The first husband of Vladimir Putin's daughter Maria – now Vorontsova by family name – is reportedly embroiled in a criminal case in the Netherlands.

A property which Jorrit Joost Faassen (43), the Russian leader’s ex-son-in-law, owns in Duivendrecht, a suburb of Amsterdam, has been seized temporarily by the Functional Public Prosecutor’s Office. The authorities investigate his role in fraud and tax evasion, seeking to confiscate the property. 

The seizure on 12 May was signaled by a research collective called Follow the Money, the British daily newspaper The Guardian and the online media channel Proekt Media. The reason for the seizure is unknown, although Faassen was recently questioned at Schiphol on suspicion of sanction evasion, says the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. 

The case involving Faassen has been surrounded by moderate secrecy, as the prosecutors withhold information from the public due to the sensitivity of the case. The Dutchman, a businessman, had built a successful career in Russia during his close relationship with the president’s younger daughter from his marriage to Ludmila Putina (now Ocheretnaya). He moved to Moscow in 2006 to serve as a director at the construction company Stroytransgaz, then took over a higher post in the gas giant Gazprom, in 2007, and until 2015 he worked as a deputy chairman of the consulting firm MEF Audit.

Born in Leiderdorp, Faassen bought the site in the village of Duivendrecht in 2019, for 450,000 euros. At the time of the purchase, he was “unmarried”, according to the land register.

There, he applied for construction of a residence and six office buildings.

Faassen’s name doesn’t show up in public records regarding the plot of land, until 2019. The land was originally bought by a Dutch company called Molenkade Ontwikkeling BV. The sole shareholder of Molenkade Ontwikkeling is a company based on Cyprus, called Gietrin Investment Limited. It is known to be owned or controlled by billionaire brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, personal friends of Putin, Proiekt.Media noted. 

Land registry documents also show that Faassen is now registered at a new address: Prechistenskaya Naberezhnaya 17 in Moscow. It is an apartment complex along the Moskva River, a few minutes walk from the Kremlin.

In 2022, Follow the Money spoke to Thomas Grentzius, director of Molenkade Ontwikkeling BV from 2013 until 2019. He claimed to be personally instructed by Jorrit Faassen to act on behalf of the company in the land acquisition transaction. Grentzius, in turn, is married to Faassen’s cousin and learned years later that Faassen had been married to one of Putin’s daughters. Grentzius subsequently cut off all the ties with Faassen anymore and quit the company in 2019. 

More to read:
What dowry did Vladimir Putin offer his ex-wife, who remarried? [part 1]
What dowry did Vladimir Putin offer his ex-wife, who remarried? [part 2]

The legal status of Faassen in the investigation is unclear yet and no formal charges have been filed so far. Neither the prosecutors who instrument the case nor Jorrit Faassen agreed to comment on it.

Faassen married Maria Putina in 2008 and the couple split up shortly afterwards. The two have a son together, born in 2012. Maria, a pediatric endocrinologist by training, remarried later to Yevgeny Nagorny, a high ranking official at the Russian oil and gas company Novatek, with whom she has a son born in 2017. 

Maria Putina / Faassen / Vorontsova and a corner picture of Jorrit Faassen. Credit: Meduza 

Given that Jorrit and Maria were seen together taking care of their 11-year-old son Roman long after their formal divorce – until 2016, there are suspicions that they remained un an “unregistered marriage” and acted to fool around the authorities in order to avoid the Western sanctions.

Faassen’s connections with the Putins attracted criticism after the Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and the shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines aircraft with almost 300 civilians aboard in the sky of eastern Ukraine.

Local residents hang out a Ukrainian flag on the fence of Faassen’s property in Duivendrecht and a banner calling on Maria to persuade her father to stop the war.