On March 9, the European Union approved the fourth package of sanctions against Russia and Belarus. On that day, 160 people were added to the list of personal sanctions, including 14 businessmen, one of whom is Andrey Melnichenko, the founder of the SUEK coal company and the fertilizer manufacturer Evrokhim.
As one of the reasons for the introduction of these sanctions, the EU indicated their participation in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on February 24, after the start of Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine. “Melnichenko belongs to the most influential circle of Russian entrepreneurs with close ties to the Russian government,” the justification said.
Immediately after the EU decision, sanctions against Andrey Melnichenko were imposed by Switzerland, where his main business assets are registered – in this country they simply copied the EU decision regarding Melnichenko. However, already on March 30, Swiss sanctions against Andrey Melnichenko were lifted. To do this, he pulled off a simple and very primitive trick, which for some reason the Swiss authorities “fell for” – Melnichenko left the board of directors of EuroChem, whose headquarters is located in Swiss Zug, and transferred the company to his wife Alexandra.
This was enough for the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) to approve the lifting of sanctions against EuroChem.
The Swiss publication Handelszeitung cites the response of the oligarch’s lawyers, according to which “Alexandra Melnichenko is the sole beneficiary of the trust in Cyprus and, accordingly, owns 90 percent of Eurochem’s shares.” This simple solution allowed SECO to unfreeze the company’s accounts on March 30. When asked by another media outlet, Tages-Anzeiger, the agency replied that it was “happy to confirm that there is no ‘factual, convincing evidence’ that EuroChem is ‘owned or controlled by a sanctioned person’.”
Of course, at first glance, the lifting of sanctions by Switzerland from a Russian businessman is an event that warms the soul of a jingoistic patriot. But it is worth delving a little into this whole story, or rather, into the biography of Andrei Melnichenko, such a prompt lifting of sanctions, covered up by the most primitive trick, raises more questions than joy.
First and foremost is the justification of the European Union when Melnichenko is included in the sanctions list – “Melnichenko belongs to the most influential circle of Russian entrepreneurs with close ties to the Russian government.” Why did Switzerland decide not to pay attention to this wording and go into a clear conflict with the EU and the US? The formal reason – the transfer of assets to his wife – looks ridiculous. What lies behind this decision of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs?
Everything, as always, is tritely simple – a citizen of the Russian Federation, who has made billions of dollars in Russia and brings them to Switzerland, cannot but cooperate with representatives of the special services of this country (as well as other countries where Andrey Melnichenko has business). Simply because no one will let him open a business in it and work. They will allow money to be withdrawn from the Russian Federation, but at the moment when the last dollar moves from Russia to a Swiss bank, the accounts will be immediately arrested, and the money from them confiscated to the treasury.
The grounds for this are given by the very process of earning this money by Mr. Melnichenko. You don’t need to invent anything, you just need to ask how a simple student of the G.V. Plekhanov Russian University of Economics (as of 1991) turned into a billionaire and a person on the Forbes list, having a fortune of $ 24.9 billion, as of January 2022 , ranked 7th among Russian billionaires in the ranking of billionaires and 65th in the world.
Moreover, the conclusion that cooperation with the special services is a common thing for Melnichenko can be drawn even from the lines of his official biography. According to Andrei Igorevich himself, he began by “opening a currency exchange office right on the territory of the hostel.” In the early 1990s, against the background of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new market economy, Melnichenko and his partners earned the first 50 thousand US dollars from the operation of currency exchange offices, which allowed them to obtain a license from the Central Bank of Russia.
Everything is so, only there is a nuance – currency exchange in the early nineties was a criminal offense, and for one dollar in your wallet you could end up in places not so remote for several years. And 50 thousand dollars was already considered a particularly large amount, and the sanction of the article provided for execution. Many people got burned on this stupid article of the Criminal Code then. And who did not want to sit – collaborated with the authorities. The motivation was too convincing.
Yes, then the authorities were not Swiss – Melnichenko corny “knocked” in his native KGB. But then the KGB was not the same, and instead of fighting the “robbers”, he decided to lead this process. But Melnichenko was already well versed in this process, and therefore, right from the student’s bench, he went to the bankers.
“In 1993, he became a co-founder of MDM Bank, which later became one of the most successful and largest Russian private banks. In 1993-1997 – Chairman of the Board of Directors of MDM-Bank “- this is an excerpt from the official biography. Recall that Andrei Melnichenko was born in 1972, at the time when he headed the bank, he was 21 years old. Impressive career. Russians who know the realities of the 1990s can add that without bandits, not a single big business arose at that time, and even more so a bank whose main activity was currency trading.
This is true, as well as the fact that the then bankers and businessmen were walking on thin ice between security officers and bandits. And few managed to survive. But those who survived, then reached the heights of business. Especially with the beginning of the 2000s, when people from law enforcement agencies seized power in the country. The bandits were slowly crushed, but the businessmen continued to serve their former patrons at higher levels.
