Russias political and business elites, as well as their loved ones, have for years been able to travel abroad using diplomatic passports, the investigative news outlet The Insiderreported Thursday, mentioning documents it obtained.Russian law does not clearly permit non-diplomats to acquire diplomatic passports, however they may still beissued to anybody as chosen by the President of Russia, developing an exploitable loophole.Its all at the discretion of the state, and the Foreign Ministry can release diplomatic passports on requests to essentially anyone, ex-diplomatBoris Bondarev informed The Insider.If the Presidential Administration or Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] ask you to release one to some pal of his, then obviously they will.Western-sanctioned oligarchs Oleg Deripaska, Alisher Usmanov and Ukrainian-sanctioned Igor Yusufov are all recipients of Russian diplomatic passports, according to The Insider.Previous reporting showed that Deripaska had utilized his diplomatic passport toenter the United States a handful of times.
The Insider stated Deripaska used a diplomatic passport to travel to India last year.Rosneft state oil giant CEO Igor Sechin is another holder of a Russian diplomatic passport.
Given that at least 2013, The Insider reports Sechin utilized his diplomatic passport to go to numerous EU countries, along with the Middle East.The Insider said Putin aide and ex-minister Andrei Fursenko utilized his diplomatic passport to visit France, Germany, Iran and Italy.
Ex-prime ministerViktor Zubkov utilized his to visit Azerbaijan aboard a business jet operated by the Gazprom gas giant, where he is chairman of the board.Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Alexander Bortnikov, along with FSB generals Sergei Beseda, Sergei Korolev and Alexei Sedov, supposedly used theirs to check out France and Switzerland before Russia invaded Ukraine.Among the children of officials to receive diplomatic passports, The Insider listed Ksenia Shoigu, the child of previous defense minister and existing secretary of Russias Security Council Sergei Shoigu; Ilya Medvedev, the child of ex-president and Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev; and Alexander Mishustin, the son of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.Russias Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill had actually also utilized his diplomatic passport to frequently visit Germany, Austria and Finland before shared flight bans over the intrusion of Ukraine were introduced.Diplomatic passport holders should officially return the document into storage after coming back from journeys abroad, however this rule doesnt use to everyone, The Insider estimated a confidential former government official as saying.They constantly looked elsewhere when VIPs took a trip with a diplomatic passport to locations like Cote dAzur, the source included.