In the Shadow of the Adriatic - Valentina Matviyenko's Son, Italian Villas, and the Quiet Empire of San Marino

It is a picture that seems to come from another world: while in Moscow sanctions and international isolation tighten their grip on the political elite of the Putin era, Sergei Matviyenko, the son of Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko, lives secluded in a villa on the Italian Adriatic.

The "Tsarina" - Putin's Most Powerful Ally

Valentina Matviyenko, born in 1949 in the Ukrainian city of Shepetivka, is far more than just an official - she is Putin's closest confidante and one of the most powerful women in Russia. As chairwoman of the Federation Council, the 75-year-old formally holds the third-highest state office of the Russian Federation and is automatically a member of the influential Security Council. Her political career began in the 1980s as a party official of the CPSU in Leningrad, where she met Putin in his early years. The irony of her biography is bitter: born in Ukraine, she became one of the staunchest supporters of Putin's war of aggression against her birthplace. Her signature appears on that fateful decree that authorized the Russian armed forces to invade Ukraine. In Russian media, she justifies the war by claiming that Ukraine had become a "Russia-hostile Nazi state" - a cynical distortion of history from the mouth of a woman whose parents are buried in the very country she is now having bombed. Matviyenko's rise ran parallel to Putin's ascent to power. First as deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, then as ambassador to Malta and Greece, and finally as governor of Saint Petersburg - Putin's hometown - she systematically built her power network. In 2011 she was elected chairwoman of the Federation Council, marking her final ascent into the innermost circle of the Putin system. Already in 2014, immediately after the annexation of Crimea, she landed on the first US sanctions lists - a sign of her central role in Putin's aggressive foreign policy.

Pesaro, a quaint coastal town with long sandy beaches and views of the endless waves of the Mediterranean, has become the quiet retreat of a man who is officially under Western sanctions. Sergei Matviyenko has discreetly shifted the bulk of his fortune to nearby San Marino - that tiny, independent principality that has been known for decades for its opaque financial structures.

Further research shows that Matviyenko has an Italian tax number, even though he does not conduct any business in Italy. It serves solely to secure his residency and the associated banking services. This goes far beyond "I am a rascal." Behind it stretches a web of lawyers, trustees, and financial advisors that maintains formally legal structures but avoids any transparency. San Marino, which only in 2015 took and implemented all measures to bring anti-money laundering efforts to an international level after Italy exerted significant pressure, provided the perfect backdrop. Around the province of Pesaro e Urbino, a whole network of shell companies, trust structures, and straw men has formed, apparently allowing the Matviyenko family to circumvent Western sanctions.

Villa M - An Oligarch Paradise in a Nature Reserve

The villa itself tells its own story. Purchased personally by Valentina Matviyenko in 2009 for 7 million euros, it was later incorporated into an Italian trust named Dominanta - a legal construct that carries out no economic activities and serves only to hold the property. The villa previously belonged to Tibor Rudas, the Hungarian impresario and manager of Luciano Pavarotti, who created the triumphant tours of the Three Tenors (Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti). It lies only 50 meters from the property of the Pavarotti family - a neighborhood that could hardly be more symbolic.

On the approximately 26-hectare estate stands a three-story house with 774 square meters of living space, which the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) of Alexei Navalny valued at around ten million euros in 2022. The estate stretches across 650 meters of coastline and has a swimming facility of at least 20 meters in length. At the entrance gate proudly hangs the letter "M" for Matviyenko, next to the symbol of the Orthodox Church - a discreet but clear demonstration of power.

Officially Sergei lives there with his wife Julia, a former model and entrepreneur, surrounded by vineyards, olive groves, and a wide view over the hills of the Marche. To outsiders the idyll seems perfect, yet behind the facades lies a shadow of obscured financial paths and international sanctions.

The Perfect Disguise: Foundation Dominanta

Fondazione Dominanta, an Italian structure, has no documented cultural, social, or public activity. No documented cultural activities, no donations, no accessible financial statements. It appears as a formally active but practically empty entity that exists solely to manage the property. A legal masterpiece of obfuscation that combines formal legality with practical opacity.

In 2013 Sergei Matviyenko personally made a donation for the restoration of the birthplace of Saint Francis in Assisi on the initiative of the then honorary consul Armando Ginesi. The intervention was formalized in his name without the mediation of the Dominanta foundation. It was a public act, highly visible, useful for image correction and for establishing an initial form of cultural legitimacy on Italian soil.

