RUSSIAN officials sent a team of builders to Monaco to erect a three-bedroom “dacha” in Prince Albert’s garden earlier this year as a sign of the growing friendship between Moscow and the tiny principality on the Riviera, according to sources close to the palace.

The simple wooden building has the function of a pool house at Albert’s estate in the hills behind Monte Carlo and reflected growing bonds with Moscow that have helped to turn Monaco, a glamorous tax haven, into the favourite playground of Russians.

Albert’s spokesman declined to comment but a former adviser saw the dacha as evidence of the warm friendship that has developed between the 50-year-old bachelor prince and Vladimir Putin, 55, the Russian prime minister.

The two spent a week together last summer, fishing and hunting in Siberia, where the Russian leader was photographed posing without his shirt. Albert was given two freshwater seal pups from Lake Baikal.

They met again last month in St Petersburg, when Putin thanked Albert, a member of the International Olympic Committee, for supporting Russia’s bid to host the winter Olympics in the Black Sea port of Sochi in 2014.

Albert has previously expressed gratitude to Russia for helping to organise an expedition he made to the North Pole, in the footsteps of one of his ancestors, in 2006.

Ever since Prince Rainier, Albert’s father, married Grace Kelly, the American actress, in 1956, an aura of glamour has clung to the tiny principality, helping to attract business: and a lot of business these days seems to be coming from Russia.

Some advertisements in estate agents’ windows are in Russian and so are the number plates on the Ferraris: Monaco has become the latest magnet for mega-rich Russians in search of somewhere to hide their money.

“They’re extremely rich and, judging by the way they spend it, you get the feeling that it was earned very easily,” said Frédéric Laurent, a Monaco native and author of The Prince on his Rock, who talks about an “invasion” of Russians.

“The girls are very beautiful, of course, but a lot of them are prostitutes.”

Albert is not the only member of the centuries-old Grimaldi clan to be reaching out to Moscow.

Princess Stephanie, his sister, will open an exhibition called The Grace Kelly Years in Moscow next month.

Charlotte Casiraghi, daughter of Princess Caroline, has also brought a touch of European sparkle to Moscow as a guest at the opening of an art gallery created by Dasha Zhukova, girlfriend of Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club.

Abramovich is one of several Russian oligarchs who, drawn by memories of the Riviera-mad old Russian aristocracy, have been buying up properties on the Côte d’Azur.

He paid £15m for the semi-derelict Chateau de la Croe, home to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor after the second world war.

Complaints about a “Russian invasion” of the Riviera reached a peak last month when Monaco hosted a football match between Zenith Saint Petersburg, a club owned by Gazprom, the Russian state oil giant, and Manchester United. It attracted 10,000 Russian supporters.

“A lot of them got so drunk that they ended up in hospital,” said Laurent.

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