Freeze $ 1,5 billion: how US sanctions affected the life and business of the Russian oligarch - ForumDaily
The article has been automatically translated into English by Google Translate from Russian and has not been edited.
Переклад цього матеріалу українською мовою з російської було автоматично здійснено сервісом Google Translate, без подальшого редагування тексту.
Bu məqalə Google Translate servisi vasitəsi ilə avtomatik olaraq rus dilindən azərbaycan dilinə tərcümə olunmuşdur. Bundan sonra mətn redaktə edilməmişdir.

Freeze $ 1,5 billion: how US sanctions affected the life and business of the Russian oligarch

The owner of the Renova group Viktor Vekselberg told Forbeshow he reacted to the sanctions imposed against him by the US Treasury, about his interest in the Jewish topic and how he acquired the famous Faberge collection from the family of American media tycoon Malcolm Forbes.

Photo: Shutterstock

Billionaire Viktor Vekselberg was very unlucky - in April 2018, he came under US sanctions. At the same time, unlike other members of the Forbes list, who suffered the same fate, the owner of Renova was considered his own man in America: he had a business and charitable projects there, his partner and institute friend Leonard Blavatnik was an American, was born in the USA and before his son Alexander still lives. Vekselberg can travel to Switzerland, but he cannot do anything with the shares of Swiss companies that make up most of his fortune.

More than $ 1,5 billion has already been frozen on his accounts in Western banks. Recently, the businessman was mainly engaged in public work - he headed the Skolkovo Foundation and the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center. He lost his first position at the end of last year, and the second will lose this February. In an interview with Forbes, he told how he will live next.

 

- You have a lot in common with the United States - your relatives live there, your children studied, you once transported your family there, your son is still there, your partner Leonard Blavatnik is an American, you had a business there and a number of charitable projects. How did you move your inclusion on the sanctions list? How much does it hinder you from living and working?

- I already once said that it was a big disaster for me, although then they understood me too literally. Of course, the sky did not collapse to earth, but many of my ideas about the world order had to be changed. After all, I have always believed that I understand the Western world well, much better than many. I understand what and how it works there, I understand people. Therefore, for me, the sanctions were a shock, I could never imagine that this civilized world, based on its views and positions, could make such decisions, as they say, without trial and investigation. Probably the most painful thing is the reaction of a large number of people who were next to me.

The world has split into two parts, thank God, unequal - into those who supported me and continue to support me, and those who simply disappeared. Moreover, people disappeared, about whom I could not think in any way that because of the sanctions they would stop communicating with me. And I'm not talking about business - from business I can still understand people - I'm talking about human relations. Of course, I had difficulties in doing business both there and here. As for charity, all projects abroad have been closed altogether, while in Russia our opportunities have significantly diminished. We have supported both the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky theaters, various museum projects, and numerous charitable foundations. But now, due to sanctions, the financing of many projects, alas, had to be stopped.

- To date, about $ 1,5 billion has been frozen on your accounts in American and Swiss banks. Can't you use them at all?

- More frozen. And you can use them only with the permission of the US Treasury (Treasury - Ed.). However, they don’t give it. They weren’t even allowed to give anything for charitable purposes, to fight the pandemic, although we were talking about relatively small amounts - several million, which I wanted to use to help fight the coronavirus in Europe. This became another revelation for me. How can you not allow giving money to those in need in such a difficult time? When the pandemic began, we did quite a lot in Russia. All businesses that are part of the Renova group took part in these projects, each in their own way. This includes the purchase of tests, the sending of medicines to the regions, the purchase of ventilators, and simply assistance in accordance with the requests of regional structures. Our airport business participated very actively in these projects, delivering food to elderly people. Collectively, we spent about two billion rubles last year to fight Covid.

But at the same time, we also have a large international business, and therefore, I personally received many appeals from Jewish communities in Switzerland asking for help. My first, natural reaction was the following: one of our structures has frozen money in a Swiss bank - take it and help your compatriots. It's not for me, not for business, exclusively for charity. We wrote a request to the US Treasury. Then there was a whole epic, but in the end they did not give us any answer, they did not say yes or no.

On the subject: US imposed sanctions against Ukrainians for meddling in presidential elections

- Have you made more attempts?

- I did. In the summer, the American Forbes held a large online conference on philanthropy. I was invited, which was strange, because I am a sanctioning person. It was a very representative conference. Major philanthropists from all over the world spoke there - Bill Gates, for example, said there that he gave $ 300 million for the development of a vaccine. Everyone said the right things. The [Chairperson of the European Commission. - Forbes] Ursula von der Leyen. She called on everyone to unite in the fight against the pandemic. After the conference, I wrote her a letter, impressed, explaining the situation: I want to help citizens in need of Europe. He asked for assistance with the US Treasury, so that they give permission. It was not she who answered, but someone from her secretariat: we, they say, did not fully understand what you are talking about, we, of course, are in favor of supporting everyone, but what does the sanction have to do with it? I wrote her a second letter, in more detail, and the story ended there.

- Is it also impossible to finance your American projects? Fort Ross, for example.

- At one time we had several projects in the United States, mostly innovative. Fort Ross is a charity project. This is a small Russian fortress of the early XNUMXth century in California, which we helped to restore in due time. The treaty was signed with Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he was governor. Everything went on with a bang, the museum worked, we organized national festivals there, brought children there, played out historical scenes. Films were also filmed there. Because of the sanctions, everything has stopped, we cannot help anything today. The last thing we managed to do there was to install a large windmill on the territory. It was built in Russia, in Vologda, according to old blueprints and brought there.

