6 2GM Wednesday February 23 2022 | the times
News
Vladimir Putin’s cronies who were hit
by sanctions yesterday all have ties with
Britain, The Times can reveal.
Relatives of the three Russian busi-
nessmen, Gennady Timchenko, Boris
Rotenberg and Igor Rotenberg, were
educated in England and some of their
children have British citizenship.
Two of the three “high net wealth” in-
dividuals have a history of offloading
shares and businesses onto their child-
ren and business partners, seemingly in
an effort to avoid US and EU sanctions.
Timchenko, one of Russia’s richest
men, with an estimated wealth of
£18 billion, was sanctioned yesterday
because of his involvement with Bank
Rossiya, described by the US Treasury
as “the personal bank for senior offi-
cials of the Russian Federation”.
Timchenko and Putin have been
friends since at least the early 1990s
when the former was an oil trader in St
Petersburg and the latter a rising politi-
cian. Putin, then head of the city’s for-
eign relations committee, granted Tim-
chenko an export licence and the oil
man went on to co-found Gunvor, a
trading house for Russian oil exports.
According to Catherine Belton’s book
Putin’s People, the pair knew each other
in the 1980s when Timchenko allegedly
studied with Putin at the KGB’s Red
Banner Institute. Timchenko has dis-
missed this account as a “fairytale”.
By 2007 about 30 per cent of Russian
oil exports went through Gunvor. In
2014, after Russia’s annexation of
Crimea, the Obama administration im-
posed sanctions on Timchenko, saying
that “Putin has investments in Gunvor
and may have access to Gunvor funds”.
Timchenko told a Russian news
agency after the sanctions: “You have to
pay for everything in your life, even for
your friendship with the president.”
Natalia, 43, the elder of his daughters,
studied at Oxford and was once married
to a Briton. Company records show that
she obtained citizenship and once lived
in South Kensington. The flat she gave
as her address is owned by a company
registered in the British Virgin Islands.
It is unclear who owns the company.
Timchenko sold his shares in a Lux-
embourg company, Sogeco Participa-
tions, to Natalia when he was hit by
sanctions in 2014. The company owned
the luxury hotel Le Club de Cavaliere in
the south of France, of which Tim-
chenko’s wife, Elena, was a manager.
The younger daughter, Xenia, 37,
graduated from Edinburgh University
in 2009. A year later she married Gleb
Frank, son of Putin’s former transport
minister Sergey. Timchenko trans-
ferred his shares in the insurance firm
Sogaz to Xenia in 2014, the Russian
newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported.
That year he sold a 17 per cent stake in
the petrochemical company Sibur to
Kirill Shamalov, then the husband of
Putin’s daughter Katerina.
Timchenko shares a number of busi-
nesses with the Rotenberg family, some
of whom were also targeted by British
sanctions yesterday. Boris Rotenberg
and his brother Arkady are childhood
friends of Putin. The trio attended judo
training and are known to still spar.
Boris, 65, is a major shareholder of
SMP Bank, which he founded in 2001
with Arkady, 70. The same year they be-
came partners in Gazprom, the state-
owned oil company. The pair and the
bank were hit by US sanctions in 2014.
Boris’s son, Roman, studied at the
European Business School London
before acquiring British citizenship in- He has not been hit by sanctions.
There is no allegation of wrongdoing.
Roman, 40, reportedly owns a
£3.3 million townhouse in Belgravia
through a firm based in Cyprus. He be-
came head coach of the SKA St Peters-
burg Hockey Club last month despite
never playing or managing profession-
ally. Timchenko is president of the
team, ultimately owned by Gazprom.
In 2014 Roman acquired businesses
previously owned by his father and un-
cle. These include companies in Fin-
land subject to US sanctions in 2015.
Igor, 47, Arkady’s son and Boris’s
nephew, is the chairman of the board of
directors of National Telematic Sys-
tems. Issuing the sanctions, the British
government said the company was
“conducting business in the transport
sector, which is of strategic significance
to the government of Russia”.
Ukraine is closer to home than you
think, Daniel Finkelstein, page 25.
Putin’s aim is to prove the West cannot
win, Roger Boyes, page 26
West must stand up, letters, page 28
Sanctions are woefully inadequate,
leading article, page 29
Quentin Letts
A hush... then MPs
catch the scent of fox
A
fter the prime minister’s
statement on Ukraine it
was evident this would
not be a good time to
put Vladimir Putin up
for the Athenaeum. The Russian
president was no longer given the
honorific of “Mr”, he was now
plain “Putin”, which by
parliamentary etiquette means
you have officially become a
wrong ’un, to be filed under D fordespot. Saddam. Gaddafi. Putin.
