Russian Steel Oligarch and Putin Ally Is Secretly Profiting from Trump's Pipelines

25.3.17

Russian Steel Oligarch and Putin Ally Is Secretly Profiting from Trump's Pipelines: [alternativemediasyndicate.com] After helping launch Putin’s presidency in Russia, Abramovich also was instrumental in the vetting and picking of Putin’s cabinet, according to Midgley and Hutchins in their book. They also reveal that Abramovich was instrumental in the creation of Putin’s political party, Unity.
Abramovich bought a 41 percent stake in the steel producer Evraz in 2006. Prior to that, he owned a 72 percent stake in the Russian state-owned oil company Sibneft, which was eventually purchased for $13 billion by the state-owned company Gazprom and became known as Gazprom Neft.

Before this, however, Sibneft merged in 2003 with the company Yukos, then owned by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in an attempt to create what was envisioned as a competitor to the likes of ExxonMobil. Had it materialized, the resulting company, called Yukos-Sibneft, would have been at that point the fourth largest oil producer in the world.

Under pressure from Putin, however, and with what was reported as the helping hand of Abramovich, the deal was called off, and Khodorkovsky ended up arrested and then jailed for eight years for alleged tax evasion and fraud. Abramovich’s personal wealth doubled as a result of the later Sibneft-Gazprom merger.

The Telegraph (UK) reported that Abramovich met with Putin before the Yukos-Sibneft deal was tossed to the curb.

“The revelation of the meeting will fuel suggestions that the Kremlin is closely involved with the fate of the two companies,” The Telegraph wrote at the time. “Many industry commentators saw [the] decision to halt the merger as a government-backed effort to further weaken Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former chief executive of Yukos and its largest shareholder.”