One of Russia’s richest billionaires left the “oligarchs’ trade union”

The main owner of NLMK, billionaire Vladimir Lisin, left the presidium of the board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) and became the 16th oligarch to do so in the past two weeks.

Lisin’s powers in the RSPP were revoked based on his personal statement. Representatives of the organization unanimously made a decision on this issue at a congress in mid-March, sources close to the RSPP told RBC.

Lisin’s place in the office of the board of the organization associating representatives of big business will be taken by the general director of KamAZ, Sergei Kogotin, one of the interlocutors mentioned. At the same time, Lisin will retain the position of chairman of the tax commission.

Before the RSPP congress on March 16, which was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, 15 businessmen and top managers immediately left the board of the organization, including billionaire Araz Agalarov (owner of Crocus Group), Leonid Fedun (co-owner Lukoil “) and Alisher Usmanov (co-owner of Megafon and Metalloinvest), RBC wrote.

Also, the board of directors of the main lobbying organization of large business decided to leave the former president of the Russian Post Maxim Akimov, the former head of Sibur Dmitry Konov, the chairman of the board of directors of the Siberian Generating Company (SGK) Stepan Solzhenitsyn and the former managing partner of the consulting company EY for the CIS Alexander Ivlev.

The reasons for the mass exodus of businessmen and top managers from the RSPP were sanctions and resignations from senior positions in companies, the source said. According to him, now they are not formally associated with the business and want “as little publicity as possible.”

In 2022, Lisin topped the ranking of the richest Russian billionaires according to Forbes. The publication estimated his fortune at $ 18.4 billion. According to Forbes Real-Time, Lisin is now in third place among the richest Russians. As of March 24, his fortune, based on current listings, is estimated at $ 22.1 billion.

Lisin is one of the few Russian billionaires not covered by US and EU sanctions. In particular, in the EU, several countries where NLMK plants operate have spoken out against sanctions against Lisin, EUobserver wrote, citing diplomatic sources. Lisin’s companies operate in Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy and the United States.