Sanctioned Russian billionaire Andrey Bokarev, one of Putin’s inner circle, is worth an estimated $3.9 billion. He has built a complex scheme to conceal luxury property across Europe. The oligarch, whose companies supply raw materials for Russian weapons, has been transferring ownership of real estate worth tens of millions of euros to underage children and close associates. At the center of this scheme is 29-year-old Diana Madzhitova, who controls assets ranging from luxury villas in Dubai to landholdings in the Balkans. Her companies are already steeped in scandal: in Montenegro, her firm blocked a French family from accessing their own property, forcing the 83-year-old owner to reach his house only by boat.
Andrey Removich Bokarev (born December 23, 1966) is a Russian oligarch who ranks 36th on Forbes’ list of “125 Russian Billionaires.” He is co-owner and chairman of the board of Transmashholding, together with his partner Iskander Makhmudov. Bokarev is one of the largest contractors of Russia’s Ministry of Defense and is described as a “longtime friend of the Kremlin.” A graduate of the Moscow Finance Institute in 1995, he began his career in banking. Bokarev was present at meetings with Putin on the day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and again on March 16, 2023, where he publicly voiced support for the Kremlin’s actions. He also maintains ties with Russian organized crime, including links to Gennady Petrov of the Tambov gang and the Izmaylovo group, which controlled coal and aluminum enterprises. According to Russian media, he even controls his own private military company, “Bokarev PMC,” while his firms continue supplying raw materials for Russian weapons production.
The company IMMOBILIER ALBERT 1ER, which owns prime real estate in central Paris, belonged directly to Bokarev until recently. Likely fearing sanctions, asset freezes, and confiscation, the oligarch transferred the company– and with it, the costly real estate, to Zhanna Bokareva in March 2024.
But this wasn’t the only French company tied to Bokarev. Another, BEL’OMBRE SCI, was also transferred to Zhanna Bokareva in February 2024. This real estate management firm owns roughly three hectares of land in the exclusive La Moutte area of Saint-Tropez, on the French Riviera.
На величезній території на понад 2,5 гектари два маєтки на 453 та 156 квадратів. Сусідні ділянки в французькому реєстрі нерухомості оцінюються мільйонами євро.
Best to the Children
Bokarev has also shifted other luxury assets to companies formally owned by his children. Two firms– SCI Serenity Capital and Casa Lea II Property– were reassigned to his three children with Olga Syrovatskaya: Andrey, Elizaveta, and Alexander. Casa Lea II Property has previously been jointly owned by Bokarev and Syrovatskaya. On July 29, 2022, Bokarev transferred his share of the company to their three underage children. Around the same time, he divorced Syrovatskaya apparently to shield the property from being frozen or seized. Despite this, Bokarev continues to sign all documents on behalf of his children as their legal guardian. On February 15, 2024, Syrovatskaya also transferred her share of the company to the children. This legal change was recorded in the French registry in August 2025.
The company owns a villa in the Ramatuelle region of France. According to the French corporate registry, the villa was valued at €6 million in 2023. The property includes a pine-covered hectare with a four-bedroom house.
A similar scheme was applied to SCI Serenity Capital, which owns several elite properties, including a plot at 9001 Les Marres Ouest in Ramatuelle and land with private homes on Chemin de Val de Rian. Several of these houses feature swimming pools. In 2023, one of the villas was priced at over €26 million, according to the French registry.
The Mysterious Diana
According to Radio Liberty, for the past five years 29-year-old Diana Madzhitova has been regularly seen in Bokarev’s circle. Together, they have traveled to Dubai at least 20 times.
XXII Carat is a gated enclave of ultra-luxury villas on Dubai’s artificial Palm Jumeirah island. These mansions, worth tens of millions of dollars, come with private beaches, million-dollar crystal-and-quartz bathtubs, climate-controlled wine cellars, and every imaginable luxury. Journalists confirmed that Madzhitova formally owned two “Ruby-class” villas in this exclusive compound. One of these later passed into the hands of Gulnoz Kocharova, the niece of another sanctioned oligarch already investigated by Trap Aggressor journalists – Alisher Usmanov. This transfer bears all the hallmarks of a familiar scheme: high-end real estate shuffled among proxies within the circles of Russian billionaires.
And that’s not all. In August 2019, a woman named Diana Madzhitova founded First Investment Company in Montenegro. Starting in 2020, the firm began snapping up land and property across the country, as journalists from Trap Aggressor discovered in Montenegro’s corporate registry.
Today, the firm owns 11,615 square meters of land and 7,284 square meters of property on that land. This includes 14 plots in the Milovići area of Tivat municipality. On one prime seaside plot, construction is currently underway on a two-story cottage of more than 350 square meters.
This construction has already ignited a scandal. According to local media, in the summer of 2025, the French Barbić family – longtime owners of two old stone houses on the Kaluđerovina coast – suddenly discovered that they could only reach their homes by sea. The reason was First Investment, a company owned by Russian national Diana Madzhitova. The company put up a metal fence around its plot, completely blocking all land access to the French family’s houses. As a result, the 83-year-old owner, who had long traveled from France for summer holidays, was forced to buy a boat just to reach his own home. The family’s lawyer has filed a lawsuit alleging unlawful interference and violation of basic property rights, while Tivat’s municipal police and inspectors are investigating the legality of the fence.
The Bokarev case highlights a fundamental clash of values between Russian and European systems of thought. For Europeans, private property and the rule of law are sacred principles at the very core of their identity and democratic values.
Russian oligarchs, by contrast, treat those same principles as tools to serve their own ends, where the end justifies the means. Enriching themselves through Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, billionaires like Bokarev funnel capital into Europe, effectively expanding Russian presence and influence within Western jurisdictions.
This publication was produced with the support of the Prague Civil Society Centre. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Prague Civil Society Centre.