Page 75 - TURKRptJun22

bne June 2022
Opinion 75
Potanin’s business partner Mikhail Prokhorov has also proved adept at dodging sanctions. He is yet to be included on the US, EU or UK lists of sanctioned entities, in spite of his $13bn net worth, much of which comes from assets acquired after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when his bank financed the privatisation of vast state assets. Prokhorov owned the Brooklyn Nets until recently, but sold off the last of his stake in 2019, reportedly at Putin’s request.
The sanctioned founders and executives of independent companies, on the other hand, are largely not complicit in the system and have nothing to do with its war in Ukraine. Sanctioning them feels like a desperate attempt to placate hawks by plugging the obvious oligarch-shaped gaps in the sanctions programme.
Oleg Tinkov is one example. Unlike the oligarchs, who obtained their wealth in the sell-off of state assets in the turbulent 90s, he made his money by importing electronics wholesale and selling them on in Russia at a markup. In this sense, he perhaps most closely resembles Lord Alan Sugar, although he models himself on Richard Branson.
Tinkov is best known in Russia for his neobank Tinkoff – the largest digital bank in the world by user numbers. Two months into the war, Tinkov took to Instagram and publicly lambasted the “crazy” war, insisting that 90% of Russians opposed it.
He also asked: “How could the army be good if everything else in the country is s**t and mired in nepotism, sycophancy and servility?”
Shortly after the comment, Tinkov sold his 35% stake in TCS Group, which owns Tinkoff Bank.
In spite of his overt condemnations of the war, and the fact that he claims never to have set foot in the Kremlin, Tinkov
was sanctioned by the UK after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Britain has since reversed some of the travel restrictions imposed against Tinkov, Vedomosti reports. It is unclear if the partial overturning of the sanctions against Tinkov was the result of an appeal.
“They must have thought ‘Look, here’s the main owner of a bank which pays lots of taxes to Putin’s regime’... But I’m sure they’ll work it out, because unlike us the English are decent people. Maybe it will take a year, two, even three, but they’ll take me off the list in the end. Because I don’t deserve to be on it. I’ve never collaborated,” Tinkov told journalist Yuri Dud.
“They put me on the list by accident, they made a mistake. But they made that mistake in the face of the enormous crime committed by the Russian government in starting this war. They’re simply shocked,” he added.
Other individuals from successful, modern Russian companies have also been sanctioned. They too tend to be innovators and career executives – the beneficiaries not of state-mandated corruption in the 90s, but of successful economic reform and liberalisation in the 2000s.
Dmitry Konov, former chairman of the management board of plastics manufacturer SIBUR, was recently added to the EU’s list of sanctions. Konov, too, falls into the category of non- oligarchs who appear to have been sanctioned simply because they are a big figure in the world of Russian business.
“A bunch of Russian businessmen who I don’t want to name have been fully sanctioned, although they’ve never even given a single interview. I’m not talking about the likes of Abramovich, but some people who are entirely uninvolved in politics. They’re looking at some other criteria, maybe the Forbes list,” Tinkov said.
In addition to export bans, asset freezes and limiting Russia's access to financial markets, corporate self-sanctioning has seen western giants pull out of Russia. Other sanctions target Russian individuals rather than its economy. Image: bne IntelliNews.
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