The only dome that can be glimpsed from the anonymous alley dedicated to Gabriele D'Annunzio, in the heart of San Teodoro, the seaside offshoot of Barbagia, is that of the parish dedicated without too many frills to the town's saint. The Siberian scion, Artem Uss, taken in recent days by Putin's secret services in Italy, had his fiscal residence here for Russian affairs in Sardinia. An anomalous residence, given that they even declare it without a house number. Quite another view that the prodigal son of the Siberian governor can now enjoy from his Russian home in the heart of Moscow. A young hopeful, if it weren't for that propensity for reckless business in the name and on behalf of mom and especially dad. In the capital of warmongering Russia, the "fugitive" has a well-defined residence and street number: via Prechistenka 31/16, in the most prestigious metropolitan area of Khamovniki, in the heart of Moscow. Not just any house. In the 1930s, it was built for police officers exactly on the highest hipped bell tower in Moscow. High rank, given the history of that apartment.
Yeltsin's house
The young scion was lucky, he inherited it from his father, President of the most powerful region of Siberia, who in turn received it as a dowry from none other than the President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. This would be enough to understand that the owner of the Costa Dorada, the southern offshoot of the Costa Smeralda, Artem Uss, born in 1982, is not just any father's son. After the ruthless escape complete with an electronic bracelet from the heart of Padania, complete with the United States - Italy crisis, one still wonders why Putin himself ordered an operation, as bold as it is precise, to bring home the heir to one of the closest men in the Kremlin. Yet, in this story of arrests and escapes, secret services and military affairs, there is a behind-the-scenes story that you ignore or deliberately pretend not to see. There is a detail that is not mentioned: while Artem Uss and his father Alexander are under sanctions in the United States and Ukraine, in Italy and Europe they could, on the other hand, operate without any problems, on the loose, before their arrest last October 17 when the Russian scion was "chained" in Malpensa airport in execution of an international mandate from the judicial district of New York. Very heavy accusations: from arms trafficking and computer chips for jets and missiles, up to oil smuggling.
Money in Sardinia
The topic is delicate, the question disturbing: why in Italy could they freely invest and hold billionaire assets even of not always lawful origins? Who was supposed to control these investments? And above all, have those capitals invested in Italy, and above all in Sardinia, constituted illicit competition for other economic operators, Sardinian and Italian, given the origin from unclear or worse illegal business and trafficking? To discover the financial meanderings of certain characters, the chamber of commerce certificates in the land of the Bel Paese are not enough. Here they can declare a tax residence without a street number, rely on an armored trust in Cyprus and shield all kinds of information. To enter the underground business system of oligarchs and relatives, you have to rely on the few native-speaking investigators left alive, because most are killed, always accidentally. Who testifies, tells, publicly or with microphones turned off always ends up disappearing. The candid face and hoary hair of the head of the Siberian Region of Krosnoyarsk, Alexander Uss, father of the owner of the Costa Dorada of Porto San Paolo, southern Gallura, should not mislead. Nor should he soften the attitude of a tried father with which in recent days he has shown himself in favor of television cameras to say that he did not know where his son was, but that he wanted to thank everyone, foreign friends and especially President Putin, for made him come home. Behind those angel faces there is a mountain of business kept under track by the grace of Putin and beyond.
The behind the scenes
How did a 34-year-old Russian boy manage to buy a five-star resort in one of the most exclusive proscenium in Sardinia, the island paradise in the center of the Mediterranean? How did he manage to accumulate so much fortune to be able to afford the "Luxory Sardinia srl" owner of this heritage? Who is behind the holding company registered in Cyprus which holds assets everywhere, including the Sardinian one? To find out, it is not enough to know that the father has been in charge of one of the richest regions of Russia since 2017. And it is no coincidence that the first appointment as governor of Krasnoyarsk was imposed by Vladimir Putin himself. There was an immense and very rich territory to govern, that of Siberia: oil, aluminum, gold, and above all timber. Yes, timber, lots of precious wood, to be cut, to be razed to the ground, with impunity and without control, to be sold to China and beyond. Here, in this icy land, the forests are a deposit of rubles, to be extracted with revolving chainsaws. Textbooks talk about the largest forest oases in the world, along with the Amazon.
