A billionaire closely associated with President Vladimir Putin has quietly acquired control of Baltika, Russia’s largest beer manufacturer, as revealed by an investigation conducted by the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), founded by the late Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny.
Gennady Timchenko, whose wealth is estimated by Forbes at over $23 billion, oversees Ena Invest, a firm that the FBK claims frequently covers personal expenses for Putin’s family.
Carlsberg, the Danish brewery that owned Baltika until the previous year, had stated that its Russian subsidiary was bought by two long-time employees in December 2024.
In 2022, Putin had placed Baltika under temporary state control after Carlsberg announced its decision to exit Russia, where it employed approximately 8,400 people, following the invasion of Ukraine.
The formal buyer was VG Invest, which received a loan of 34 billion rubles (around $427 million, as per spot foreign exchange data from Reuters) from the state-owned Rosselkhozbank to facilitate the purchase.
Within a span of just 22 days, VG Invest repaid the loan using funds transferred through various transactions from Ena Invest, the investigation found. The brewery’s actual worth at that time was estimated to be between 150 billion and 200 billion rubles.
FBK concluded that Timchenko did not acquire Baltika for personal gain, highlighting Putin’s longstanding ties to the company. During his tenure as Mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, Putin played a key role in attracting foreign investors to prevent Baltika from shutting down, earning him the nickname “godfather” of the brewery.
FBK noted that this was not the first instance where Ena Invest benefitted from the departure of foreign firms from Russia. A year before acquiring Baltika, the firm obtained assets from British oil giant Shell.
In February 2023, Putin signed a decree transferring Shell’s 50% interest in a joint venture developing the Salym oil fields to Gazprom Neft. However, by the end of that year, that stake had been transferred to Ena Invest via a network of intermediary companies, according to FBK.
The investigation also claims that Ena Invest has funneled hundreds of millions of rubles to organizations and individuals linked to the president’s family, including a foundation managed by alleged partner Alina Kabaeva, a clinic associated with Putin’s daughter Maria Vorontsova, and salaries for private tutors of Putin and Kabaeva’s sons.
Two of these tutors—Sofia Bozic, 33, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Irene Enss, 36, from Germany—reportedly teach German to the couple’s sons: 6-year-old Vladimir Jr. and 10-year-old Ivan. Each tutor is said to earn 2.9 million rubles ($36,500) monthly, which is approximately three times the salary officially declared by the president.
