April 18 () –
The Russian authorities have called this Thursday the seizure by France of a property located in the southwest of the country and belonging to a Russian company as “illegal” and have warned that this type of action threatens “the foundations of the French judicial system.” “.
“Any attack on private property is a priori illegal,” said Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov during a press conference in which he stated that the French authorities “are undermining their own legal system,” according to information collected by the Russian news agency TASS.
The property, a villa in Anglet seized at the end of 2023 as part of an investigation into suspicions of money laundering, would belong to businessman Artur Ocheretni, the new romantic partner of the ex-wife of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
The French Prosecutor's Office reported the seizure on Wednesday and clarified that the villa, called 'Souzanna', was purchased for about 5.4 million euros. Peskov, for his part, has insisted that the Russian authorities have expressed their complaints about this on several occasions and has declined to comment further on the matter.
