Russian businessman Mykhailo Fridman offered to invest $1 billion of his personal wealth in a Ukrainian bank, which he co-founded. In exchange for investments, the oligarch asked the British government to remove sanctions from him.
The Wall Street Journal writes about it.
The oligarch is the founder of Alfa Bank.
Alfa Bank Ukraine, which is part of the Fridman group, works in Ukraine. It changed its name to Sense Bank in August.
According to the U.S. officials, Fridmanʼs proposal is one of a series of statements that owners and executives of companies on the sanctions list are "quietly" making to Western authorities as those countries wage a campaign to inflict economic damage on Russia in response to its war against Ukraine.
In a comment, Fridman himself denied that he had made such a proposal. "The United Kingdom does not justify any evasion of sanctions," the British Foreign Ministry noted.
- In June, the head of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption Oleksandr Novikov stated that Fridman was consulting with the Ukrainian authorities about obtaining Ukrainian citizenship and re-registering the main assets in Ukraine.
- Fridman, who ranked 11th in the Russian Forbes in 2021 (net worth — $15.5 billion), was included in the sanctions lists of the European Union and Great Britain after the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine.
- In May 2022, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova reported that Fridmanʼs assets worth 12 billion hryvnias had been seized in Ukraine.