Petrostate:Putin, Power, and the New Russia by Goldman Marshall I

Author:Goldman, Marshall I. [Goldman, Marshall I.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

SIBNEFT’S TURN

Having reined in Yukos, Putin’s next target was Sibneft. Its takeover was done so quietly hardly anyone noticed. As we saw, when threatened with jail, then chief owner Boris Berezovsky hastily fled to London. On his way out, he sold off his share of various properties to his one-time protégé, junior partner, and erstwhile sportsman Roman Abramovich, who in turn was happy to relay most of his new possessions on to the state. Among other properties, Berezovsky transferred control to Abramovich of the aluminum company Rusal, the TV network ORT, and, most important, the petroleum company Sibneft. This undid an earlier merger between Yukos and Sibneft agreed to in April 2003. At that time, Khodorkovsky had paid $3 billion for a 26 percent share of Sibneft stock. After Khodorkovsky’s arrest, Abramovich put the merger on hold but neglected to refund the $3 billion.

For a time, Abramovich also flirted with the subversive idea of selling half of his share of Sibneft to a foreign company. He considered offers from Chevron-Texaco, Shell, and Total.56 But after the inevitable visits from the Russian tax authorities and significant claims of some $1.4 billion in tax arrears, in September 2005 Abramovich agreed instead to sell his 72 percent stake in Sibneft to Gazprom for $13 billion.57 Renamed Gazpromneft (Gas Industry Petroleum), this gave state-dominated Gazprom a major stake in the petroleum sector for the first time. With the transfer of Sibneft to state ownership, the state once again gained control of 30 percent of Russia’s total oil output.58

Don’t shed any tears for Abramovich. By working with the state and Putin, he was able to sell Sibneft at a price that made him Russia’s richest man with a net worth estimated by Forbes Magazine at over $18 billion. This leapfrogged him over the now jailed Khodorkovsky, whose earlier $15 billion had been mostly in Yukos stock. After the company’s bankruptcy, it was worth only a fraction of what it had been.

Abramovich was not only Russia’s richest man. Since he had effectively moved to London, he also became Great Britain’s richest man. One of his new homes was a 440-acre estate in Sussex, the other a mansion in London’s exclusive Belgravia district. His other purchases included two of the world’s largest yachts and the Chelsea soccer team for which he paid $250 million—not bad for a poor boy with a murky background who started out in 1996 as a junior oil trader and office manager at Sibneft.59

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.