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Sergei Matviyenko, the son of Russian Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko, resides in a villa in the Italian seaside town of Pesaro on the Adriatic coast, an investigation by the Italian newspaper Linkiesta has found. The report claims that Sergei Matviyenko has transferred most of his financial assets to San Marino — a small, independent republic that is not uncoincidentally located near Pesaro.
While the younger Matviyenko has an Italian tax identification number, Linkiesta reports that he does not conduct any business in Italy. The tax ID serves to maintain his residency status and access to local banking services. Investigators say he has built a formally legal but opaque network in order to shield his assets, aided by a large team of lawyers and consultants. The longstanding lack of transparency in San Marino’s banking sector and slow-moving legislative reforms facilitated the arrangement, notes the report.
The Linkiesta investigation also suggests that the province of Pesaro e Urbino has become a hub in a network of shell companies, trusts, and proxies allegedly built by the Matviyenko family to circumvent international sanctions. Sergei Matviyenko is under sanctions from the United States, Japan, and Canada, while his mother, Valentina Matviyenko, has been sanctioned by the EU, the UK, Switzerland, the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Ukraine.
The villa, where Sergei resides with his wife Yulia, was purchased by Valentina Matviyenko in 2009. It was later transferred to an Italian-registered trust named Dominanta, which does not conduct any operations and exists solely to hold property. In March 2022, the Alexei Navalny-founded Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) reported that the Matviyenko family’s estate in Pesaro includes a three-story home covering 774 square meters and a 26-hectare plot of land. The property was valued at approximately €10 million.
Italian Senator Ivan Scalfarotto responded to the Linkiesta report the same day, calling the findings “intolerable.”
“Intolerable. I will present a question today to the Ministers of the Interior and Foreign Affairs to explain how it is possible that one of the highest Russian political authorities can enjoy a sort of free zone, a kind of extraterritoriality, in Italy,” Scalfarotto wrote on X (formerly Twitter).