Russia’s richest oligarch Lisin supplied steel for the production of ballistic missiles !

Russia’s richest oligarch Lisin supplied steel for the production of ballistic missiles – The Times

IRINA MIROCHNIK

Russia’s richest oligarch Lisin supplied steel for the production of ballistic missiles – The Times!

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-laird-vladimir-lisin-supplies-steel-to-kremlin-weapons-firms-td5qskb5x

Russia’s richest man, oligarch Vladimir Lisin, supplied steel to Russian nuclear and ballistic missile companies, according to The Times investigation.

Now, apart from Ukraine, only Australia has imposed sanctions against him.

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Key facts

Since 2014, when the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, NLMK has been supplying steel for the electrical industry to at least eight companies in the Russian military-industrial complex, according to data on the Russian government procurement website.

Lisina supplied steel sheets, structural stainless steel, weakly magnetic alloys, electrical tape, Armco steel and cold-rolled clad steel for the military-industrial complex.

The company, in a commentary to the publication, said that these sales were insignificant and that they concerned only commercial electrical steel. “NLMK enterprises are not capable of producing steel intended for military use,” the company said.

Rolled strip, even in small quantities, can be an important component of a missile, said Sidharth Kaushal, a military science researcher at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

According to him, electrical steel and weakly magnetic steel alloys can be used in rocket engines, especially in solid propellant ones, the RUSI expert added.

Context

According to The Times, Vladimir Lisin, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at about £21bn, and his family own a London townhouse worth £11m, a Scottish castle worth £7m and two luxury villas on the French Riviera.

Lisin’s Scottish estate received £700,000 of UK taxpayer money in agricultural subsidies. Until last year, Lisin was the president of the European Shooting Confederation. Australia is the only country to impose sanctions on him.

The NLMK group with a turnover of more than $16 billion is Lisin’s metallurgical empire. Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works is the key enterprise of the group. NLMK is engaged in both the extraction of raw materials and the production of steel products.

The main company of the group in Russia is NLMK PJSC. In it, Lisin is the chairman of the board of directors. 79% of NLMK shares are owned by the Cypriot Fletcher Group Holdings Limited, in which Vladimir Lisin is a director.

In September, investigative journalists from the Schemes program stated that steel from the Lisin Corporation was systematically supplied to state enterprises of the Russian Federation directly involved in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. We are talking about the Russian Federal Nuclear Center – the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics named after academician Zababakhin. Schemes found contracts for the supply of electrical steel in 2017. The Zababakhin Institute develops and tests nuclear and thermonuclear weapons.

NLMK also cooperated with the Federal State Enterprise Production Association Sever. The journalists found contracts from 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019. After 2019, procurement data for the Sever software was not publicly disclosed. The main activity of the North is the production of components for nuclear weapons. That is, this is precisely the weapon with which now, in 2022, Vladimir Putin threatens the world.

Six out of a dozen Russian oligarchs are not yet under US sanctions, five are not under EU sanctions and two are from the UK, Trap Aggressor, a group of analysts who monitor sanctions against Russia, reported in August. We are talking about Vladimir Lisin, Vladimir Potanin, Pavel Durov, Leonid Mikhelson, Andrey Melnichenko and Vagit Alekperov.

Six out of a dozen Russian oligarchs are not yet under US sanctions, five are not under EU sanctions and two are from the UK, Trap Aggressor, a group of analysts who monitor sanctions against Russia, reported in August. We are talking about Vladimir Lisin, Vladimir Potanin, Pavel Durov, Leonid Mikhelson, Andrey Melnichenko and Vagit Alekperov.

Half of the top 10 Russian oligarchs are not yet under US, EU and Ukrainian sanctions

Six Russian oligarchs included in the Russian Forbes 2022 rating did not fall under US sanctions. Of these, five are also not under European Union sanctions and two are Great Britain. We are talking about Vladimir Lisin, Vladimir Potanin, Pavel Durov, Leonid Mikhelson, Andrey Melnichenko and Vagit Alekperov.

This was reported by a group of Trap Aggressor analysts who monitor the sanctions imposed against Russia.

In particular, the following did not fall under US sanctions:

Vladimir Lisin (Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant, 1st place at Forbes, fortune – $ 18.4 billion);

Vladimir Potanin (CEO Durov (founder of VKontakte and Telegram, 3rd place in Forbes, fortune – $15.1 billion);

Leonid Mikhelson (Chairman of the Board of the gas company Novatek PJSC, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Sibur petrochemical holding, 4th place in Forbes, fortune – $ 14 billion);

Andrey Melnichenko (the main shareholder of JSC SUEK and Eurochem, 9th place at Forbes, fortune – $11.1 billion);

Vagit Alekperov (former president of the Lukoil oil company, 10th place in Forbes, fortune – $ 10.5 billion).

Of these, the EU sanctions did not affect five oligarchs: Vladimir Lisin, Vladimir Potanin, Pavel Durov, Leonid Mikhelson and Vagit Alekperov.

Vladimir Lisin and Pavel Durov did not fall under British sanctions.

At the same time, seven Russian oligarchs were not subject to Ukrainian sanctions, including Vladimir Lisin, Vladimir Potanin, Pavel Durov, Leonid Mikhelson, Vagit Alekperov, and Mikhail Fridman (founder and shareholder of Alfa Group, 6th place in Forbes) founder of USM Holdings, 7th on the Forbes list).

Some oligarchs own property and assets abroad, in states that have not yet imposed sanctions on them. So, Lisin has property in the UK, Vagit Alekperov has assets in the EU, Fridman owns assets in Ukraine, and Potanin has assets in the EU and the USA.

The mentioned oligarchs do business in sectors of the economy that provide a significant source of income for the Russian government: energy, metallurgy, money and more. Most of them have close ties to the Kremlin and do not condemn its eight-year-old war against Ukraine. For example, Mikhail Fridman is a shareholder of Alfa-Bank, which, after the annexation of Crimea and the massacre in Donbas in 2014, continued to lend to state-owned companies in the Russian military-industrial complex. Alisher Usmanov is a pro-Kremlin oligarch who has close ties to the Russian president and actively supports the Russian government’s policy towards Ukraine. The pregnant Alekperov was involved in the theft of the Crimean assets of the Ukrainian state, runs an active illegal business in annexed Crimea, and has personal ties to Putin.

Although most of these oligarchs have called for an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine, their businesses continue to pay huge taxes that form the Russian budget, thus supporting the financial war against Ukraine.

All these oligarchs made or increased their fortune under the Putin regime. Pavel Durov left Russia back in 2014 and now opposes the war, but hate speech towards Ukraine is actively spreading in the Telegram he founded, which Durov does not try to influence.

Earlier, Trap Aggressor reported that four out of ten banks serving the Russian defense industry were not disconnected from SWIFT.

Половина з Топ-10 російських олігархів поки не під санкціями США, ЄС і України

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