Av alla ryska oligarker som har belagts med sanktioner efter Rysslands invasion av Ukraina är stålmagnaten Aleksej Mordasjov den som har mest att förlora, skriver The Wall Street Journal. Mordasjov är rikare än alla andra på sanktionslistan och har förlorat runt en fjärdedel av sin förmögenhet sedan 18 februari. Men han utmärker sig också genom att han har försökt hålla sig på avstånd från politikerna i Kreml. Enligt en person i oligarkens närhet har han ägnat sin karriär åt att få Ryssland att närma sig väst och vissa bedömare menar att det är omdömeslöst att rikta sanktioner mot just honom. – Han var en av de bästa representanterna för det moderna ryska näringslivet, säger Michael Harms, tidigare chef för den tyska handelskammaren. One of the country’s richest men, steel magnate Alexey Mordashov, distanced himself from politics, but Putin’s Ukraine invasion made him a pariah By Angel Au-Yeung 20 April 2022 In late December, brothers Nikita and Kirill Mordashov did as their father asked and transferred their shares in a mining company to the Russian oligarch. Alexey Mordashov had given his children stakes in the family business as part of a succession plan but decided they weren’t quite ready, according to a person close to him. Two months later, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Mr. Mordashov was racing to get those shares off his hands again. This time, he transferred a roughly $1 billion stake to Marina Mordashova, the mother of four of his other children, according to public documents and the person close to the oligarch. Later that day, the European Union froze his European assets. Western governments have levied a barrage of sanctions targeting Russian tycoons with penalties meant to strip away their wealth and financially isolate them. Governments hope they might pressure Russian leader Vladimir Putin into ending the war. Mr. Mordashov, 56, has more at stake than most of his peers. One of Russia’s richest men, his net worth is higher than that of any individual on the EU’s sanctions list, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His fortune centers on his 77% stake in Severstal PAO, among the world’s biggest steelmakers, which sells its products all over the world, particularly in Europe, where it has a large staff and operations. It has long depended on global financing to keep operating, a channel now under threat from sanctions. Unlike other oligarchs, who have either embraced sanctions as a badge of honor or tried to pivot away from pariah status, Mr. Mordashov has decided to try to manage through the mess. He has moved to protect his large Western shareholdings while taking steps to focus his steelmaking business on new markets in Asia and Africa. He is pursuing legal waivers in the U.S. and U.K. that would allow Severstal to make debt payments to bondholders, according to an announcement the company filed with the London Stock Exchange—a move the company hasn’t been able to do since sanctions were levied. In announcing its sanctions, the EU said Mr. Mordashov “is benefiting from his links with Russian decision makers.” The U.K. followed the EU and sanctioned him and several other oligarchs on March 15, resulting in a combination of penalties that froze their assets and made it difficult for their businesses to operate across Europe. The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control hasn’t sanctioned him; the office declined to comment. Mr. Mordashov had fashioned himself an apolitical businessman who kept the Kremlin at arm’s length, said the person close to him. He had dedicated much of his career pushing Russia toward the West. The fluent English and German speaker had lobbied for Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization and once led a Brussels-based global steel trade group. He had paid tuition for 200 of his employees to go to business school in England. The sanctions lumped him together with oligarchs like Igor Sechin, chief of Russian oil producer Rosneft. After the U.S. targeted Mr. Sechin in 2014 over Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea, Mr. Sechin had said Washington’s action was a sign he was doing his job. Mr. Sechin is now under the new EU and U.K. sanctions. Rosneft didn’t respond to requests for comment. On the evening the EU sanctioned him, Mr. Mordashov issued a statement saying he has never been close to politics and didn’t see how sanctioning him would help solve the Ukraine conflict. Without mentioning Mr. Putin, he called what was happening in Ukraine “a tragedy for two fraternal nations” and said he hoped the “bloodshed” would end soon. Since Feb. 18, he has lost about a quarter of his wealth, which Bloomberg now estimates at $22 billion. Through a family spokeswoman, Mr. Mordashov, his sons Nikita and Kirill, and Ms. Mordashova declined to be interviewed for this article. Mr. Mordashov’s career has been characterized by his success navigating Russia’s postcommunist chaos while embracing Western markets and business management. He was born north of Moscow, where his parents worked at a steel mill. He secured a postcollege job at the mill as an economist and, in 1992 at age 27, became its chief financial officer. One of his priorities was fending off Moscow-based tycoons targeting the mill during Russia’s upheaval toward capitalism, he told The Wall Street Journal in 2004. Mr. Mordashov and his peers set up a company that bought steel from the mill and resold it, using the proceeds to buy shares of Severstal, which means Northern Steel in Russian. He became CEO in 1996 and by the early 2000s was among industrialists who regularly met with Mr. Putin. Yet Mr. Mordashov has said he was different from other oligarchs because he had few political connections. “We never had any high-placed patrons in the government,” he said in the 2004 Journal profile. He also leaned West, hiring McKinsey & Co. to