This Monday, agents of the National Police searched several luxury mansions in Mallorca that supposedly belong to businessman Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kolesov, an oligarch of the Russian arms industry considered close to President Vladimir Putin, as confirmed by EL PAÍS in several police sources. The records occur after ―founded by activist and opposition activist Aleksei Navalny who died in strange circumstances in 2024 in a Russian prison― revealed last summer that Kolesov, sanctioned since December 2024 by the European Union (EU), owns at least five real estate properties in Mallorca that he has put in the names of relatives, including his young children.
The operation began after 1:00 p.m., when dozens of National Police agents went to at least two of the mansions attributed to Kolesov. Specifically, to a villa in the Cala Vinyes area and another in the Sol de Mallorca urbanization – one of the most exclusive in the area -, both in the municipality of Calvià, in the south of Mallorca. Both and a third appear to have been acquired in 2024 by Kolesov’s four-year-old son. Of the other two homes on the island that Navalny’s foundation allocates to the oligarch, one is in the name of another young daughter and the other, of a septuagenarian sister of the tycoon. All of them were previously listed in the name of Russian arms companies linked to the oligarch. The police sources consulted have declined to provide more information as the investigation, headed by the General Information Commissioner (CGI), is under secrecy.
In the update, it stands out that this, 69-year-old, is the general director of the company Russian Helicopters JSC, the main manufacturer of these aircraft for the Army of his country. The European Union justified the sanctions by considering that this company is, in fact, “a key company within the Russian military-industrial complex. The Russian Armed Forces use various types of helicopters and other equipment and defense material from Russian Helicopters JSC in its war of aggression against Ukraine,” the document details, adding below: “Therefore, Nikolai Kolesov is supporting actions that undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.”
Kolesov’s biography appears linked to the Russian regime and, above all, to the arms industry. A deputy of the State Council of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, in 2007 he was appointed governor of the Amur region, near the eastern border with China. A year later he resigned and shortly thereafter he was appointed general director of Kret, a company specialized in the development of electronic warfare systems and a subsidiary of Rostec, the Russian state defense industry corporation.
Since then he has always been linked to this sector. Thus, in 2019 he became the president of the board of directors of Elekon Plant JSC (manufacturer of electronic components for military equipment and one of the companies that was listed as the owner of one of the homes in Mallorca before it was transferred to one of the oligarch’s children). Two years later he took up his current position as general director of Russian Helicopters JSC.
