The NR Holding AG around the Russian majority shareholder Viktor Charitonin is examining a stake of just under 25 percent. “This means that NR Holding AG’s share would be below the blocking minority and it would have no veto right or influence on the operational management,” said the Nürburgring holding company. Charitonin, 50 years old, married, two children, wants to buy the insolvent Frankfurt-Hahn Airport in the Hunsrück. He has already made an offer of a rumored 20 million euros.
At the same time, Russia’s most influential pharmaceutical company at the airport in the Hunsrück is only concerned with a financial and not a strategic commitment. “The remaining 75 percent of the shares in the buyer company are to be held by investors in Germany – exactly which ones are still to be clarified,” it said. Charitonin, loud forbesMagazine, who is more than six billion dollars rich, hardly comments on the case himself: he is considered to be particularly shy of the public. There are only a few quotes from him and hardly any interviews – not even in the Russian media. When the corona pandemic also hit Russia, it was Charitonin’s company that produced the Russian Covid vaccine Sputnik V. Well, the businessman might buy the German private airport Frankfurt-Hahn.
Kharitonin’s project received a lot of attention during Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. “At the moment you shouldn’t and can’t do business with Russian oligarchs,” said the Hessian Finance Minister Michael Boddenberg (CDU). If a hazard is identified, the sale of Hahn would have to be prohibited, said Economics Minister Robert Habeck from the Greens. “But it’s too early to comment on an unfinished process,” he said a few days ago.
The accusations are that the reservations about Charitonin are discriminatory
The state of Hesse still holds 17.5 percent of the airport in Rhineland-Palatinate. The Federal Ministry of Economics is examining whether Hahn Airport, with its rare night flight permit, is part of the critical infrastructure and whether the sale under discussion would endanger public safety and order.
On Monday, a ministry spokesman added that the federal government had not yet formed an opinion on NR Holding AG’s holding of only 24.9 percent in Hahn. A Hahn creditors’ meeting had not recently given any commitment to a sale to NR Holding AG.
But she emphasized: “Viktor Charitonin is not an oligarch. He has no influence on Russian politics.” The representation that the businessman is close to the Kremlin is wrong. He certainly has contacts with Russian authorities, ministries and the Kremlin. According to the group, contacts between the executive boards of leading German companies and the federal government are not unusual here either. “He is an independent and international pharmaceutical company with numerous companies and many thousands of employees for whom he is responsible,” it said. The reservations against Charitonin in Germany are discriminatory. He is not on any sanctions list anywhere in the world.