- What other innovative projects did you talk about?

- We had an innovation fund there, rather big, about forty projects. Now everything has stopped. By the way, from the point of view of charity, another interesting story is connected with America. This is the return of the bells of St. Daniel's Monastery from Harvard. The story was this: in the 1930s, when the bells of the monastery belfry were about to be melted into bronze, an American businessman, Harvard graduate Charles Crane bought all 18 bells at the price of scrap metal and shipped them to America. The bells were installed at Harvard University bell tower. In the mid-2000s, the Russian Orthodox Church approached us with a request to help return the bells. By that time they had been trying in vain for more than ten years to come to terms with the Americans themselves. It seemed to me that the task was simple: the Americans understand well what historical value is for the country, and, of course, they will return it. I went to Boston, met with the president of Harvard. The first reaction was: “Of course not! This is ours".

We began to convince them, found supporters who helped us. As a result, in 2007 we agreed. We were required to make exact copies of the bells. They were cast in Voronezh, people from Harvard came specially to check the sound - they demanded a complete match. We spent a lot of time and $ 7-8 million. The bells were brought by ship to St. Petersburg, consecrated on the square in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral. Then these bells were transported to Moscow on open platforms. Then there was the ceremony of placing the monastery on the bell tower of the Holy Danilov Monastery. And everywhere they were met by crowds of believers.

- You had another American project - the purchase of Imperial Easter eggs from the Forbes family. How did you manage to get the Sotheby's auction canceled, and what did it cost you?

- The story began when the Forbes family decided to sell the Faberge family collection and in 2004 put it up for auction at Sotheby's. A catalog of the entire collection was published, with about 200 items, including nine Imperial Easter eggs. Malcolm Forbes and his wife had been assembling it for several decades, and now each item was sold separately, each had its own price. And I also understood the historical value of the collection for Russia, and how great it would be to return it entirely to its homeland.

We wrote a proposal letter to the Forbes family that was based on average catalog prices for each item. Nobody really believed that it would work, but a miracle happened - we were told that they were ready to sell the entire collection without an auction. Now I have a framed article about it from the New York Times at the time. Why did the Forbes brothers agree? Probably, they themselves were sorry that the collection would be sold out in parts, so they set a condition that it would remain intact and be open to the public.

It is interesting that the family used a significant part of the items in their everyday life - items for a writing table, dishes, and so on. They did not create museum history, unlike us. But we were asked to do an exhibition in New York before we collect everything. We still keep in touch, Christopher is even a member of the board of trustees of the Faberge Museum.

- Did you spend about $ 100 million on the purchase of the collection?

- Well, something like this.

On the subject: U.S. Senate report: Russian oligarchs secretly bought art to bypass sanctions

- You are especially actively involved in the Jewish theme - you head the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, you are a member of the Bureau of the Presidium of the Russian Jewish Congress. But you yourself are not a Jew, are you?

- Yes, I grew up in a Ukrainian family, all my other relatives, except for my Jewish dad, were Ukrainians - my mother, uncles, aunts. Culturally, we lived like a normal Soviet Russian-Ukrainian family - our language was Russian. As a child, I never even thought about the fact that Vekselberg is a Jewish surname. I realized this only in Moscow, when I could not enter Moscow State University because of my last name and went to study at MIIT in automation and computer technology.

- And what was written in the school magazine opposite your surname? Russian?

- Yes exactly. Dad is Jewish, mom is Ukrainian, and I am Russian. I learned the tragic story of my father's family when I was already an adult. I came to Drohobych on vacation and began to question my father. It turned out that his entire family, 17 people, had been driven into the ghetto during the war. The father himself was not in the city, he fought. At the end of the war, when the Germans were retreating, in three days they destroyed the entire ghetto, about 12 people. In Soviet times, there were no identification marks at the place where they were shot, there were just mass graves in the forest. In the 000s, my dad and I created a memorial there. Of the whole family, only my father's cousin survived - she was saved by the Ukrainians, for four years she was hiding in the forest in a dugout. After the war, she managed to escape to America, I met with her in New York. Back in the 1990s, she found dad, wrote to him, but he did not answer. And to those Ukrainians who saved her, she sent some small money. I found them later, but they got scared - they asked not to tell anyone in the city that they were hiding a Jewish girl during the war. And their children are still asking.

Dad said that I would never be able to understand how scary it was - Jews were killed not so much by Germans as by nationalists. And this national hatred has not gone anywhere, it has simply been extinguished, hidden. When I learned all this, when I realized that I have 50% Jewish blood, I developed a natural interest in Jewish culture. I am not a very religious person, but I have great respect for all religions. At the same time, I associate myself more with the Jewish culture than with the Christian one. At the same time, as a child, I did not know a word in Yiddish, except for one that my father sometimes said - "swarming with tuhes!" ("Kiss your ass!"). The tragedy of the Holocaust that affected my family is very important to me. Of course, I will do everything possible so that it never happens again, I help and I will help as much as I can.

Read also on ForumDaily:

Beatings, shockers, tear gas: how the Russian authorities responded to the actions in support of Navalny

About Trump, Biden, Crimea and NATO: Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave an interview to HBO

A descendant of Ukrainian immigrants and a tough critic of the Kremlin: what is known about the new US Secretary of State

Navalny's video about 'Putin's palace' breaks Russian-language YouTube record and inspires tiktokers

Miscellanea billionaires Our people Russian oligarch
Subscribe to ForumDaily on Google News

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis. 



 
1079 requests in 1,210 seconds.