Boris Johnson said MPs would
“struggle to contemplate how in the
year 2022 a national leader might
calmly and deliberately plot the
destruction of a peaceful
neighbour”. Even the Scots Nats,
who daily plot the bedevilment of
England, nodded to Johnson’s words.
Marshal Sturgeon may want to have
words with them.
As Johnson stepped to the
dispatch box the house hushed
utterly. There is a special stillness it
retains for moments of national
jeopardy and this was one of them.
A European country of 44 million
souls could soon “become the target
of a full-scale war of aggression,Political Sketch
The decision by the UK to freeze the
assets of five relatively small Russian
banks is expected to have only a modest
impact on Moscow. Four of the lenders
have previously been sanctioned by
the United States, meaning that they
have already been frozen out of the
American financial system.
bank rossiya
This lender is well known for its close
association with the Russian govern-
ment. When the group was hit with
sanctions by Washington in 2014, the
US Treasury described it as “the per-
sonal bank for senior officials of the
Russian Federation”.
The UK said yesterday that Rossiya
was “privately owned by elite Russian
billionaires with direct links to Putin”
and counts Gennady Timchenko —
who has also been sanctioned — as a
big shareholder.
It has been targeted by Britain
because of its extensive operations in
Crimea and Sevastopol since the
Russian annexation in 2014. These
Bank sanctions unlikely to hit hard
have included opening branches,
providing travel cards, and selling
insurance, all of which have supported
Russian moves to integrate the areas,
the UK said. It also has stakes in Russia’s
National Media Group, “which con-
trols television stations which actively
support the Russian government’s
policies of destabilisation in Ukraine”.black sea bank for
development and
reconstruction
This Crimea-focused lender was
created immediately after the 2014
annexation and “has capitalised on the
sector’s fear of western sanctions and
the lack of banks in Crimea”, the UK
said. The group is a minnow.
According to the Bank.ru website, it
is Russia’s 197th biggest bank by assets.promsvyazbank
This state-owned group is the only
bank sanctioned by Britain that has not
previously been targeted by the US. It is
also the biggest lender on the UK’s list,
having been classed as systemically
important by Russia’s central bank. Itwas nationalised in 2017 and is focused
on providing financing to the defence
industry. Britain said Promsvyazbank
was “a pivotal bank for the Russian mili-
tary-industrial complex,” and this in-
cluded “servicing nearly 70 per cent of
the state contracts signed by the defence
ministry as a government customer”.
The US also sanctioned it yesterday.is bank
Another little-known lender that has
been targeted by Britain because of its
interests in the Crimean peninsula. The
UK said that its “business development
is directly tied to the annexation of
Crimea” and it had been aiding the
integration of the area into Russia by
selling financial services.genbank
This small bank also has an extensive
business in occupied Crimea. “By
providing banking and other financial
services in the annexed territory of
Crimea it contributes to undermining
or threatening the territorial integrity,
sovereignty and independence of
Ukraine,” the UK said.Ben Martin Banking Editor
Gennady Timchenko with President Putin at an ice hockey match. The RussianNews Ukraine crisis
Britain targets three billionaires
Tom Ball, Emanuele Midolo
Q&A
What sanctions were
announced yesterday?
Five Russian banks —
Rossiya, IS Bank,
Promsvyazbank,
Genbank and the Black
Sea Bank — will have
assets in the UK frozen
and be unable to trade
in the UK. Three
oligarchs will also be
sanctioned: Gennady
Timchenko, a billionaire
who controls the Volga
Group; Boris Rotenberg,
a co-owner of SMP
Bank; and his nephew,
Igor Rotenberg.
Duma members who
voted to recognise the
independence of
Donetsk and Luhansk
will be sanctioned.
People and businesses
in the UK will not beable to deal with the
territories. Russia will
be prevented from
issuing sovereign debt
on UK markets.How significant are
these sanctions?
Boris Johnson called
them “very tough” but
only the “first tranche”
of what the government
was prepared to do.
Sir Keir Starmer, the
Labour leader, said he
understood holding
back sanctions to deter
a full invasion, but said
that “a threshold has
already been breached”.What have European
countries done?
The German chancellor,
Olaf Scholz, said the
Nord Stream 2 gas
pipeline from Russia
would not be certified.
The EU will impose
sanctions to “target theability of the Russian
state and government
to access the EU’s
capital and financial
markets and services”.
Politicians, military
figures and spreaders of
disinformation will be
blacklisted for asset
freezes and visa bans.Does Britain already
have sanctions?
Yes. After Putin invaded
Crimea the EU, of which
Britain was then a
member, agreed
sanctions against
people and companies
who “undermined
Ukraine’s territorial
integrity, sovereignty
and independence”.How will Russia react?
It could cut supplies of
natural gas, but income
from oil and gas exports
is half of its federal
budget revenues.