It has already come to light that the Finnish Immigration Service did not ask Supo for a statement in connection with the processing of Gennadi Timchenko’s citizenship application.
Immigration Office did not ask for a statement from the protection police (supo) even when he ended up on the banned list Boris Rotenberg applied for Finnish citizenship at the end of the 1990s. The matter emerges from a report made by the Immigration Office, or the former Immigration Office, which STT received through a request for information.
Nor did supo find any mention of the statement regarding Rotenberg’s citizenship application in its archives when STT inquired about the matter on Thursday.
It has already come out before that the Office for Foreigners did not ask Supo for a statement Gennady Timchenko in connection with the processing of the citizenship application. Both men subsequently received citizenship, although Rotenberg’s citizenship application was processed at the Foreigners’ Office considerably longer than Timchenko’s application.
Boris Rotenberg, who received Finnish citizenship, belongs to his brother Arkadin with Vladimir Putin close circle. So does Timchenko. Their citizenship applications also coincided with the time when Putin was working in Russia’s state administration as head of the security service FSB and later as the country’s president.
Boris Rotenberg and Timchenko started their citizenship applications in the same year. Rotenberg submitted his application to the police in February 1998, Timchenko a few months later in December.
The Helsinki police, on the other hand, referred both applications to the Immigration Office for processing within a few months of each other. Rotenberg’s application went to the agency in January 1999, while Timchenko’s application arrived in March.
Timchenko’s citizenship was processed much faster than Rotenberg’s. Both applications were requested to be expedited: Timchenko’s application in May 1999 and Rotenberg’s in January 2000. Based on the Finnish Immigration Service’s investigations, positions in business life were invoked in both requests to be expedited. Only Timchenko’s request was agreed to.
Timchenko received citizenship in October 1999, and Rotenberg, who submitted his application before him, only in May 2002, even then conditionally.
Rotenberg also finally received Finnish citizenship in 2003, when he announced that he had renounced his Russian citizenship. Since then, he has regained his Russian citizenship.
The processing speed of Rotenberg’s application corresponds to the pace at which citizenship applications were processed at the turn of the millennium, based on publicly available information. At the end of the 1990s, the agency was criticized for the long processing times. Timchenko’s processing speed was second to none.
Boris Rotenberg son, among other things owning part of the Helsinki arena Roman Rotenberg had applied for citizenship at the same time as his father, but he received a negative decision in 2002. The reason was that Roman Rotenberg had come of age during the processing of the application.
Based on an investigation by the Finnish Immigration Service, in the spring of 2002, father Boris Rotenberg and his ex-wife sent a request for clarification on the processing of Roman Rotenberg’s citizenship to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Erkki Tuomiojja (sd). The request sent to the judge was turned over to the Immigration Office. The report submitted by the agency to STT does not indicate what actions the request for clarification led to.
Since then, Roman Rotenberg was also granted citizenship.
Yet at the time of the citizenship application, Boris Rotenberg was not exactly an oligarch. Timchenko had already accumulated wealth in the 1990s from, for example, oil trading, but Rotenberg’s entrepreneurial history before the turn of the millennium was modest in comparison. The Rotenbergs started getting really rich only after Putin became president and their companies received various contracts from the Russian state.
Before the war in Ukraine, Timchenko and the Rotenberg brothers were estimated to have billions in assets. After Russia attacked Ukraine, they all ended up on the sanctions lists of the EU and the United States.
In the late 1990s, at the same time that Timchenko and Rotenberg were applying for Finnish citizenship, the status of their friend Vladimir Putin rose in Russia. In 1998, Putin became president Boris Yeltsin as deputy chief of staff of the administration, and in the summer he became head of the security service FSB. In August 1999, Putin was already the prime minister of Russia, and he started the new millennium as acting president of Russia.
Evening newspaper has previously said that the protection police was at least interested in Timchenko already at the time of the citizenship application. The management of the protection police has not publicly commented on their possible interest.
At the time of both Rotenberg’s and Timchenko’s citizenship applications, the Office for Foreigners was in charge Matti Saarelainen, and he has been publicly suspected of having contributed to the processing of Timchenko’s citizenship application. Saarelainen himself has denied this.
Correction 3.2. at 7:52 a.m.: Gennady Timchenko was mistakenly featured in the main photo, and the caption of the story read that Boris Rotenberg is in the photo. The picture has been changed to a picture of Rotenberg.
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