UNSANCTIONED

Alexander Abramov

$5.5 bil

After Russia’s financial collapse in 1998, Abramov bought up steel companies and coal mines at bargainbasement prices. Today he’s chairman of the board of Evraz, Russia’s largest steel producer.

Vagit Alekperov

$10.5 bil

A former Caspian Sea oil rig worker and deputy minister of oil and gas in the last Soviet government, Alekperov founded Lukoil in 1991 as a stateowned enterprise. He took it private two years later. It now produces 2% of the world’s oil. Seen as comparatively independent, Alekperov remains unsanctioned, likely because he is viewed by the West as a counterweight to state-owned Rosneft’s sanctioned boss, Igor Sechin.

Igor Altushkin

$1.8 bil

A scrap metal trader in the early 1990s, Altushkin is the founder and largest shareholder of the Russian Copper Company, the country’s third-largest copper producer. He’s a key supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church; Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship in 2017.

Andrei Guriev

$4.8 bil

The former communist committee leader got his start at Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s investment

company, Menatep. After Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2003, Guriev bought out his former boss’ stake in fertilizer manufacturer PhosAgro. His son, Andrei A. Guriev, is PhosAgro’s CEO and was sanctioned by the EU on March 9.

Vladimir Lisin

$18.4 bil

Lisin cut his teeth in Russia’s brutal aluminum wars of the 1990s. He managed factories for Trans-World Group, a collection of commodities traders with stakes in aluminum smelters. Trans-World was later investigated for bank fraud by Russian authorities. In 1995, Lisin himself was reportedly interviewed by Russian police in connection with the death of a local politician; he denied wrongdoing. Today he chairs NLMK Group, a big manufacturer of steel products.

Vladimir Litvinenko

$900 mil

Since 1994, Litvinenko has been rector of Saint Petersburg Mining University, where Putin wrote a 1997 dissertation (alleged by the Brookings Institution to have been plagiarized) on the city’s mineral resources. He owns more than one-fifth of PhosAgro, which he was given for his political support and lobbying, sources tell Forbes. Litvinenko claims he obtained the stake in return for consulting services.

Iskander Makhmudov

$3.6 bil

The Uzbekistan-born Makhmudov is the main owner of metals conglomerate UGMK, which controls 300 mining companies scattered across Russia. In 2003, Makhmudov and his former business partner Oleg Deripaska were accused in American courts of leading a “massive racketeering scheme.” They denied it, and the lawsuit was eventually dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. UGMK spent $100 million building the Shayba ice arena for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, which it gave to the Russian government after the games.

Leonid Mikhelson

$14 bil

The founder and chairman of natural-gas producer Novatek and a 36% shareholder in petrochemical company Sibur, Mikhelson bought some of his Sibur shares from Kirill Shamalov, Putin’s former son-in-law. Sanctioned oligarch Gennady Timchenko is his partner in both companies.

Vladimir Potanin

$17.3 bil

A former Soviet bureaucrat, he served briefly as Boris Yeltsin’s deputy prime minister in 1996 and 1997 and helped oversee the privatization of various state-run enterprises. Potanin spent $2.5 billion developing a ski resort, snowboard park and freestyle skiing center for the 2014 Olympics. He runs Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest nickel producer. Following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, he stepped down from the board of the Guggenheim Museum foundation, on which he served for two decades.

Dmitry Rybolovlev

$6.6 bil

Built his fortune investing in newly privatized shares in the 1990s. He sold his stake in Uralkali, Russia’s largest producer of potassium fertilizer, for $5.3 billion in 2010. He has spent roughly $1 billion on property in Europe, including $400 million for La Belle Époque, a Monaco penthouse in which he lives. He also owns Skorpios, a Greek island, and soccer team AS Monaco.