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The docs we dug up in a St. Petersburg archive consist of reports & bulletins on the work of Putin's External Relations Committee, whose shady deals led city lawmakers to call for Putin's firing in 1992. We didn't find any bombshells in the docs, but lots of curiosities. /2

Mostly they consist of short summaries of meetings Putin & Co. held with visiting entrepreneurs & officials. We sifted through the docs & dug up backstories on the scant offerings in the docs - like his Sept. 92 meeting with the Catalan behind Chupa Chups lollipops. /3

Putin & his longtime confidant, Igor Sechin, had traveled to Barcelona earlier that year with their boss, St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. Here's a pic of Putin flipping through a book at a banquet on that trip. /4

Putin's meeting with Chupa Chups founder Enric Bernat appears to have gone well - a factory to produce the lollipops was set up in Russia: kommersant.ru/doc/93957 But Bernat's son told a reporter later some interesting stuff on the bribes needed to do business in Russia. 5/

Another Catalan who had some interesting things to say about corruption was Manuel De Forn, a Barcelona official who came to St. Petersburg to discuss the idea of setting up a market like Barcelona's Mercabarna. An extract from the bulletin shows Sechin was tasked with this. /6

Here's what De Forn told El Pais about that trip: "Putin didn't directly ask us for money, but other people told us what we needed to know about the bribes": elpais.com/espana/catalun /7

But the biggest surprise for me from these archived docs we dug up was that Putin met a 26-year-old

@RepLizCheney

in St. Petersburg when she was a USAID official leading a State Dept. delegation meeting with him. /8

On the agenda was creating a foundation to support Russian business. Putin's government barred USAID from Russia 20 years later. Cheney was among 100s of Americans that Russia banned recently (along w/Rob Reiner, Morgan Freeman, & the late John McCain) mid.ru/ru/maps/us/181 /9

On her trip to Russia, Cheney visited multiple cities - including Nizhny Novgorod, where she met the governor, a young politician named Boris Nemtsov (seen below at a meeting with local voters in 1992 -- credit, TASS). /10

We asked Cheney through her office if she recalled any details about meeting St. Petersburg Deputy Mayor Vladimir Putin in October 1992. She said Putin "left no impression at all." (Full statement below.) /11

You can download all four documents with the archived reports on Putin's committee from 1991-93 at the following links toward the top of our report: rferl.org/a/putin-cheney If you spot anything interesting, let us know! /12

Угнанный самолет, встреча с Элизабет Чейни и "красная мафия". Истории из бюллетеней петербургского...

Huge thanks to my brilliant colleagues

for their reporting on this. You can read in Russian at the following links:

@SvobodaRadio

: svoboda.org/a/putin-ugnann

@CurrentTimeTv

: currenttime.tv/a/samolet-chei /13

currenttime.tv

Как Владимир Путин оказался в одном рукопожатии от Сальвадора Дали, а испанские бизнес-проекты в России наткнулись на коррупцию и криминал. Как уличный музыкант угнал самолет в Европу, чтобы не...