he has a path to grabbing what‘s left, I guess he could try, but if they are lodged in some secret immense bank vault in Las Vegas, I doubt he will have an easy time of it.