Oleg Deripaska, once named as Russia’s richest man, is an energy and aluminium tycoon who is well known for his connections with prominent British politicians.
The 54-year-old billionaire was one of seven oligarchs added to the sanctions list on Thursday because of his “pro-Kremlin” stance and associations with the Government of Russia and Vladimir Putin.
His main London base is a mansion on Belgrave Square, one of the capital’s most exclusive addresses, although he is said to rarely visit. The property, was bought in for £25 million in 2003, through a British Virgin Islands holding company, and is now likely to be worth closer to £100 million.
In 2001 his Cypriot registered company Edenfield Investments bought the Grade II listed Art Deco Hamstone House on the St George’s Hill estate in Weybridge, Surrey, which is currently on the market.
Deripaska’s $65 million yacht Clio is one of several vessels owned by oligarchs now anchored in the Maldives, which does not have an extradition treaty with the US.
Deripaska, who is worth around £3 billion and has been described as one of Putin’s favourite industrialists, has stakes in En+ Group, a major mining and energy company which owns UC Rusal, once the world’s biggest aluminium producer and still the number two player.
Earlier this week the Conservative peer Greg Barker quit as chairman of En+ after earning millions of pounds in salary and bonuses, including more than £4 million in 2019 alone.
The former energy minister in David Cameron’s government oversaw a plan to help the firm respond to US government sanctions against the company and Deripaska in 2018 when FBI agents raided a historic New York townhouse in Greenwich Village, and a Washington D.C. mansion connected to the oligarch.
The net had already been closing in on Deripaska in the UK as last week the National Crime Agency obtained freezing orders against bank accounts held by a British businessman containing money it believed is linked to the Russian oligarch.
The agency said it had secured two account freezing orders in respect of five bank accounts held by Graham Bonham-Carter, a cousin of the actor Helena Bonham Carter.
Deripaska is probably best known in the UK for a political furore in 2008 triggered by meetings with former Labour minister Peter Mandelson and then future Tory chancellor George Osborne aboard his £80 million yacht off the Greek island of Corfu.
Deripaska, who is a grandson by marriage to the former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin, has denied the claims about him as “a lie” adding: “The idea that I am some kind of ‘’Kremlin operative’’... is clearly idiotic nonsense.”
The former business partner of fellow sanctioned oligarch Roman Abramovich was alleged to have ties to organised crime gangs during the “Aluminium Wars” that followed the collapse of the former Soviet Union in a £650 million legal battle at the High Court in 2012.
He denied the allegations and claimed that he was the victim of an ‘old-fashioned protection racket’ run by the Mafia-style gangs.
