Russia's richest woman, Yelena Baturina, earned 31 billion rubles ($1 billion) in 2009, but spent almost all of it to pay down the debts of her Inteko company, the firm said on Tuesday.
The Inteko press release said Baturina, the wife of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, spent 27 billion rubles to pay off loans from Gazprombank and a number of other Russian banks.
It said she had boosted her income through one-off sales of shares and real estate.
"The total sum of [Baturina's] incomes included: 28 billion rubles [$954 million] from security and investments...and 3 billion rubles [$102 million] in salary and other payments from Inteko," the press release said.
It added that paying down Inteko's debt allowed Baturina's real estate development company to start new projects and increase the profitability of current ones.
Luzhkov, meanwhile, earned 7.98 billion rubles [$272 million] in 2009, the mayor's official site announced later on Tuesday.
MOSCOW, May 4 (RIA Novosti)
