After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Franz Sedelmayer saw a business opportunity: training Russian police forces in special operations.
It was successful. Not least thanks to the fact that he managed to get to know influential people in St. Petersburg. One of them, a bureaucrat and former KGB officer, named Vladimir Putin.
– I needed to solve a business problem and contacted Putin. From the beginning he was not very friendly, it took several months before we had a good relationship. He came to my house every now and then for Bavarian food and beer.
Sedelmayer describes it as a productive relationship.
– Putin was a different person then. I have very mixed feelings about it now.
Took over the assets
But the laws were changed and the then president Boris Yeltsin nationalized Franz Sedelmayer’s assets in Russia.
The German businessman then decided to sue the Russian state and demanded that Russia’s assets in other countries be seized. One of the assets identified was in Sweden: the so-called “Russian house” on Lidingö.
– We were able to prove that the property was not only used for the purposes of the embassy or the federation, but was rented out to private businesses and commercial companies. So they could no longer claim diplomatic immunity.
It was the start of the protracted conflict around the seven-story yellow building. Watch the mini-documentary about “Spionhuset” here.
