News

Russian oligarch, allies retain key ownership in company after sanctions lifted: report

by Jordain Carney - 01/21/19 5:11 PM ET

A Russian oligarch with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin along with his allies will maintain a majority ownership in an energy company under a Treasury Department plan to lift sanctions against the business, according to The New York Times.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, in a letter to Congress last month, said that the agreement to lift the sanctions will reduce Oleg Deripaska’s “direct and indirect shareholding stake in those entities”— Rusal, EN+ and EuroSibEnergo—”to below 50 percent.”

But, according to documents obtained by the Times, Deripaska and his allies would own approximately 57 percent of EN+ under the Treasury Department plan.

{mosads}Under the Treasury Department agreement, Deripaska will also be freed from debt he owes to VTB, a Russian government-owned bank, in exchange for transferring shares worth roughly $800 million to the financial institution.

The Treasury Department, in a statement to The New York Times, stressed that Deripaska’s control over the three companies is “severed by this delisting” and that the deal prevents him from using the companies “to carry out illicit activities on behalf of the Kremlin.”

The administration is expected to lift sanctions against EN+, as well as Rusal and EuroSibEnergo, after Congress failed to block the administration from moving forward with its plan.

More than 130 Republicans broke with Trump to back the measure in the House, marking a significant rebuke of the administration’s plan.

But Senate Republicans were able to defeat the measure, where it fell three votes short of the 60 needed to defeat a filibuster.

Eleven Republicans voted with Democrats in the Senate to advance the resolution of disapproval, arguing that they were unconvinced that Deripaska wouldn’t still have effective control over the companies.

“For all intents and purposes between his shares, the independent shares that the Russian state-owned bank control and various other individual shareholders, I still think he retains operational control,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told reporters ahead of the initial vote. “So they’re going to have to do better.”

Tags Marco Rubio