Russia - President Vladimir Putin's inner circle
Co-founder of Alfa Bank
About
Mikhail Fridman is a co-founder of Alfa Bank, the largest privately-owned bank in Russia, along with German Khan. Their business partner, Petr Aven, served as the bank's president for many years and remains a principal owner. The bank is part of the trio’s Alfa Group, a major Russian private investment company with interests in energy and telecommunications.
Fridman, who was born in Ukraine, lives in London, where he bought a mansion in 2016 for $90 million. Aven, who briefly served as minister of foreign economic relations in the nascent Russian Federation, is a major collector of Russian art. Khan, who previously led Alfa Group’s oil portfolio, is estimated to be worth more than $7 billion.
The U.S. sanctioned Alfa Bank in February 2022. The U.K. and the EU froze the trio’s assets with officials in Brussels saying the men have “a close relationship with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin” and that Khan “continues to trade favors” with Putin.
Fridman criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before being blacklisted. He and Aven released a statement saying they would “contest the spurious and unfounded basis for the imposition of these sanctions.” Khan, who sold his Alfa Bank shares in March 2022, has not publicly commented.
Political Career
Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Alfa Group Consortium (unknown-2022)
In The Pandora Papers
Mikhail Fridman appears in the Pandora Papers as an officer of more than 20 companies registered in the BVI and Cyprus between the 1990s and 2015. He is the beneficial owner of most of them, together with Aven, Khan and a business associate.
As of 2016, the companies linked to Fridman and his associates held $2.7 billion in assets. Several employed nominee shareholders and directors, likely to obscure ties to their true owners.
Fridman, the records show, used an entity in secretive Liechtenstein as a shareholder for a BVI company that held a $5 million Swiss bank account and credit cards.
Responding to ICIJ, Fridman said “no companies were opened to avoid sanctions or tax.”
For more than a decade, Aven owned a BVI company to control an investment firm, a yacht and one-third of an Italian villa. In September 2014, months after the U.S. and other nations blacklisted certain Russian businesses following the invasion of Crimea, records show Aven inserted a trust in Cyprus as the company’s owner, a practice that in general can help increase anonymity.
Aven told ICIJ his offshore structures are transparent and for the “preservation of wealth for family succession.”
Secrecy Jurisdictions
British Virgin Islands
Cyprus
Liechtenstein
Secrecy Broker
At the heart of the Pandora Papers are 14 offshore firms that help clients establish companies in secrecy jurisdictions. This profile draws on leaked data from these providers:
Discover this Power Player’s offshore connections.
This profile was published in the Power Players interactive on April 11, 2022, as part of Pandora Papers Russia.