The son of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s close KGB comrade bought a bolthole in the west of Scotland last year.
Yevgeniy Strzhalkovskiy paid just under £4 million for an historic estate on the Cowal peninsula. His multi-millionaire father Vladimir is a close associate of Putin. He served as a KGB colonel alongside Putin in Leningrad – the former name for St Petersburg.
The 12-bedroom Knockdow House is the secluded former seat of the Lamont Clan set in ornamental gardens and 250 acres of rolling woodland and fields overlooking the Kyles of Bute and Arran.
Strzhalkovskiy gave the address of a firm of solicitors in Monaco, according to title deeds for the property, which officially changed hands in October last year.
Strzhalkovskiy senior, 63, has seen his business interests grow since Putin came to power in 1999.
He held several key government roles, including leading Russia’s tourism agency, before becoming chief executive of Norilsk Nickel, a multi-billion-pound mining and smelting corporation.
When he left the metals giant, whose main operations are in Arctic Siberia, he was handed $100m. Strzhalkovskiy senior then forged a career at the Bank of Cyprus before being replaced in 2015 as vice-president by Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor who subsequently became Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary.
Vladimir Strzhalkovskiy is currently chairman of Dinamo, the Russian sports club associated with police and security services which has globally famous football and hockey teams.
His son is also in business and is understood to have interests in yachting, historic battle re-enactments and Zenit St Petersburg football club.
A decade before Strzhalkovskiy acquired his Scottish property, steel billionaire Vladimir Lisin bought Aberuchill Castle in Perthshire. Oligarchs Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, and travel and metals giant Alexei Mordashov have both yachted off the Cowal peninsula.
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