Ever since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2014, the influence of oligarchs in Russia diminished. But Oleg Deripaska has managed to stay on the right side of Putin and has built up a gigantic business empire. Now, he has come under fire over the Russian interference in the US presidential elections
Associate of Trump’s ex-campaign head
Deripaska—once an associate of US President Donald Trump’s former campaign director Paul Manafort, who is being investigated by the FBI—has offered to cooperate with the congressional committees probing
the issue
First London IPO since 2014
The young favourite among the Russian oligarchs of the 2000s, Deripaska’s holding company holding company En+ floated on the London stock exchange recently—the first for a Russian group since the West imposed economic sanctions on the country over the Ukraine crisis, according to AFP
Close to Russia’s first President
The 49-year-old was among the oligarchs who amassed huge wealth in the years following the collapse of the USSR. He was close to the first Russian president Boris Yeltsin and in 2001 he married Polina Yumasheva, the former editor of a glossy magazine and the daughter of Yeltsin’s chief of staff
‘King of Aluminum’
Forbes magazine puts Deripaska’s fortune at $6.5 billion. En+ owns the power supplier En+ Power and also holds a 48 per cent stake in aluminium giant RUSAL. In 2016, the group, which is based in Siberia but has a presence in 19 countries, reported a turnover of $10 billion. The oligarch’s business empire also reaches into the automobile, insurance and agriculture sectors, AFP adds
The 2008 financial crisis hit Deripaska hard, as he had developed his businesses by taking out foreign loans secured by his assets. The Russian state later bailed him out