Of that "company" many have since been put in the "crosshairs" of Western sanctions. But he, the richest of them all and one of the few who remained standing after the Yeltsin era, is to this day almost "untouched".
More than a month after the start of the war, the so-called "king of nickel" was included on the sanctions list of Canada and Australia: among the largest nickel producers and therefore Potanin's main rivals.
Only last Wednesday, four months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Britain finally decided to follow the same path.
It imposed an entry ban and an asset freeze, opening an investigation into the Potanin Charitable Foundation - "brother" of Russia's The Vladimir Potanin Foundation - whose assets are estimated at more than £95 million.
The US and the EU, however, continue to keep Vladimir Potanin off the sanctions list, without having announced the reasons why.
This, while the Russian oligarch has been included since 2018 on the US Treasury Department's "Putin List" of 210 named individuals closely linked to the Russian president.
And somehow unhindered, Potanin has significantly increased his personal fortune amid the war in Ukraine. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, it now exceeds $35.2 billion.
A... metal "shield" in sanctions
The 61-year-old Potanin is not called the "King of Nickel" for nothing. Among many others, he is the chairman and major shareholder (34.59%) of MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC.
With a long history under the USSR, the mining giant is today the world's largest producer of refined nickel and one of the most important in copper and palladium production.
Potanin acquired a majority shareholding in the company at short notice during the Yeltsin presidency. Since then, the history of the company known as Nornickel has been marked by years of conflict between its tycoon shareholders: Potanin and Oleg Deripaska. By industrial accidents. By the biggest environmental disaster in the Arctic, when 21,000 tons of fuel leaked from a tank at a Nornickel thermal power plant in 2020.
The company paid a $2 billion fine and undertook a cleanup of the site. But Potanin's business empire remained unscathed and highly profitable.
A look at its clientele may even adequately explain why neither he nor Nornickel have so far been included in the US and European sanctions.
Nornickel is considered central to the EU's green agenda, as it is its main supplier of nickel. In its pure form the metal is used - in addition to the production of stainless steel - in electric vehicles. Therefore, the cooperation between Nornickel's nickel and cobalt refinery in western Finland and the German giant BASF for the production of electric drive batteries is considered strategic.
The US, on the other hand, although not so dependent on Russian nickel (they mainly import from Canada), knows that any sanctions on Nornickel would create huge shortages on the market and send prices skyrocketing. Already the price of nickel has doubled since the beginning of the year.
In addition, Nornickel produces 40% of the world's palladium: a vital metal for semiconductor manufacturing. Persistent in the midst of a pandemic, their shortage has already dealt a huge blow to a number of sectors of the economy - especially the automotive industry - worldwide.
Profiting from the war
The rally in commodity prices, pandemic and war alike, has sent Nornickel's profits soaring.
But the mining giant - which has distribution hubs in Hamburg and Rotterdam, a sales office in Chug, Switzerland, and a sales branch in Pittsburgh - is not the only source of wealth for... the West's favourite Potanin.
In fact, as long as they don't touch him, Western sanctions work in his favour. They have already been a reason for him to further expand his business empire.
As one after another foreign companies left Russia and he urged Putin via Telegram not to proceed with seizures that would "take us back to 1917",
Interros Group - his own holding company with a presence in the pharmaceutical industry - began to grow in the financial sector.
He bought back the Russian bank Rosbank from Societe Generale, to which he had sold it in the previous decade. In the new transaction, the French bank reported losses of $3.3 billion.
On unknown terms and for an undisclosed price, meanwhile, Potanin also bought United Card Services: the Russian arm of US financial technology company Global Payments.
As a ... bonus, he acquired a 35% stake in TCS Group Holding, one of the largest financial groups in Russia and owner of the online bank Tinkoff.
Officially put up for sale under unclear circumstances. It was, however, preceded by public opposition to the war from its billionaire founder, Oleg Tinkoff.
Without saying further, he said the consideration he received was just 3% of the value of his stake.
Loyal but... extroverted oligarch
Born into a wealthy and high-ranking Communist Party family under the USSR, masculinized in perestroika and later a post-Soviet tycoon, Vladimir Potanin has demonstrated strong business survival instincts.
He quickly jumped on the privatisation bandwagon in Russia. He even stepped on the gas as one of the initiators of the sale of state property with the "loans for shares" programme.
This gave him a stake in Nornickel and the favour of Boris Yeltsin, under whose presidency he even served as first deputy prime minister in 1996-97.
He survived the Russian financial crisis of 1998. He hit it off with the new president and former KGB spy, Vladimir Putin.
Over time, Potanin cultivated good and close relations with the West - although his early partnership with Hungarian-born American investor George Soros in the late 1990s did not end well.
Several years later, he became the first (and to date the only) Russian tycoon to subscribe to the The Giving Pledge initiative of American mega-investor Warren Buffett and former couple Bill and Melinda Gates, thus pledging to donate at least half of his fortune to charity.
Through his own charitable foundation he has made several donations: from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., to the University of Oxford and the Pompidou Cultural Center in Paris.
He has also been a member of the American think tank Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and the board of the Solomon R.F. Guggenheim Foundation, based in New York. He resigned from both, however, at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
"Heads in"
Before the war even broke out, meanwhile, Potanin repatriated funds. He moved Interros Capital, a subsidiary of the Interros Group, from Cyprus to Ruskie Island in the Russian Far East, with the lure of tax incentives.
He announced investments in the region in high-tech projects and start-ups, and the creation of a resort for "responsible tourism development" on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
He had done a similar project in Sochi ahead of the 2014 Olympics, building a huge ski resort, Rosa Khutor, which he aspired to turn into a "Russian Courchevel".
Today, just in case... he has reportedly moved one of his three yachts, the $300 million Nirvana, to the safe haven of Dubai for Russian oligarchs.
But even if he doesn't end up on the US and EU sanctions list, the blow may come from elsewhere.
The Revenge of the Ex
Since 2014, Potanin has been in court with his first wife of 31 years, mother of his three (out of five) children. Natalia.
In the original settlement he offered her a monthly allowance of $250,000 and properties in Moscow, London and New York. She said this was only a fraction of what she rightfully owned.
Under Russian law, wealth acquired during marriage must be shared equally. According to Natalia, however, Potanin's real wealth lies offshore.
Since then she has begun a legal battle to obtain her share. The dispute has now now reached the High Court in London.
The courts in the British capital are generally considered... a popular destination for high-profile divorce settlements. And this is one of the biggest.
Now, the Russian tycoon is seeking to overturn a ruling that paved the way for Natalia Potanin to claim 50% of the value of his stake in Nornickel. The amount could well exceed $7 billion...
Source: in.gr
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
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