find bottlenecks in Severstal and encouraging employees to go to business school at England’s Northumbria University, his alma mater. Anders Aslund, an adviser to Russian and Ukrainian governments in the 1990s, recalled Mr. Mordashov speaking at a Moscow university in the early 2000s about hiring McKinsey and getting mobbed by students afterward. “He was treated like a rock star,” Mr. Aslund said. In 2006, Mr. Mordashov saw a chance to bridge his Russian and Western business worlds after Indian-owned Mittal Steel made a hostile bid for Luxembourg-based rival Arcelor. He met Mr. Putin and won his blessing for a counterbid, the Journal reported that year. Arcelor’s chairman, making a case to shareholders to accept Severstal’s offer, called Mr. Mordashov a “true European,” noting his English and German proficiency. Mittal eventually outbid Mr. Mordashov, who then pursued smaller deals, including buying an ArcelorMittal facility in Maryland for $810 million in 2008. He was “really a Western-style manager,” said Michael Harms, head of the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce from 2007 to 2016. “That’s why the sanctions on him are not wise and also not fair, because he was one of the best representatives of the modern face of Russian business.” Mr. Mordashov retreated from the U.S. after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014. That year, he sold two major U.S. steel mills for a combined $2.3 billion. Four years later, the U.S. sanctioned one of his companies for assisting in delivering turbines to Crimea. In Europe, he gradually built a stake in German travel giant TUI AG, becoming its biggest shareholder. During the pandemic-triggered global travel collapse, he put up more capital to bolster TUI financing. The oligarch recently began setting up a second generation of Mordashovs to play a leading role in his empire. He is father of seven children from three mothers, said the person close to him. In 2019, he transferred significant stakes in TUI and Nord Gold, which had been spun off from Severstal, to sons Nikita and Kirill. On Dec. 28, 2021, both brothers transferred their Nold Gold stakes back to their father, according to U.K. records. That day, the pair also sold their TUI shares back to their father, public records show. Mr. Mordashov had asked them to make the move, feeling Nikita, now 21, and Kirill, now 22, weren’t mature enough to hold such stakes, the person close to him said. In late February, Mr. Mordashov’s business lieutenants told him news reports suggested the EU was about to sanction him, the person said. He transferred stakes in Nord Gold to Ms. Mordashova, according to U.K. records. He transferred the TUI shares from subsidiaries he controlled to an entity named Ondero Ltd., TUI said in a press release. A TUI spokesman declined to comment. Nord Gold didn’t respond to requests for comment. On Feb. 28, the EU announced sanctions against Mr. Mordashov and other oligarchs. It cited his role as head of Severgroup, an entity owning 5.4% of Bank Rossiya, alleged by Western officials to be the personal bank of senior Russian officials. The EU said Bank Rossiya also opened branches in the Ukrainian region of Crimea, helping Russia consolidate the area it illegally annexed. Brussels said Severgroup had significant stakes in a media group controlling television stations that support Moscow’s attempts to destabilize Ukraine. Mr. Mordashov’s spokeswoman said that his stakes in Bank Rossiya and the media group are minor, and that he isn’t involved in day-to-day decision-making at either organization. Bank Rossiya didn’t respond to requests for comment. On March 3, Mr. Mordashov held a virtual town-hall meeting from Moscow for Severstal employees, according to a summary of the meeting that Severstal posted on social media. He said the company didn’t plan to lay off any employees and was in a stable financial position. Severstal lawyers started work applying for a special license from the U.K. and the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control to let its bank, Citigroup Inc., transfer funds to pay interest to bondholders, said the person close to Mr. Mordashov. Severstal also announced its applications in a statement to the London Stock Exchange on April 1. While the U.S. hasn’t sanctioned Mr. Mordashov, Severstal said that Citigroup froze the payments due to regulatory investigations. Citigroup declined to comment. The share price of Severstal, which previously did significant business in EU countries such as the Czech Republic, Italy and Poland, has fallen by about a third since Russia invaded Ukraine. On March 18, TUI said it was informed that Ondero, the entity to which Mr. Mordashov transferred his shares, was controlled by Ms. Mordashova, the mother of four of Mr. Mordashov’s children. It said that the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action was investigating the transaction, which would be invalid until at least the end of the probe. A spokeswoman for the German agency said it was conducting an investment-screening procedure relating to TUI. Without disclosing the individuals involved, she said the probe was unrelated to sanctions but rather an investigation into whether the transaction threatens Germany’s public order or security. Italian authorities said they seized one of Mr. Mordashov’s yachts, the 213-foot Lady M, as well as property on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. Late last month, the 465-foot megayacht Nord, equipped with two helicopter pads, a cinema and swimming pool—the person close to Mr. Mordashov said it belongs to the oligarch—completed its three-week journey from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean to Vladivostok, a far-eastern Russian city near the Chinese and North Korean borders. Locals have been visiting the harbor and posting selfies with the vessel on social media.
