Pyotr Aven: Sanctioned oligarch doesn’t know if he can pay his bills

Pyotr Aven
Sanctioned oligarch talks about his new life without a cleaner and driver

On paper, Pyotr Aven is a very rich man. The US magazine Forbes currently lists the London-based businessman as having assets of 4.4 billion dollars (4 billion euros). In fact, the 67-year-old currently doesn’t know how to pay his daily bills like he does “Financial Times” told.

Awen is among those Russian oligarchs who have been sanctioned by the EU and Britain over Putin’s war. His fortune is frozen. Shortly before the sanctions came into effect, his wife had frantically withdrawn as much cash as possible from various ATMs, the FT reports. Because Awen’s luxury life has turned upside down overnight. “Our business is completely destroyed. Everything we have built in 30 years is now completely ruined. And we kind of have to start a new life,” Awen told the FT.

Suddenly, the multi-billionaire is confronted with everyday problems that he hasn’t had to worry about for a long time. “Can I have another cleaner or driver?” Awen asked in the interview. “I don’t drive myself…maybe my stepdaughter will drive me. We don’t know how to survive.” The words sound a bit odd coming from the mouth of a man who, after all, is currently still sitting in a luxury apartment in London and not in a Kiev basement.

Got rich with oil and banking

But Awen, like his longtime business partner Mikhail Friedman, feels unjustly punished for Putin’s war. The allegations against him were based on “malicious and intentional untruths,” Awen said shortly after the sanctions were imposed. The two criticized the war at least cautiously. The EU, on the other hand, counts Awen among “one of the oligarchs most closely associated with Putin,” which is why it holds him partly responsible for his policies. For the British authorities, he is also one of the most prominent pro-Kremlin oligarchs.

Awen was born in Moscow, where he studied economics and built up the Alfa Group with Mikhail Fridman in the 1990s. The financial empire also includes Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest private bank. Among other things, he became rich with investments in the oil business, which he sold in 2013 to the state-owned Rosneft under Putin’s friend Igor Sechin. He then founded a multi-billion dollar investment firm, LetterOne.

Pyotr Aven wants to challenge sanctions

Without good relations with the Kremlin, documented by photos of Vladimir Putin shaking hands, Awen would hardly have been able to have such a successful career as a businessman, but he rejects any association with Putin’s politics. “It’s very strange, just because you meet the President, you get sanctions. We try to stay absolutely out of politics. With Putin, I introduced the Alfa Group, not myself,” Awen told FT.

Now that his stake in LetterOne has been frozen, he can’t even go to the office and meet with company employees, Awen said. He has resigned from his post as President of Alfa-Bank. Awen wants to stay in London with his family and challenge the sanctions against him, but says he’s having trouble finding lawyers to represent him. “British lawyers don’t want to work with Russians,” Awen said. “I’ve been told it’s almost impossible to change the sanctions.”

Awen argues that the current sanctions against prominent Russians will have no impact on Putin. “It’s understandable. But it’s not fair,” he says of the post-invasion sanctions imposed on Russians. But he didn’t want to complain because people were dying elsewhere.

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