Two friends of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, businessmen Gennady Timchenko and Boris Rotenberg received Finnish citizenship bypassing the current procedure. Their statements were not approved by the Counterintelligence Directorate of the Security Police, according to the Finnish News Agency (STT) and the newspaper ilta sanomat.

According to journalists, the immigration service did not contact the security police twice. In fact, in the case of Timchenko, the process of obtaining citizenship was organized in such a way that counterintelligence did not have time to deal with this case, the Ilta sanomat newspaper writes.

According to an anonymous source of the newspaper in the Security Police, the process of considering the application was organized in such a way that those who could influence the decision were on summer vacation.

Rotenberg and Timchenko applied for Finnish citizenship in 1998. The former’s application was approved relatively late, in 2002, when the businessman was asked to renounce his Russian citizenship in order to obtain Finnish citizenship, which he later reacquired.

Timchenko’s application was considered “incredibly quickly.”

Timchenko’s application was processed “incredibly quickly,” according to the Finnish News Agency. He received a Finnish passport in 1999. At the time of filing, Timchenko, unlike Rotenberg, was already wealthy and had a joint business with a friend of the head of the Migration Service, according to the Finnish news agency. The commander then was Matti Saarelainen. Counterintelligence has launched an investigation into his role in Timchenko’s obtaining Finnish citizenship, the newspaper “ilta sanomat” writes. However, the investigation was not completed because he had retired.

The newspaper “Ilta sanomat” writes that Timchenko was in the zone of interests of the security police. In the early 1990s, he came to Finland to run a company founded by a KGB agent who had been deported from Sweden. Under Putin’s patronage, the company brought in cheap oil from areas outside St. Petersburg and sold it for multiple profits. To date, the fortune of the businessman in question is estimated at $ 11.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Timchenko and Rotenberg were placed on European Union and US sanctions lists after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

^{Source: APE-MEB, Svoboda.org}