Page 13 - bne IntelliNews monthly country report Russia February 2024

accused of taking children from the occupied territories of Ukraine and transferring them to Russia, which is a war crime. As a result, he has been absent from several international summits this year, including the G20 and BRICS summits. He has, however, visited countries that do not recognize ICC’s jurisdiction, such as China, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
On December 7, Putin met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow. “Our relations are developing very well. Please convey my best wishes to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei,” Putin said in his official remarks, before praising the countries’ trade relationship. The pair also discussed the war in Gaza. “This is not a regional issue, but a global issue, and a solution should be found promptly,” Raisi said.
2.4 Stoligarch: Armen Sarkisyan, king of lotto, lifts and tyres
Russian businessman Armen Sarkisyan is one of the biggest winners of the exodus of foreign firms from Russia, picking up their assets for a tenth of the market price, The Bell reports in an investigation.
Sarkisyan is the buyer of the Continental and Bridgestone tire companies, Bosch factories, the Russian business of elevator manufacturers Otis and Kone - and the owner of a biography from which one can study the history of the Russian penumbral business.
The owner of the S8 Capital holding, Sargsyan was one of the first to start buying up the assets of foreign companies - since the summer of 2022. The first was the Russian business of the American elevator manufacturer Otis.
In April 2023, Sargsyan bought three factories of the German Bosch - for the production of spark plugs, heating boilers and power tools. In May - the tire plant of the German Continental. In October - Russian assets of the Finnish elevator manufacturer Kone.
Finally, in December Sargsyan’s S8 Capital announced the purchase of the Japanese Bridgestone tire plant in the Ulyanovsk region. Together with the Russian company Cordiant, acquired in May, these acquisitions made Sargsyan the second player in the Russian tire market.
Armen Sarkisyan was born in 1978, graduated from MGIMO, and his first job in big business in the early 2000s was Vneshprombank. The bank operated thanks to the connections of its founders, Georgy Bedzhamov and Larisa Marcus, children of an Assyrian organized crime boss killed in 1995.
The money in Vneshprombank was kept by the son of Sergei Ivanov, the wife of Dmitry Kozak, and the son-in-law of the head of Transneft Nikolai Tokarev. Large companies also brought VIP clients, including Transneft and Rosneft. Sargsyan's sister married a relative of Marcus, and the family received a minority stake in the bank. In 10 years, in 2016, Vneshprombank will burst, the hole in its capital - 210 billion rubles - will temporarily become a record in Russian history, and Larisa Marcus will go to a colony.
13 RUSSIA Country Report February 2024 www.intellinews.com