Nearly half of Russia’s wealthy are war profiteers. According to one investigation from the independent investigation site Proektpublished Monday, July 31, at least 81 of the names appearing on the list of the 200 richest personalities in Russia (according to the 2021 ranking of the magazine Forbes) are clearly implicated in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The companies they benefit from supply components, equipment or fuel, either to the Russian armed forces or to arms factories.
Logically, billionaires who have made their fortunes through their personal ties to Vladimir Putin are profiting from the war. They are Gennadi Timtchenko (Novatek, Sibur), the Arkadi brothers and Boris Rotenberg, as well as Iouri Kovaltchouk (Rossia bank). There are also the names of the great oligarchs who got rich in the 1990s, before Vladimir Putin came to power, such as Alexei Mordashov (Severstal), Vladimir Potanin (Nornickel), Vaguit Alekperov (Lukoil), Alicher Ousmanov ( USM), Vladimir Yevtouchenkov (AFK Sistema) and Oleg Deripaska (Rusal).
Roman Abramovich’s Evraz mining group supplies, according to the investigation, raw materials for tank factories and chemicals for making explosives and producing missiles. At the very beginning of the conflict, Roman Abramovich shunned the meeting to which the head of the Kremlin had invited all the major Russian businessmen, preferring to present himself as a ” intermediate “ between kyiv and Moscow to find a “peaceful solution”. The initiative, which quickly failed, did not allow the businessman to achieve his main objective: to completely escape the European and American sanctions aimed at him.
Insurance premium
Mikhail Fridman, co-shareholder of Alfa Group, opted for another method. Also absent from the February 24, 2022 meeting between Mr. Putin and the billionaires, he presented himself in the English-language media as a collateral victim of the war, even managing to convince Russian opposition figures to sign a letter asking the European Union to lift the personal sanctions imposed on him. The businessman, who, like his partner Piotr Aven, lives in the United Kingdom, recently obtained, from London, the unfreezing, on his bank account, of a sum of 300,000 pounds (350,000 euros) for its “current expenses”according to the New York Times.
Alfa Bank and Alfa Assurances, controlled by MM. Fridman and Aven, provide credit to several Russian manufacturers in the arms sector, including a producer of ammunition and a manufacturer of optical systems for Russian bombers. Alfa Assurances continues to sell insurance premiums to the Russian guard (active in occupied areas of Ukraine), as well as to military bases participating in the invasion.
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