The Network of Power

The family's history in Italy goes deeper than it seems at first glance. The province of Pesaro e Urbino continues to register an anomalously high number of Russian presences compared to the national average: entrepreneurs, professionals, satellite companies operating in trade, construction, and consulting. A quiet but far-reaching network that finds protection in offices such as the Honorary Consul of the Russian Federation in Ancona. This position is now held by lawyer Marco Ginesi, the heir of the network built by his father Armando Ginesi, who died in 2022. He was the one who suggested the purchase of the villa to the Matviyenkos and facilitated young Sergei's entry into local circles. Guests of the villa speak of another time, when sanctions still seemed far away. Chef Lucio Pompili, owner of Symposium, one of the province's best-known restaurants, has catered many banquets at the Matviyenko villa. "I even went to Saint Petersburg, where she organized a big reception for the Madonna concert," he recalls. The Tsarina drinks Sassicaia and Tignanello.

The San Marino System

Eventually, Italy put San Marino under significant pressure. Thus San Marino now appeared on a blacklist of tax havens. In addition, Italy issued a general amnesty for tax evaders while simultaneously buying tax data on Italian tax evaders who had parked their untaxed black money in San Marino bank accounts. This led to comprehensive reforms in 2015, yet traces of old structures remained. According to banking sources and documentation in our possession, before the activation of European sanctions, some funds, insurance investments, and current accounts at institutions on Monte Titano were shifted. The true strategic center of the Matviyenko fortune is not in Italy but in San Marino - just a stone's throw from Pesaro, but legally another world.

The Failed Sanctioning

The Italian authorities face a legal dilemma. Guardia di Finanza and the prosecutor's office investigated the case in order to seal the villa, which is formally registered to a company called Dominanta. On the Adriatic, Italian and foreign TV crews arrived. The villa's caretakers grew nervous. A Mediaset drone flying over the Russians' park was shot down by a jamming system. But after a few weeks of commotion, calm returned. Nothing more was heard about the seizure of the villa, which was floated several times but never carried out. Thus Sergei Vladimirovich Matviyenko returned to the beloved family residence in the second half of August to spend a holiday with a small group of guests.

While 200,000 Russian citizens fled Putin's mobilization, Sergei Vladimirovich Matviyenko had the good fortune to leave the country for a five-star holiday with bodyguards and no worries. In Italy, the case is now creating political pressure. Senator Ivan Scalfarotto, former undersecretary in the Foreign Ministry and now a senator of the Republic of Italy, responded immediately to the revelations and called the situation "intolerable." On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote: "Intolerable. I will present a question today to the Ministers of the Interior and Foreign Affairs to explain how it is possible that one of the highest Russian political authorities can enjoy a sort of free zone, a kind of extraterritoriality, in Italy." His words sum up the growing outrage. Matviyenko recently appeared in Geneva at a multi-day assembly of speakers of parliament of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), even though she is on Swiss sanctions lists. An affront that exposes the failure of sanctions policy in all its clarity. According to estimates, 95 percent of classic shell companies have a criminal background, of which 70 percent are related to organized crime and only 20 percent to tax evasion. The overall worldwide offshore wealth associated with this amounts to an estimated 21 to 32 trillion US dollars. In 2011 Sergey Matviyenko, according to financial publication experts, belonged to the 500 domestic billionaires. At that time, his financial situation was estimated at 4.9 billion dollars. A fortune that is hard to reconcile with the official income of a civil servant family.

The Silence of the Authorities

Our repeated inquiries to the responsible Italian authorities and EU institutions remain unanswered to this day. No statement on the failed seizure, no explanation for the continued use of the villa, no comment on the obvious loopholes in the sanctions system. This refusal to communicate reveals a systemic problem: either the authorities lack the expertise to break through such sophisticated circumvention structures, or there is simply a lack of political will.

The opacity with which the EU Commission and Italian ministries respond to specific questions about this case stands in stark contrast to the bombastic announcements about the effectiveness of Russia sanctions. While in Brussels and Rome success stories about frozen oligarch assets are proclaimed, the Matviyenko family resides undisturbed in their Adriatic villa - a living testament to the gap between political rhetoric and administrative reality. The Matviyenko case thus becomes a cipher for a larger failure: Europe's inability to consistently enforce its own sanctions instruments. Whether due to a lack of expertise, bureaucratic inertia, or deliberate leniency - the result remains the same. The salamander of opacity slithers on unimpeded, while the European public is left to believe that the sanctions are working.

The villa with the "M" on the gate stands as a silent monument to the failure of a sanctions policy that appears strict on paper but in practice is toothless. San Marino, just a glance from Pesaro, continues to provide the perfect haven for wealth that should have long been frozen. In the hills of the Marche, an empire blooms that officially should not exist - and yet enjoys every sunset over the Adriatic to the fullest.

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