>>428843305Wife of Russian Deputy Def Min spends hubby’s blood money in Paris
Ah, Paris! The City of Lights! La cité de l’amour! The world’s shopping capital for the wives of Russian kleptocrats and murderers! But wait… How is it possible that the wife of a sanctioned Russian official should be permitted to go on a shopping spree in the capital of an EU country - in spite of sanctions?
Meet Svetlana Maniovich, a woman with a taste for the finer things in life. How fine? Eye-wateringly expensive ones.
Svetlana rents a villa in Saint Tropez for EUR 150,000 per month. Her yacht docks in Naples. She owns a retro Rolls-Royce Corniche to drive around Moscow, which she apparently likes so much, she bought a second one to wait in a garage in her French Riviera home, just waiting there for her. She is so rich, she does not simply go shopping, but luxurious Parisian jewelry stores invite her to buy from them when they have something that they think she might like, and her jewelry pieces cost in the tens of thousands or even over 100,000 euros. And when she goes on a shopping spree in Paris, she does not have to stoop down to staying in hotels like a peasant! No, she rents an apartment there specifically for that purpose.
Is Svetlana a rich businesswoman? No, she is not spending her own money but her husband’s. And who might this lucky man be?
Why, it is Timur Ivanov the Russian Deputy Minister of Defense.
Ivanov is not her first husband. The former husband of Svetlana Maniovich-Zakharova-Ivanova warned him that he will not be able to afford her. “Svetlana demands at least USD 50,000 a month,” the scorned spouse reportedly said.
My oh my, how can a government official in the Ministry of Defense afford that on what is still essentially a government clerk's salary?