Russia - President Vladimir Putin's inner circle
About
Konstantin Ernst has been in charge of Russia’s leading TV station, Channel One, since 1999. He has been credited with helping to create President Vladimir Putin’s political persona, and of broadcasting propagandistic news stories that conform to the Kremlin’s agenda.
Ernst started out as a producer of “Vzglyad (Viewpoint),” a news and discussion program that would become among the most influential shows of the liberalizing perestroika years of the 1980s, and went on to make some of the most influential shows of the ’90s.
He was appointed as Channel One’s chief producer in 1995. In 1999, around the same time that Putin became president, he was promoted to chief executive.
In an interview with New Yorker writer Joshua Yaffa, Ernst defended Channel One’s failure to report on the Putin family’s alleged wealth, saying “society is in no way put in danger” by the omission.
Ernst directed the acclaimed opening and closing ceremonies of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
Political Career
General Director, Channel One (1999 - present)
In The Pandora Papers
The Pandora Papers reveal that Ernst obtained a secret 23% stake in a billion-dollar deal, which he acquired with a loan from a Cypriot bank partly owned by the Kremlin-linked VTB Bank.
This occurred only nine months after the 2014 Sochi Olympics when Ernst became the shareholder of British Virgin Islands-registered Haldis Corp., records show. Haldis held a 23% interest in a Russian company, which bought 39 aging but valuable Soviet-era cinemas and surrounding property from the city of Moscow.
The properties were sold at around half their taxable value through a Moscow government-run auction. A legal challenge by a local anti-corruption activist and a city council member alleged that the auction was designed to effectively exclude all but the partnership in which Ernst, behind layers of shell companies, held a stake.
The files reveal that Ernst’s company received a loan from a Cyprus bank partly owned by VTB Bank, which helped to fund his stake in the deal. The bank requested that records documenting Ernst’s connection to the loan not be shared with the British Virgin Islands government records.
Another BVI company he owned, D’Zandra Holdings Limited, owned a painting worth $6.2 million by the 18th century neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David.
In an email to the ICIJ, Ernst said he had never made a secret of his involvement in the real estate project and denied any suggestion that his involvement in the project was compensation for his work on the Olympic ceremonies. He declined to answer ICIJ’s questions on the basis that ICIJ was “not an independent investigation company but an organisation commissioned by the US secret services.”
Secrecy Jurisdictions
British Virgin Islands
Secrecy Broker
At the heart of the Pandora Papers are 14 offshore firms that help clients establish companies in secrecy jurisdictions. This profile draws on leaked data from these providers:
Discover this Power Player’s offshore connections.
The information on this profile is current as of October 3, 2021. Read more about the Pandora Papers data.