Who is Timur Ivanov, Russia’s deputy defense minister who was arrested for corruption?

The position of ‘deputy minister’, even in the crucial Ministry of Defense, is more or less regarded as an honorary job in Russia, with a handsome salary and pleasant privileges. It is not a job that requires proven aptitude: it is a position that rewards loyalty. It is not without reason that the Russian Ministry of Defense has no fewer than twelve of these officials.

Not a single Russian will know any of this dozen by name, but the newspaper reader can no longer ignore Timur Ivanov. The 48-year-old Russian was arrested on Wednesday and brought to court, where he was charged with large-scale corruption. Ivanov, dressed in military uniform, said he was innocent.

There is doubt about the latter, especially after the insight into the man’s financial dealings that the Russians received in 2022 thanks to the work of the research group of the late opposition leader and corruption fighter Alexei Navalny. The investigators revealed thousands of emails, containing invoices, bills and photos from the inbox of Ivanov’s wife Svetlana.

There were no immediate indications of bribes or other forms of self-enrichment. But the papers did show that the couple had a standard of living that could not quite be reconciled with the salary of a deputy minister in Russia, about 112 thousand rubles per month, or about 13 thousand euros in a year . The business magazine Forbes Russia estimated the couple’s personal wealth in 2019 at almost 137 million rubles, which at the current exchange rate is about 1.4 million euros.

Villas and holiday homes

According to the investigators, the Ivanovs’ private property includes several expensive villas and houses in Moscow and TverIn province. Over the course of five years, Ivanov and his wife spent more than 1 million euros on their holidays on the French Riviera. 850 thousand euros were spent on renting holiday homes and 250 thousand on luxury yachts. In 2011 they bought a Rolls Royce Corniche, with a price tag of 120 thousand euros, which they had refurbished for another 75 thousand euros. A party on the occasion of Svetlana’s birthday in Istanbul, with dozens of guests, cost 178 thousand euros.

Ivanov’s past also offers no explanation for such high prosperity. The future deputy minister graduated from the Moscow State University in 1997 at the Faculty of Computer Mathematics and Cybernetics. The first two years after obtaining his degree, Ivanov held some commercial positions, from 1999 to 2012 he worked in the energy sector.

If apparatchik Ivanov came into the picture in 2012, when he was appointed as deputy governor of the Moscow Oblast, as the right-hand man of the future Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Later, Ivanov climbed a few more steps on the military ladder when he was appointed director general of Oboronstroy JSC, a conglomerate of companies that are part of the Ministry of Defense.

Cat on the bacon

Ivanov’s connection with Shoigu, a confidant of President Vladimir Putin, earned him the appointment to his current post in 2016. If Ivanov previously showed a weakness for financial favors, the Kremlin now turned a blind eye. In his position as deputy minister, he is responsible for the army’s real estate, housing and medical care for Russia’s soldiers and the construction and maintenance of all Defense facilities. All lucrative contracts with a military twist pass through Ivanov’s hands. Also that of an army amusement park, Patriot, just outside Moscow. The construction cost $365 million, the newspaper said Moscow Times.

In 2020, when the corona pandemic also gripped Russia, Ivanov oversaw the construction of sixteen multifunctional health centers of the ministry, where Covid patients were treated. He is also said to have played a role in the reconstruction of apartments in Mariupol, the Ukrainian city that was destroyed by the Russian army. Ivanov was also involved in the dismantling of the Wagner business empire of mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, after his uprising against Putin last year.

Limits to Putin’s patience

Temptations abound, but the indictment that was read out in court on Wednesday does not make it clear in which cookie jars exactly Ivanov was caught with his fingers. Sergei Markov, one of Russia’s leading political commentators, says he does not believe the deputy minister was captured for a handful of rubles. It seems, says Markov, ‘that the deputy minister has committed not just a sin, but a serious crime. It’s a signal to everyone: don’t try to defend him.’

Dara Massicot, an expert on the Russian armed forces at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, comes to a similar conclusion. The New York Times. ‘He (Ivanov – ed.) is not an outlier in terms of stinking business and inexplicable wealth. To see your career end like this must have made someone very angry.”

According to some analysts, the signal emanating from Ivanov’s fall seems to be intended for Ivanov’s boss, Defense Minister Shoigu. It is under fire because of the disastrous course of the war in Ukraine. Shoigu is seen as one of the yes-men in the Kremlin who told Putin that the Russian army would be in Kiev within a few days at the start of the invasion in 2022. Now that one of his confidants is being treated so harshly, Shoigu knows: Putin’s patience has its limits.

In an earlier version, based on a publication by Navalny’s research group, we wrote that a deputy minister in Russia earns about 1.3 million euros annually. That is not true. It’s about 13 thousand euros. Added is a report about the personal assets of Ivanov and his wife in 2019.