Russia’s 20 Biggest Billionaires Keep Riches From Putin

Alisher Usmanov, Russia’s richest person, moved control of most of his $20 billion fortune last year to a holding company based in the British Virgin Islands, a collection of more than 60 isles 5,600 miles away from Moscow.

The company, USM Holdings, controls the billionaire’s most valuable asset, Metalloinvest Holding Co., Russia’s largest iron ore producer, through two Cyprus-based subsidiaries, USM Steel & Mining Group

“Offshores are the main tool for Russian businessmen to protect their assets from state authorities, rivals and all kinds of raiders,” Valery Tutykhin, an attorney with John Tiner & Partners, a Geneva-based law firm that specializes in wealth management, said in a phone interview.
All of Russia’s 20 richest people — who have a combined net worth of more than $227 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — control a portion of their fortune through holding companies registered outside of their home country.
The billionaires, most of whom built their fortunes during the violent and unpredictable post-communist economic environment, use the entities to manage, preserve and conceal their wealth — a tactic that has drawn the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Vekselberg, Deripaska
Viktor Vekselberg, 56, holds the majority of his $14.8 billion fortune through Bahamas-based Renova Holdings. Among the company’s assets is a 7 percent stake in United Co. Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum producer.
Vladimir Lisin, 56, controls his 85 percent stake in publicly traded OAO Novolipetsk Steel, Russia’s most valuable steelmaker, through a Cyprus-based holding company, Fletcher Group Holdings Ltd. Mikhail Fridman, 49, controls his banking, retail and telecommunications assets through Moscow-based Alfa Group, which is owned by Gibraltar-based CTF Holdings.
Putin has vowed to bring some of the money home. Last year, he took control of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, an executive body aimed at combating money laundering. The State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, introduced a series of amendments to existing laws, tightening control over companies’ financial transactions.
During his campaign for a third term last year, Putin, 60, said that he was considering a one-time tax on entrepreneurs who acquired state assets at “unfair” prices in the 1990s.
‘Score-Settling’
In a speech to the nation in December, Putin criticized the country’s legal system and the elements that led to accusations of wrongdoing, vowing to eliminate the factors that have turned “economic disputes into score-settling.”
Putin said in a televised news conference the following week that he “hoped” the billionaires who sold their 50 percent stake in TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil company, for $28 billion, would reinvest the proceeds in their home country.
“Russia was and always will be the basic platform for investment,” the billionaires — Vekselberg, Fridman, Len Blavatnik and German Khan — said in a joint statement released six days after Putin’s comments. A fifth partner, Alexey Kuzmichev, wasn’t part of the announcement. “In Russia, in particular, they plan to invest most of the proceeds from selling their shares in TNK-BP.”
So far, there’s been little money flowing back to Russia. Fridman and his partners at Alfa Group announced on March 18 that they would create a global investment company to pursue energy and telecommunications assets. Two weeks later, through Altimo, a unit of Alfa based in the British Virgin Islands, Fridman offered to buy out minority investors in Cairo-based Orascom Telecom Holding SAE in a deal for as much as $1.8 billion.
‘Enhance Efficiency’
Usmanov combined control of his assets into USM in the British Virgin Islands in December.
“The formation of a single holding company enables us to optimize business processes, enhance the efficiency of managing subsidiary companies, and provide more opportunities to access international capital markets,” he said by e-mail in February.
It also allows the billionaire and his partners, Ardavan Farhad Moshiri and Andrey Skoch, to pay less tax and avoid the Russian legal system.
“The Russia-Cyprus-BVI structure is the most attractive form of holding company,” Andrey Goltsblat, managing partner of Moscow-based Goltsblat BLP, the Russian practice of the international law firm Berwin Leighton Paisne, said by phone.
Russian billionaires create companies in the British Virgin Islands because they find its legal system, which is based on British law, more attractive than their own, according to Steven Philippsohn, a senior partner at PCB Litigation, a London-based firm that helps banks track offshore assets held by Russians.
Tax Avoidance
Cyprus-based entities allow them to benefit from lower tax rates available under the double-tax avoidance treaty signed by the Mediterranean island nation and Russia in 1998. Cyprus also caps taxation of dividends paid from Russia at 5 percent and allows tax-free cash transfers to the British Virgin Islands, according to Artem Toropov, a senior associate at Goltsblat.
Katja Ulanova, a spokeswoman for Usmanov at RLM Finsbury in London, confirmed the billionaire’s holding structures and declined to comment further.
The transfer of wealth from the Russian state to individuals began when President Boris Yeltsin kick-started Russia’s privatization era, declaring in an April 1992 speech a future with “millions of owners, not hundreds of millionaires,” according to “The Oligarchs,” a book by journalist David Hoffman published in 2003.
Public Assassinations
Yeltsin’s moves led to the so-called loans-for-shares program, which allowed a small number of private banks and the entrepreneurs who led them to make loans to the Russian government in exchange for liens on state assets. When the government defaulted, those entrepreneurs took control of large swaths of the country’s oil, aluminum, precious-metal and mining assets. They soon moved those assets offshore.
Oleg Deripaska, Russia’s 15th-richest man, described Russia’s economic environment at the time as one of beatings, boardroom intimidations and public assassinations, according to his written defense in a 2012 London lawsuit. The suit was brought by exiled Russian businessman Michael Cherney, who claimed he was owed money for his stake in United Co. Rusal. Deripaska, 45, called him a mobster who extorted money in return for protection.
In 1994, Deripaska established his DKK foundation in Liechtenstein. He was later persuaded by Cherney to use Syndikus Treunhand Anstalt, a Vaduz, Liechtenstein-based nominee trust company, to hold his aluminum assets, according to the suit.
‘Clear Shift’
Syndikus provided credit cards to government and business contacts in Russia, including the country’s deputy minister of industry, the chairman of the Russian Federation on Metallurgy, directors of important aluminum plants and their wives, and Boris Yeltsin’s tennis coach, according to the suit.
Putin’s arrival as a political power in 1999 marked a “clear shift of the political and legal landscape,” Deripaska wrote in his defense, and allowed the billionaire to free himself from the grip of organized crime.
Deripaska and Cherney met on March 10, 2001, at the Lanesborough Hotel in London. At the meeting, the billionaire agreed to pay $250 million that he says was his final protection payment, according to his defense, denying Cherney ownership claims in part because Liechtenstein law only enforces agreements “which are clear and free from uncertainty.”
Deripaska settled his suit with Cherney last September, agreeing to pay him $200 million over six years, according to Russian newspaper Vedomosti. Vera Kurochkina, his spokeswoman at Rusal, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Dmitry Radyshevsky, Cherney’s spokesman in Israel, said he declined to comment.
Gibraltar, Cyprus
Roman Abramovich, Russia’s eighth-richest man, used a maze of offshore entities to build and control his $12.9 billion commodities fortune. According to a lawsuit brought against him in London by Boris Berezovsky, Abramovich shuffled assets, including stakes in oil, aluminum, automobile manufacturing and airlines, between holding companies in Gibraltar, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands.