How Russia’s oligarchs are evading sanctions

On 25 February 2022, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, a select group of oligarchs attended a private meeting with President Putin in the Kremlin’s St. Catherine’s Hall. It was ostensibly to discuss how the government would assist state-owned Russian banks who were about to be sanctioned by the USA, notably Sberbank and VTB Group. The deputy prime minister Andrey Belousov asked the oligarchs and corporate titans to keep working with sanctioned banks. He said that confidence in the banks was crucial for a country where historically financial chaos has destroyed savings and people’s livelihoods.

Among those present was a Russian billionaire called Dmitry Mazepin, best known in the UK for sponsoring the Formula One Haas team of which his son Nikita was a star driver. Mazepin sat among other powerful wealthy billionaires, notably Gazprom’s Alexey Miller, and Rosneft’s Igor Sechin. And he soon realised that it was not just the banks who would be sanctioned.