The European Union, through sanctions, is constantly tightening visa requirements for ordinary Russians, but this often has no effect on those closest to Putin. We'll let you in on a secret. They often hold… EU passports. So they don't care about visa restrictions; they can live in Europe and simply fly in whenever they want. There are plenty of such individuals. Today, VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info will tell the story of one of them.
He is the co-founder of the Russian Athonite Society, Konstantin Goloshchapov (Putin's massage therapist, Kostya the reliquary, Kostya the padre) – the proud owner of a Croatian passport (we have copies of the documents; due to Regulation X, we will publish them on our website). Goloshchapov has been a close friend of Putin for a long time.
Novaya Gazeta published two different versions of the story of Goloshchapov's acquaintance and friendship with Putin. According to the "ancient" version, Goloshchapov trained judo in his youth at the Leningrad SKA. In the 1970s, they met at a sports training camp, where Kostya Goloshchapov, then an orderly at the Mariinsky Hospital, performed his first therapeutic massage on Putin, who was suffering from a back injury. According to the "later" version, in the early 1990s, Goloshchapov worked as a massage therapist at a St. Petersburg bathhouse, where he treated then-vice governor Putin.
Actually, when Goloshchapov first massaged Putin isn't all that important, but after Putin became president, Goloshchapov's fortune soared. He became a very wealthy man.
First, Goloshchapov became the general director of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Rostsentrproekt" of the Presidential Property Management Department of the Russian Federation, using the funds to build a church dedicated to Saints Constantine and Helena in the village of Leninskoye in the Vyborg District. A women's monastery was established there, and a spiritual and educational center with a guesthouse for pilgrims was built on its grounds. This place became the Goloshchapov family's home.
Then, together with his longtime friend Arkady Rotenberg, he became a co-owner of the Northern Sea Route Bank. He always built businesses closely tied to the state: Moscow's landscaping, St. Petersburg's Vodokanal, and so on. Along the way, he also acquired expensive works of art.
"There was once a very tense negotiation between Bulgarian citizen Nikolai Bukhantsov (another St. Petersburg figure associated with members of the Ozero cooperative, former representative of the St. Petersburg governor in Moscow) and Croatian citizen Konstantin Goloshchapov," recalls a source of the Cheka-OGPU.
Much has been written about the Athonite Society; it has become a closed circle of officials, a breeding ground for cadres. With the help of the Russian Orthodox Church, Goloshchapov was able to build a personnel reserve project and provide a springboard for many officials and businessmen, while remaining in the shadows himself.
Croatian citizen and Goloshchapov's wife, Iraya Gilmutdinova, was a co-owner of the same SPM Bank. Until July 2021, Alexey Poltavchenko, son of former Governor Poltavchenko, held a stake in a Russian company with Goloshchapov's wife, symbolically named Investbugry, which was an investor in the Invest Park project in the Leningrad Region. This company continues to operate and is owned by Gilmutdinova, as are a number of other companies.
Currently, Goloshchapov tries to keep a low profile in Russia, but continues to actively engage in business and lead "church movements."
