The owner of TMK moved from Cyprus to Russia

MOSCOW, July 19 (Reuters) – The company that owns Russia’s largest pipe producer TMK has moved from Cyprus to Russia, registering on Rus Island, according to data from the unified register of legal entities.

In June, the international company TMK Steel Holding was registered on Russkaya Island in the Primorsky Territory, which is a special administrative region, by redomiciliation under the USRLE.

Earlier, TMK Steel Holding was registered in Cyprus, which owns over 90% of the shares of the Russian TMK.

A spokesman for TMK has not yet commented on the matter.

The company’s shares at 17.15 on the Moscow Stock Exchange rose by almost 5%.

Until March 2022, the main owner of TMK was Russian businessman Dmitry Pumpyansky, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $1.7 billion, but on March 10 last year, the company announced that it had left the list of beneficiaries. Pumpyansky is on EU and US sanctions lists and is challenging European sanctions in court.

Against the backdrop of pressure from Western sanctions and restrictions, more and more Russian businessmen are relocating companies holding shares in Russian assets from traditional foreign offshore jurisdictions to other jurisdictions, often in the Russian Federation, to internal offshore zones (special administrative regions in Kaliningrad and Ruska Island).

In the spring of last year, Andrey Guryev moved his Swiss companies Chlodwig Enterprises AG and Adorabella AG to Russia, through which he and his family owned approx. 43.66 percent. Phosagro. New companies registered in Kaliningrad are controlled by trusts whose beneficiaries remain Guryev and his family.

Last year, the Cypriot company Wandle Holdings Limited became a resident of Russky Island, through which businessman Said Kerimov owned 76.3% of the gold mining company Polyus. Now he owns 43.35% of the company’s shares, which Karimov transferred to the Fund for the Support of Islamic Organizations.

Bloomberg reported in July, citing a source, that billionaire Vladimir Lisin, who is not on Western sanctions lists, had moved his stakes in NLMK and Freight One from Cyprus to Abu Dhabi. (Anastasia Lyrchikova. Editor Dmitry Antonov)