The word judo translates as “gentle way,” but you wouldn’t know it from the meaty thuds that reverberated through the St. Petersburg gymnasium during Russia’s national judo championships on Saturday, Feb. 19. Every now and then, the call to “Finish him!” would issue from the balcony packed with fans and ex-fighters, a crowd with plenty of mangled ears and twice-broken noses. As always, the co-sponsor of the event was the city’s elite judo club Yawara-Neva, of which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — a black belt — is the honorary president. He was unable to attend this year, the organizers explained apologetically, but everyone still seemed aware of his presence.
Since 2000, when Putin first became the President of Russia, Yawara-Neva has shot to incredible heights right alongside its general director Arkady Rotenberg, Putin’s childhood sparring partner. This month, in the annual ranking of Russia’s wealthiest put out by Finans magazine, Rotenberg jumped 17 spots from the previous year to officially join the list of Russia’s billionaires. His fortune is now pegged at $1.75 billion, which seems like a lot for a man whose work before Putin took office was mostly confined to running average businesses and promoting judo. But for the members of their St. Petersburg clique, this isn’t extraordinary.
Most of Rotenberg’s fortune has come through his deals with Russia’s state-controlled natural-gas monopoly, Gazprom, which is headed by one of Putin’s old friends from the St. Petersburg mayor’s office. In 2008, Gazprom started selling Rotenberg its subsidiaries, in particular the ones that supply and construct pipelines, and then it started placing huge orders with these companies once they were in Rotenberg’s control. In 2009 alone, Rotenberg’s firm StroyGazMontazh won 19 of these tenders with Gazprom, sometimes at auctions in which it was the only bidder.
One of the main competitors of StroyGazMontazh for these Gazprom tenders is a company controlled by another one of Putin’s judo buddies, Gennady Timchenko, the billionaire oil trader who also helped found Yawara-Neva in 1998. Both men deny that their friendship with Putin has helped them make their fortunes. “Acquaintance with a state official of such a high rank has never hurt anyone yet in our country, but it hasn’t helped everyone,” Rotenberg said in an interview last April with the daily Kommersant. “It is no guarantee.” In 2008, Timchenko said reports of his links to Putin were “overblown” and insisted his career was not built on “favors or political connections.”
For their part, the trainers and champions in Russia’s judo circuit are quite proud about being close to Putin, Rotenberg and Gazprom, which was the other sponsor of Saturday’s tournament. “We’re all in it together,” says the event’s organizer, Vladimir Gladchenko, gesturing at the banner with the logos of Gazprom and Yawara-Neva that hung above the judo mats. “We have the political support, the financial support, so all we have to do is keep winning tournaments.” And with a budget that seems practically limitless, that has come easy so far. Yawara-Neva has won the European judo championship seven years running, more than any other team in history.
