Sergei Roldugin is a godfather to Maria Vorontsova (b. 1985), Vladimir Putin’s older daughter. He has been friends with Putin since the late 1970s. In March 2016 The Guardian described Roldugin as “Putin’s best friend”. It was Roldugin who introduced Putin to Lyudmila, his future wife.
In connection with the Panama Papers, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project described Roldugin as the “secret caretaker” of Putin’s hidden wealth through his participation in transactions with Mossack Fonseca and Dietrich, Baumgartner & Partner, who are Swiss lawyers in Zurich, to various offshore companies including Panama registered International Media Overseas, British Virgin Islands (BVI) registered Sonnette Overseas, Sunbarn Ltd and Sandalwood Continental, and the BVI registered Ove Financial Corp.