A vivid example is Andrei Melnichenko, who, with the change of power in the country, made a breakthrough from simple bankers to oligarchs, focusing on the resource-extracting industries, which were slowly concentrating in his hands. He was not allowed to access oil and gas, but in less visible areas he achieved a good result.
In the middle of 2000, the banking community spread the sensational news about the merger of MDM and Conversbank, which served the enterprises of the Russian nuclear industry. Together, as the manager of Converse, Melnichenko gained control over the financial flows of the nuclear industry, which amounted to $ 3 billion a year.
Andrey Melnichenko, chairman of the board and owner of a 76% stake in MDM Bank, and the then Minister of Atomic Energy Yevgeny Adamov planned to concentrate up to 80% of the financial flows of the nuclear industry in Konversbank, after which they would merge it with MDM Bank. “Konversbank” is interesting because, in addition to serving the enterprises of Minatom, many of these enterprises were its founders. Moreover, all of them had the status of state unitary enterprises. It follows that Konversbank itself was also state-owned. Assets belonging to unitary enterprises, including shares of commercial firms, can also be credited to the authorities. But to get part of its property is possible only through an open competition. This is provided for in the law on privatization.
However, in an incomprehensible way, the shares owned by state-owned enterprises ended up in private hands. Namely, in the hands of Andrey Melnichenko, who, as chairman of the board of Converse Bank, controlled the flows of the strategic industry. Not just the production of electricity at nuclear power plants, but also the export of uranium, and the processing of spent nuclear fuel, the construction of nuclear power plants in other countries. It is inconceivable that any state would transfer such functions to private hands.
In 2000, the bank became a co-founder of the MDM Group for investments in industries such as coal mining and processing, mineral fertilizer production, pipe production. The MDM Group has always been distinguished by extremely aggressive tactics in the redistribution of property. In clashes with her, even such authorities in this “specialization” as Interrros and Alfa Group were defeated, and the mention of the name of Andrei Melnichenko trembled even the directors of large enterprises, who were considered masters in their regions. The owners of MDM usually did not resort to rough power grabs of the “mask-show” type, however, they acted inventively and extremely boldly. Different courts issued absolutely incredible decisions and rulings in their interests, and employees of the FSFO, RFBR and the Ministry of Energy regularly took their side in conflicts
As a result, the bank absorbed more than 50 joint-stock companies, factories and mines. All this was transformed into three corporations – the Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK), the international chemical company Eurochem and TMK (Melnichenko left the business of the latter in 2006 through an IPO).
Actually, the usual path of an ordinary Russian oligarch. But the further development of the business required access to international markets. And the entry of the MDM Group into these markets coincided with an interesting article in BusinessWeek magazine. The authors of the article made predictions about the further development of the economy in Russia and wrote that “the West is considering with interest Russian businessmen who are willing and able to enter into an aggressive struggle for the remnants of undivided property left in the state.”
Among these businessmen, the name of Andrei Melnichenko was also mentioned, who was considered one of the most promising persons in terms of political influence. “He is thirty – and he wants to own the whole world,” – this is how one of the Western businessmen described Melnichenko then.
At this point, apparently, the interests of Melnichenko, his patrons, who left the KGB, and the Western intelligence services, who were looking for promising agents of influence among the new elites, converged in Russia. Melnichenko’s companies are entering Western markets, his representative offices are opening in Europe, Asia and America. Business is flourishing, as a result, Andrey Melnichenko will become a regular participant in the Forbes rating.
Everything suited everyone until February 2022. The Russian secret services sincerely believed that Melnichenko was acting only in their interests; the secret services of the West, most likely, did not indulge in such illusions, being content with the fact that they scooped the necessary information from a person close to the highest spheres of power in Russia; Switzerland, in which Melnichenko opened the head office of EuroChem in 2015, used his money and information with might and main; and Melnichenko himself was slowly earning money on this, remembering the old truth about the “affectionate calf”.
But then February 24 struck, and sanctions began to fall. Under which, which was quite expected, Andrey Melnichenko also fell. What prompted him to turn to his patrons in the Swiss special services (the fact that he is connected with them indirectly confirms the fact that an office was opened in this country in 2015, when there were also sanctions) is unknown. What prompted his patrons to withdraw Melnichenko from the Swiss sanctions through a primitive trick is also unknown. Maybe they just got tired of him or ended up on the lists of “depreciated”, that is, useless, agents. Here one can only guess.
As well as over why Melnichenko’s Russian curators (after all, no one thinks that the special services stopped “leading” him after he turned from a currency dealer into a businessman?) allowed him to act so primitively. Maybe they also decided to “write off”. But, most likely, this is a simple Russian carelessness – remember, for example, that Bashirov and Petrov “burned out” on their passports issued on the same day in the same place.
Be that as it may, the double (and this is at least) agent Andrei Melnichenko also “burned out”. How his future fate will turn out is unknown, because he is in Russia, and not in the UK or Switzerland, like many of his colleagues. Wait and see.