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Some controversial figures have so far evaded Canadian government sanctions

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02 Mar 2022 • 3 March 2022 • 3 minute read • 28 Responses Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich walks past the High Court in London on November 16, 2011. Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich walks past the High Court in London on November 16, 2011. Photo by REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/File Photo

NATO governments have promised to crack down on the dealings of Russian oligarchs and corporations, but some controversial figures with significant investment ties to western Canada have so far evaded Canadian government sanctions.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has said that all Canadian financial institutions are prohibited from transacting with the Russian Central Bank. And Canadian authorities have identified dozens of Russian individuals and entities for sanctions in recent days, freezing the assets of 58 targets and prohibiting all transactions with them.

But one of the most recognizable Russian elites excluded from the Canadian sanctions list is billionaire Roman Abramovich, who is best known outside his home country as the owner of Chelsea FC, one of the world’s most popular football teams.

Abramovich, who had come under intense political scrutiny in the UK, said on March 2 that he will sell Chelsea and donate the proceeds to Ukraine, the Financial Times reported. The team is only its most visible asset in the West. Among other things, Abramovich is the largest shareholder in Evraz PLC, a steelmaking and mining company with operations in Regina, Calgary and Edmonton.

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Evraz has supplied most of the pipeline to the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX), which will expand the movement of oil and refined products from the Edmonton area to a terminal on the Pacific coast for export. Evraz’s agreement with the pipeline’s original owner, Kinder Morgan, provided 250,000 tons of pipe for the project.

Alexander Abramov, Alexander Frolov, Evgeny Shvidler and Maxim Vorobyev — all wealthy Russians — are also among the UK-based company’s six largest shareholders, according to Bloomberg. None of them are on the Canadian sanctions list.

TMX was bought by the federal government in 2018, making Evraz’s exclusion from sanctions a sensitive issue for the Trudeau administration so far.

“The steel supplied by Evraz for the TMX pipeline was fully delivered in the second quarter of 2021, when sanctions had not yet been in place and the war had not yet started,” Treasury Secretary Chrystia Freeland said on a statement this week. Press conference.

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Abramovich is not the only billionaire with Canadian interests to come to media attention following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Oligarch Igor Makarov. Oligarch Igor Makarov. Photo by Thomas Frey/Photo Alliance via Getty Images Files

A lesser-known figure with investments in the Canadian oil slick is billionaire Igor Makarov. The Turkmenistan-born businessman and former Russian cyclist owns a 19.5% stake in Spartan Delta Corp, making him the largest shareholder in the Calgary-based natural gas producer.

The company said in a statement this week that Makarov’s stake, through Switzerland-based Areti Energy SA, has no control or veto power. “Spartan has no other relationship with Areti outside of its shareholding in Spartan, nor is such a relationship being considered now or in the future,” the company said.

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A US PR agency for Areti strongly denied to the Financial Post that Makarov has links with Putin.

Makarov made his fortune as a natural gas supplier to former Soviet states and eventually expanded into exploration and processing in Russia in the mid 1990s and 2000s as the founder of a company headquartered in Moscow known as Itera – a precursor to Areti, according to the company’s website. Itera was acquired in 2013 by the Russian state oil company Rosneft.

Makarov was identified in 2018 on a US treasury list of Russian oligarchs — a list that critics have charged for allegedly copying names from a Forbes list of world billionaires.

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Makarov is not on Canada’s list of Russian oligarchs targeted by sanctions.

The federal government has imposed sanctions since 2014 when Russian forces invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine — more than 440 individuals and entities have been singled out since then.

The Trudeau administration has hinted that more is on the way.

“We are looking carefully at the assets of all Russian oligarchs and Russian companies in Canada,” Freeland said on March 1. “We look at them and everything is on the table.”

Freeland added: “If we are really determined to assist Ukraine, if the stakes in its fight are as high as I think they are, we have to be honest with ourselves, I have to be honest with the Canadians, that there is some collateral damage to Canada.”

— With files from Bloomberg News

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This post Meet the Russian oligarchs with investment ties to Western Canada not named in Ottawa’s sanctions

was original published at “https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oil-gas/meet-the-russian-oligarchs-with-investment-ties-to-western-canada-not-named-in-ottawas-sanctions”

Categories: Finance

Author: Frederick Sullivan

Hannah Sullivan: As a seasoned journalist, Hannah's blog provides hard-hitting analysis and in-depth reporting on major crime stories. Her thorough coverage and fearless reporting make her a trusted voice in the field.