The oligarch Oleg Deripaska has not benefited from his supposedly still good relationship with the Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. At the beginning of March, the billionaire called for an end to the war in Ukraine. And at the end of March he declared on his Telegram channel that this “madness (of which we will be ashamed long before our descendants)” could have been ended a few weeks earlier through sensible discussions.
On the other hand, according to the dpa news agency, Deripaska also warned of an alleged nuclear threat from Ukraine and was thus in line with Russian war propaganda. In any case, all the statements against the war are probably no longer of any use to the oligarch in the European Union (EU). So far, she has refrained from ordering sanctions against the billionaire and freezing his assets in the EU. But now it’s Deripaska’s turn, founder and owner of the Russian conglomerate Basic Element. The oligarch rules over a widespread empire that reaches as far as Germany.
Deripaska should no longer receive money from Austria
EU diplomatic sources say Deripaska is on the latest sanctions list discussed by EU ambassadors on Wednesday. The list could be adopted as early as Thursday. It is almost impossible that the billionaire will be removed from the list and spared. This was different with previous sanctions lists. Some EU countries reportedly wanted to take in the oligarch, but others were against it.
In any case, the Austrian construction group Strabag acted faster than the EU with major shareholder Hans Peter Haselsteiner, one of the leading industrialists in the Alpine republic, and distanced itself from co-owner Deripaska. The Haselsteiner private foundation is one of the three main shareholders of Strabag AG, which, like the construction subsidiary Züblin, takes on major orders in Germany. Züblin is involved in the Stuttgart 21 mammoth project: four new train stations, 120 km of new railway lines, two new districts and more.
Work, work, build a station: Stuttgart 21.
(Photo: Bernd Weißbrod/dpa)
Via Strabag, Deripaska was also indirectly one of the builders of the billion-euro project Stuttgart 21 and thus also benefited from orders from the state-owned company Deutsche Bahn in several ways. Until mid March. Strabag announced that Haselsteiner’s private foundation had left the long-term syndicate agreement with the Russian Rasperia. The plan to take over the Russian share had previously failed. Deripaska is a partner in Rasperia; and Rasperia, in turn, holds a good quarter of Strabag’s shares.
Strabag boss Thomas Birtel explained that the termination of the syndicate contract would create “clear conditions”. The management is ready to take all legally possible measures to avert damage to the company. According to Birtel, this applies in particular to the payment of dividends in view of the sanctions imposed by Great Britain and Canada. In plain language: Deripaska should no longer receive any money from Austria. In the US, the oligarch has been on the sanctions lists for some time.
One can be curious about the reasoning, should the billionaire really be on the EU sanctions list this time. Deripaska is or was active with his companies in a number of sectors (cars, aviation, construction, mechanical engineering, aluminum, agriculture) and is considered to be particularly close to the Kremlin. Sochi airport, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, is said to be part of his empire. That was one of Putin’s many prestige projects.
Deripaska himself acts as if he has little to do with Putin. A spokeswoman for him said when asked by SZ that the previous sanctions against the oligarch were based on false allegations. It is wrong to claim that he is close to Putin. Since the enactment of US sanctions in 2018, Deripaska has stepped down from leadership positions and now devotes himself almost exclusively to social projects around the world, from education, culture and healthcare to activities aimed at solving some of the most pressing issues such as climate change and address poverty.
The USA, Canada and Great Britain and now apparently also the EU see it differently.