It's good to have a billionaire oligarch for a father-in-law, especially when he is Russian. Just ask Kirill Shamalov. He has rocketed onto the list of the richest Russians this year, thanks in large part to who he is married to –Vladimir Putin's 30-year-old Acrobatic Rock n' Roll dancer daughter, who goes by the name Katerina Tikhonova.
Over the course of the past six months, Shamalov's personal net worth has nearly doubled. He's added an additional $1.1 billion to his net worth in that short period of time. When you combine Kirill's wealth with his father Nikolay's, they end up the fourth-richest Russian family. Oh, by the way, Nikolay is an old friend of Vladimir Putin's. Funny how that works in Russia, right?
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Kirill has also made the list of wealthiest Russians all on his own. The 34-year-old comes in at number 64. He has made his fortune largely on his stake in the Sibur oil company. In 2008, Shamalov was the vice president of business administration at Sibur, the petrochemical company. From 2011 to 2013, Kirill steadily increased his stake in Sibur to 4.3% through a stock option program the company offered to managers. However, there was one more piece Kirill had to put in place to really cash in…
In February 2013, Kirill married Vladimir Putin's daughter Katerina. A year after his marriage, Shamalov was able to buy a 17% stake in Sibur from a friend of his father-in-law. Kirill took a loan out to make the stock purchase. Sibur was valued at $10 billion. Once Kirill's purchase went through, he was revealed to be the second-largest shareholder with a 21% stake in Sibur.Then, in December 2015, Chinese-owned Sinopec bought 10% of Sibur for $1.3 billion. Kirill sold less than 1% of his shares in the deal, giving Kirill a net worth estimatedmore than $1.3 billion.
Nikolay Shamalov was a member of the group of friends of Putin's who founded the Ozero dacha cooperative in the 1990s – country houses on a compound near St. Petersburg. As you can imagine, many of those neighbors went on to have very successful businesses or government careers once Putin was in power.
One thing you'll find is that most of the families on the list of richest Russian clans are cronies of Putin's. The second-wealthiest family is the Rotenberg family. Arkady Rotenberg used to be Putin's judo sparring partner.
Vladimir Putin has two daughters, Katerina and Maria. Neither has appeared with him publicly since they were children and the Kremlin refuses to comment on them. Putin's family has always been off limits, and really, who would dare to violate that edict?
Still, daddy makes sure his little girls are well taken care of. While Kirill Shamalov has a net worth of about $1.3 billion, his wife Katerina's is more like $12.7 billion.
