purchased the century-old Novy Svet vineyard in Crimea for $26.4 million in one of the first privatization deals in the region since the annexation of the region by Russia. As of January 2019, Kovalchuk and Nikolai Shamalov through their ownership of Rossiya Bank have become the most important investors in Russia's development of annexed Crimea. In 2020, the world's leading streaming entertainment service Netflix partnered with Kovalchuk's National Media Group to launch a local-language streaming service in Russia. On 15 April 2021, Alexei Navalny's website stated that since 2003 Kovalchuk is the owner of Putin's residence at Valdai which is on the southern of a peninsula between Lake Uzhin () and Lake Valdai () in the Novgorod Oblast near Saint Petersburg and is across Lake Valdai from Valday (). Often, Putin's Dacha, which was built in 1980, is called Valdai, Dolgie Borody, or Stalin's Dacha, but Stalin was not alive when Valdai was built. Abutting north of this location is owned by the Russian Federation and is frequented by the Federal Security Service. Kovalchuk leases Putin's Dacha to the Russian government for an undisclosed price. Sanctions Kovalchuk was one of several individuals sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department on 20 March 2014 in response to the 2014 Crimean crisis. According to the U.S. Treasury, Kovalchuk is a close advisor to President Putin and has been referred to as one of his "cashiers". Notes References and notes See also List of Russian people by net worth List of individuals sanctioned during the Ukrainian crisis 1951 births Living people Businesspeople from Saint Petersburg Russian billionaires Former billionaires Russian individuals subject to the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctions Russian individuals subject to the European Union sanctions Russian individuals subject to United Kingdom sanctions