Mom & Dad
As it happens, one of the leading companies of this mountain of trees that climbs up from Siberia for the black market of wood is not only attributable to the Sardinian-Russian family of San Teodoro, but has a clear name, that of Ludmilla Prokopievna Uss, the mother of the fugitive, the wife of the governor. They cut and sell wood, but not only. In this Siberian region it happens that "misfortune" befalls those who receive a concession in a forest clearing for felling. As soon as the forest government assigns an area, with pinpoint accuracy, a massive fire breaks out shortly afterwards. Too bad, however, that the investigators and the "Corte dei Conti" believe that those fires "come down" from the sky only after the forests have been razed to the ground by the regime's chainsaws. The black market is consumed between rotating blades and devastating fire, capable of making all evidence disappear.
Cutting and fires
It would not be a coincidence, according to the Russian Court, that in the Krasnoyarsk territory in 2019 and 2020, fires multiplied dramatically. In the audit report, contested by dossiers opposing the regime, it would appear that the KLM-ECO company, founded by Artyom Uss with a share capital of 10 thousand rubles, held by the governor's mother and wife, receives proceeds from sales of 1 billion 780 million over 20 million euros. Declared net profit just over one million euros. The response of the reviewers is explicit: these are enormous sums that go to the underground economy. The turnover of KLM KO, the company of the Sardinian-Russian family of San Teodoro, today exceeds 1.5 billion rubles a year. There is a not insignificant detail in this story: for almost 20 years, the company was managed by Andrey Karpov, who served as adviser and head of his campaign headquarters to Alexander Uss, the father of the escaped prisoner electoral. According to the accounting documents, he was the main owner of the forestry company. A quarter of the company was owned by the wife of the governor, Lyudmila Prokopievna, the remaining shares were all hidden in a trust, the Bering Capital Partners Company Ltd, registered in the Cayman Islands, in the Caribbean. Artem Uss, however, always the young man from Costa Dorada, did not miss out on anything: it was he, in fact, who ran the Moscow representative office of the same company. The scandal erupts when, in September 2020, the former minister of forestation of the Krasnoyarsk Territory is arrested for bribes. Karpov, the corporate arm of the Uss family's wood holding company, confessed on that occasion: part of the company was registered in the name of the governor's wife. The second part – Artem Uss's foreign trust, the one in the Caribbean – had been designed by himself. Not long ago, in January 2021, suddenly, the uncomfortable witness, however, dies.
Siberia & Gallura
Certainly the advent of the Uss family to the government of the Siberian Region has not brought good luck to the largest forests in the world. In 2018, wood was exported for 48 billion rubles, 548 million euros, just 17 million euros ended up in the regional budget of the region. Since the year the government of the Sardinian-Russian oligarch's father took office, forest inspectors have revealed that 1.6 million hectares have been burned in the Siberian region, a third more than in 2017. In 2019, more than 2 million cubic meters of wood were cut with the sole excuse of sanitary cuts, mountains of trees declared sick. The scion of the Siberian house, however, took the safe side: Artem Uss, miraculously received a share in a billion dollar Cypriot offshore company that extracts coal. Out of the blue, the Sardinian resort tycoon also became the owner of 38.7% of the Sibugol company, which is engaged in the extraction and sale of lignite from the coalfield in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. From the American export of microchips for missiles and war jets to the coal business, from the destruction of the Siberian forest to the black trade in wood, to the scion of San Teodoro, there was no shortage of money for investments in Sardinian land. All money, however, whose provenance is not that of the producer of fresh air or enchanted dreams. In fact, the end of the green lung of the Siberian forest also weighs a ton on the affairs of Vladimir Putin's friends in Sardinia. An increasingly disturbing "Russian" thread between Moscow and the Isle of Nuraghi.
