A lot of money and little environmental protection: the richest Russian sets a new record for wealth

A lot of money and little environmental protection
Richest Russian sets asset record

In May 2020, his company caused one of the greatest environmental disasters in the Russian Arctic, and a few months later, Vladimir Potanin was wealthier than any other Russian before. The major shareholder of Norilsk Nickel is valued at more than $ 30 billion.

Russia's richest man Vladimir Potanin, major shareholder of the mining giant Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel), has set a new wealth record according to Forbes: Potanin owns more than 30 billion dollars (24.65 billion euros), reported "Forbes" – according to Russian media Potanin is the first Russian with such a high fortune. Potanin holds just under 35 percent of nornickel.

The mining company is the world's largest producer of the metal palladium and one of the largest worldwide of nickel – important in the manufacture of electric cars, for example. The market value of Nornickel has increased significantly in the past few months. Since Potanin took control of Nornickel, the company has been accompanied by allegations of pollution. In fact, the nickel giant blows so many emissions into the air that it is considered the largest single air polluter on earth and Norilsk is the dirtiest city in Russia.

At the end of May 2020, 21,000 tons of diesel oil leaked from a power plant tank of a subsidiary in Norilsk, Siberia, and polluted large stretches of the Ambarnaya River and the 70-kilometer-long Lake Pyazino. In early February, a court in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, sentenced Norilsk Nickel to pay 146.2 billion rubles (1.6 billion euros) in damages.

At the time, environmentalists spoke of the worst oil spill that had ever occurred in the Russian Arctic. Even before that, Nornickel is said to have pumped highly toxic sewage into the tundra for years, about which Dorothea Wehrmann, expert on arctic cities at the German Development Institute (DIE), said at the time: "You can find larger, foul-smelling pools deeper in the forest suggest that this is not the first time it has been practiced in this way. "

Russian President Vladimir Putin is still considered well-disposed to Potanin, and the entrepreneur already had good connections with the former head of state Boris Yeltsin, was Vice-Prime Minister of the Russian government for two years and as such was responsible for financial issues.

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