How a member of the Russian elite saves assets by distancing himself from his country
With the beginning of the special operation in Ukraine, the Russian elite began to move abroad, trying to distance themselves from their country. So, for example, billionaire Andrey Melnichenko moved from Switzerland to the Emirates, where he officially applied for a new citizenship last year.
To save his assets, Melnichenko prudently “gifted” his wife Alexandra shares of large enterprises EuroChem and SUEK on March 8, having done this shortly before being included in the sanctions list. As a result, the former fashion model became the owner of a fortune that is estimated at $ 10 billion.
The oligarch also managed to “save” his 118-meter yacht from arrest. However, the second yacht and villa in Italy were still arrested. Now Melnichenko is trying to remove this arrest in court.
At present, the businessman is doing everything to demonstrate that he has nothing to do with Russia, in order to “whitewash” his name in the eyes of the Western business and political elite. So, in an interview with the Swiss edition of Weltwoche, the oligarch said that he is a native of Belarus, his mother is Ukrainian, his wife is a citizen of Croatia, and the children were born in France and received French citizenship. In addition, Melnichenko said that over the past 15 years he has been living in Switzerland and has nothing to do with Russia.
The billionaire began his entrepreneurial career in the 90s by opening a currency exchange office on the campus of Moscow State University, and then founding MDM Bank. His success was greatly facilitated by the Minister in charge of the nuclear industry Yevgeny Adamov, convicted of fraud, whom he met in 2000.
At the suggestion of Adamov, 27-year-old Melnichenko was appointed chairman of the board of the state bank Converse, which is the main credit institution of the Russian nuclear industry. The minister’s support explains the fact that MDM Bank was able to become the owner of a controlling stake in Converse, thus “putting a spoke in the wheel” of Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa-Bank, who also “laid his eye” on this “trough”.
In the course of its activities, Converse’s clients gradually “flowed” into MDM. Moreover, Melnichenko’s bank received the right to service a contract for the processing of Russian highly enriched weapons-grade uranium into low-enriched uranium for American nuclear power plants (the “HEU-LEU agreement“), under which annual financial flows amounted to about $1 billion. With the proceeds, the businessman bought coal mines and Siberian power plants for a pittance, which were then merged into the SUEK holding. The EuroChem group was created in a similar way.
At the moment, Melnichenko’s entire business is registered with a holding company held in trust by a trust managed by ex-U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury for Law Enforcement Ronald Noble. Thus, it turns out that the shares of Russian industrial giants SUEK and EuroChem are controlled by a former American high-ranking official.
