tyb
>DJT has announced the COG:
co-founder ofAlfabank
Ukraine Native
PROFILE
Mikhail Fridman
$13.4B
$396M (2.86%)
Real Time Net Worth
as of 12/3/22
#134 in the world today
Photo by Pavel Golovkin/AP
About Mikhail Fridman
Mikhail Fridman, cofounder of Alfa Bank, Russia's largest non-state bank, was hit with sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Soon after, Fridman (who also has Israeli citizenship) stepped down from his Luxembourg holding company, LetterOne, and reduced his shareholding.
Fridman's properties in London, including the $100 million Victorian-era Athlone House estate where he mostly lived, have been frozen by the U.K.
A Ukraine native, Fridman and his college buddies German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev started commodities trader Alfa-Eco in 1989.
Thanks to Kremlin connections (one of his employees who later served as Putin's chief political advisor) he acquired additional assets in telecom, banking and oil.
In 2013 he made $5.1 billion in cash when the trio and partners sold stakes in oil giant TNK-BP for $14 billion.
https://www.forbes.com/profile/mikhail-fridman/?sh=756eb154266e
Two Russian oligarchs call for an end to Putin’s war
By Charles Riley, CNN Business
Updated 6:50 AM EST, Tue March 1, 2022
London CNN Business —
Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska have broken ranks with the Kremlin and called for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Fridman, who was born in western Ukraine, wrote in a letter to staff that he wanted the “bloodshed to end.”
“My parents are Ukrainian citizens and live in Lviv, my favorite city.But I have also spent much of my life as a citizen of Russia, building and growing businesses. I am deeply attached to Ukrainian and Russian peoples and see the current conflict as a tragedy for them both,” wrote Fridman.
“This crisis will cost lives and damage two nations who have been brothers for hundreds of years. While a solution seems frighteningly far off, I can only join those whose fervent desire is for the bloodshed to end,” he added in the letter, which was provided by his office. The Financial Times was first to report the letter.
Fridman is chairman of Alfa Group, a private conglomerate operating primarily in Russia and former Soviet states that spans banking, insurance, retail and mineral water production. Fridman has a net worth of $11.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.
The billionaire is also chairman of Alfa Bank, Russia’s fourth biggest financial services firm and its largest private bank. Alfa Bank was hit last week by sanctions that will prevent it from raising money through the US market.
Fridman resigned Tuesday from the board of Veon, (VEON) a mobile network provider based in Amsterdam that generates half its revenue in Russia.
>Fridman (who also has Israeli citizenship)
Charity Commission launches inquiry into Russian-run Jewish foundation
Government sanctioned three of the four trustees of Genesis Philanthropy Group earlier this week
Simon Rocker
BY Simon Rocker
March 18, 2022 15:12
The Charity Commission has launched a statutory inquiry into a major foundation supporting Jewish causes, theGenesis Philanthropy Group,after three of its four founding trustees were sanctioned earlier in the week in the latest government crackdown on Russian oligarchs.
The regulator has frozen the bank account of the group after Petr Aven,Mikhail Fridmanand German Khan, who have an estimated wealth of ÂŁ24 billion between them, were among those named on the latest government list.
The three men have resigned as trustees of the group, which cannot move or access funds without the commission’s permission.
Individuals subject to financial sanctions cannot discharge their duties as trustees, according to the charity regulator.
The commission said the inquiry would examine whether the charity “can continue to operate and is viable, and whether the trustees have discharged their legal duties and responsibilities in their management and administration of the charity”.
GPG was registered as a UK charity in 2018. It also has an Israeli non-profit arm.
According to its latest UK accounts, for the year ending June 2020, it spent over ÂŁ1 million helping Jewish organisations across the world with a grant of over ÂŁ250,000 to JW3. Its UK beneficiaries include PJ Library and the Moishe House among others.
A message sent out to supporters by GPG's chairman Gennady Gazin and chief executive Marina Yudborovsky said that the three men had resigned from its board "in order to assure the ability of GPG to stay true to its mission and build on the foundation we have created over the past 15 years".
They said, "Like you, all of us at GPG are horrified by the war in Ukraine and dismayed by the needless loss of life and destruction the continued fighting is inflicting on the region."
The group had recently announced a round of grants to support humanitarian needs in Ukraine and had the necessary financial resources to ensure that the resignation of the three men would not affect commitments made.
According to the Foreign Office, Mr Fridman, the founder of Alfa Bank and a shareholder in investment company LetterOne, has an estimated net worth of ÂŁ11.9 billion.
Mr Aven, who was president of Alfa Bank and co-founder of LetterOne, is worth ÂŁ4 billion, while Mr Khan was described as a business parter of the other two in both enterprises with a net worth of ÂŁ7.8 billion.
The GPG’s accounts record that it received more than £840,000 during that year from LetterOne.
Earlier this month Lord Davies, chairman of LetterOne, was quoted in The Guardian as saying that Mr Aven and Mr Fridman had “ceased to have any involvement” in the company two weeks ago, after they were sanctioned by the EU.
In a statement reported by Reuters, the two men said they would “contest the spurious and unfounded basis” for the imposition of the EU measures.
Mr Fridman called the situation in Ukraine a tragedy and said “the war should be stopped”.
The latest batch of individuals targeted for UK sanctions also included Viktor Vekselberg, chairman of Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Centre for Tolerance.
He is owner of the energy and aluminium conglomerate, the Renova Group, and estimated by the Foreign Office to be worth ÂŁ6.8 billion.
“We are going further and faster than ever in hitting those closest to Putin,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said.