Gennady Timchenko: A Businessman Distancing Himself from Putin
Gennady Timchenko is a Russian billionaire businessman, oligarch, and a close friend of Vladimir Putin, with the U.S. Army naming Timchenko ‘a close associate of Putin’. Timchenko reportedly serves as one of Putin’s wallets by maintaining large assets in foreign banks, energy companies, and offshore accounts. In 2022, Timchenko was named the 6th richest person in Russia. Timchenko is on the sanction list of several countries, including the U.S., Australia, and Canada. He was one of the first oligarchs added to UK and EU sanctions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Timchenko became a millionaire back in the 90s, but for many years in Russia only a few friends and business partners knew about him. In the late 80s, Timchenko got a job at the ‘Киришинефтех имэкспорт’ foreign trade association, which exported oil products from the Kirishi refinery, and this determined his future fate and career. Until the Crimean crisis of 2014, the trade in oil and oil products was his main business.
In 1997, together with partner Torbjorn Tornqvist, he founded the oil trading company Gunvor, one of the largest global commodity trading companies in the oil and energy markets. Timchenko’s activities in the sector were believed to be directly linked to Putin. In addition, Putin had investments in Gunvor and access to Gunvor funds. Timchenko seemed to have significantly profited from his relationship with Putin, with Gunvor benefitting from sales from Russian state-owned companies. However, the sanctions related to Russia’s annexation of Crimea led Timchenko to sell his shares in Gunvor in 2014.
Timchenko is also the owner and manager of the Volga Group, one of the biggest investment groups in Russia. In 2010, Volga Group became one of the biggest shareholders in Novatek, one of Russia’s primary natural gas firms, increasing Timchenko’s significant impact on Russia’s oil and gas industry. During Medvedev’s presidency, through which Putin retained ultimate power, Putin led a quick stripping of assets, which several of his friends played key roles in, including Timchenko. The most important object of their asset stripping was Gazprom, with Timchenko owning the main subcontractors that built Gazprom’s pipelines. Thus, Timchenko became the main trader of Russian oil.
Timchenko lequally had two larger investments that initially gained less attention, namely, Novatek and Stroytransgaz. Novatek grew to be a highly successful and efficient independent gas producer that, unlike other independent producers, was allowed to use Gazprom’s pipelines. In 2022, Timchenko resigned from the board of Novatek after being targeted by sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
Timchenko also bought 80 per cent of the shares in Stroytransgaz in 2009. The company is one of Russia’s two largest manufacturers of gas pipelines, and it continues to be one of the two biggest suppliers of pipelines for Gazprom. Stroitansgaz was reportedly designated for being owned or controlled by the Stroitransgaz Group, the Volga Group, and Timchenko. Founded in 1990, it is now one of the biggest construction companies in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Stroitransgaz has constructed several export pipelines for Russia’s oil and gas, including the Nord Stream pipeline through Europe. Timchenko has also benefited from Russia’s long-running economic links to Syria, getting contracts to construct part of a gas pipeline from two major gas processing plants in Egypt . After Russian military interference helped to reverse Syria’s civil war in favour of Assad’s regime, two more Stroitransgaz-associated businesses secured a leading position in the phosphates sector. In 2014, both Stroitansgaz and Timchenko were sanctioned by the United States as a result of their role in the war in Ukraine.
In addition, Timchenko is a major shareholder in Bank Rossiya. The bank is a key stakeholder in the National Media Group which supports Russian policy which is destabilising Ukraine’. It is linked to Vladimir Putin and has important stakes in the National Media Group. The media group is in charge of the television stations that, under the command of the Russian government, broadcast inaccurate and false information concerning the situation in Ukraine. Due to this, both Bank Rossiya and Timchenko himself were sanctioned by the United Kingdom in 2022.
The sanctions imposed on Timchenko last year caused him to file a lawsuit against the EU, accusing the group of making an obvious error of assessment with regard to the relationship between Timchenko and Putin. Because of the stated ‘immaterial damage’ he reportedly suffered, Timchenko is demanding one million euros in damages from the EU. Despite Timcheko mentioning ‘immaterial damage’, as reported by Bloomberg in December 2022, he has lost $8.48 billion since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Interestingly, Timchenko has not publicly voiced his opinion on the war in Ukraine. Despite his official position being unknown, a former senior Western banker who worked with Russian oligarchs, reports that those close to Putin who gained their wealth after his presidency, including Timchenko, would never go against Putin. Thus, existing evidence suggests that Timchenko is more likely to discretely dissociate himself from Putin to protect his finances, rather than going against Putin’s decisions.