Igor Ivanovich Sechin (Russian:И́горь Ива́нович Се́чин; born 7 September 1960) is a Russianentrepreneur and government official, considered a close ally and "de facto deputy" ofVladimir Putin. He is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) ofRosneft.[2]
Sechin has been a confidant of Russian leader Vladimir Putin since the early 1990s. Sechin was chief of staff to Putin when he was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in 1994. When Putin became President in 2000, Sechin became his deputy chief of staff, overseeing security services and energy issues in Russia.[3][4] Putin appointed Sechin as chairman of Rosneft, the Russian state oil company in 2004.[5][4] He was as Deputy Prime Minister of Russia inVladimir Putin's cabinet from 2008 to 2012.[6] He is currently thechief executive officer,president and chairman of the management board ofRosneft.[5]
Sechin is often described as one of Putin's most conservative counselors and the leader of the Kremlin'sSiloviki faction, a lobby gathering former security services agents.[7][8][9][a] He has been sanctioned by some foreign governments following theRussian invasion of Ukraine. His nickname isDarth Vader.[10][11]
Sechin graduated fromLeningrad State University in 1984 as a linguist, fluent inPortuguese andFrench.[12] In the 1980s, Sechin worked inMozambique. He was officially a Soviet interpreter.[13] From 1991 to 1996, he worked atSaint Petersburg mayor's office, and became a chief of staff of the first deputy mayor,Vladimir Putin in 1994.[14] From 1996 to 1997, Sechin served as a deputy of Vladimir Putin, who worked in the presidential property management department. From 1997 to 1998, Sechin was the chief of the general department of the main control directorate attached to the president, led by Putin. In August 1999, he was appointed head of the secretariat of the prime minister of Russia, Putin. From 24 November 1999 until 11 January 2000, Sechin was the first deputy chief of theRussian presidential administration.
Between 31 December 1999 and May 2008, he was deputy chief ofPutin's administration.[b][c] In May 2008, he was appointed by PresidentDmitry Medvedev as a deputy prime minister in a move considered as a demotion.[23] According toStratfor, "Sechin acts as boss of Russia's gigantic state oil company Rosneft and commands the loyalty of the FSB. Thus, he represents the FSB's hand in Russia's energy sector."[24]
On 27 July 2004, Sechin became the successful and influential chairman of the board of directors of JSCRosneft, which swallowed up the assets of jailed tycoonMikhail Khodorkovsky'sYukos. He has additionally been president of Rosneft since May 2012. Khodorkovsky has accused Sechin of plotting to have him arrested and plundering his oil company: "The second as well as the first case were organised by Sechin. He orchestrated the first case against me out of greed and the second out of cowardice."[25] In 2008, Sechin allegedly blocked the replacement of the AAR consortium[clarification needed] withGazprom in theTNK-BP joint venture.[26][d]
In 2008, Sechin was involved with theBP oil company and did private negotiations with the BP's CEOBob Dudley.[27] In 2008,Hugo Chávez said that the idea for Venezuelan nuclear energy program came from Sechin. Sechin negotiated deals on weapons and nuclear technology deliveries to Venezuela.[28][29] In July 2009, Sechin negotiated deals with Cuba that brought Russia into deep-water drilling in theGulf of Mexico.[30]
Sechin also presides over the board of directors of theUnited Shipbuilding Corporation, and helped with negotiations with France over the purchase of fourMistral-class ships. Sechin argued that two ships should be constructed in Russia and two in France, as opposed to the initial offer that only one be constructed in Russia.[31] Piotr Żochowski, of the Polish Center for Eastern Studies, argued that "it cannot be ruled out that Sechin's stance on this issue results from his personal financial involvement in the St Petersburg shipbuilding industry".[31]
On 12 April 2011, Sechin resigned from the board of Rosneft uponPresident Medvedev's 31 March 2011 order for senior officials to resign from large companies.[32] After Vladimir Putin became President of Russia in May 2012, he later resigned as vice prime minister on 21 May 2012 and rejoined the executive board of Rosneft as chairman and became the executive secretary for the Russia Federation's commission on the development strategy of the fuel and energy complex and environmental safety (Russian:комиссии по вопросам стратегии развития ТЭКа и экологической безопасности) in June.[33][34][e]
In December 2014, aCNBC article noted that Sechin is "widely believed to be Russia's second-most powerful person" after President Putin.[38] In December 2017,The Guardian noted that Sechin "is widely seen as the second most powerful man in Russia after Vladimir Putin".[39]
Sechin was instrumental in the arrest and trial of Putin's former minister of economy, Alexei Ulyukaev, charged and found guilty of soliciting a bribe from Sechin. The verdict was delivered after hearing testimony from Sechin in a closed trial, and is another indicator, according to theFinancial Times, of the power wielded by Sechin in Russian politics.[45]
In November 2018, Sechin released a statement at the first Russian-Chinese Energy Business Forum in Beijing, about increased levels of cooperation between Rosneft and Chinese owned energy companies, citing "increased protectionism and threats of trade wars" as a reason for the cooperation.[46][47] Agreements of cooperation were signed between Rosneft and ChineseHengli Group and include expansion in exploration as well as production and refining.[48]
On 20 March 2014, the United States governmentsanctioned Sechin in response to the Russian government's role in the ongoingunrest in Ukraine. The sanctions include a travel ban to the United States, freezing of all assets of Sechin in the United States and a ban on business transactions between American citizens and corporations and Sechin and businesses he owns.[49][50] Closely associated with Sechin, Rosneft is on the Sectoral Sanctions Identification (SSI) List.[51]
On 28 February 2022, in relation to theRussian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union blacklisted Sechin and had all his assets frozen.[52] In March, the UK government imposed sanctions which involvedfreezing Sechin's assets and a travel ban.[53][54] Two superyachts belonging to Sechin, theAmore Vero and theCrescent, had been seized by Spanish and Italian authorities by mid-March as a consequence.[55]
With Marina, he has a daughter, Inga (b. 1982), who graduated from theSaint Petersburg Mining University and, as of 2018, works at Surgutneftegasbank (Russian:Сургутнефтегазбанк).[69] Inga married Dmitry Ustinov (b. 1979), aRussian intelligence agent and graduate of theFSBAcademy,[70] and son of formerProsecutor General and current Plenipotentiary Envoy to theSouthern Federal DistrictVladimir Ustinov,[g] in 2003. Inga and Dmitry had a son on 4 July 2005.[71][72] She divorced him and, later, she married Timerbulat Karimov (Russian:Тимербулат Каримов) (b. 1974), a former investment banker and senior vice-president ofVTB Bank from October 2011 until February 2014. He is on the board of directors for the Russian Copper Company (Russian:АО «Русская медная компания») which is the third largest in Russia and owned by Igor Altushkin. Since September 2015, she is the only owner of the Moscow based company Khoroshiye Lyudi orGood People (Russian:ООО «Хорошие люди»), which on 4 December 2015, became a 40% owner of the Novgorod Agropark (Russian:ООО «Новгородский агропарк»),[h] a turkey farm located inVeliky Novgorod.[73][74][75][76]
After the demotion of Vladimir Ustinov in 2006, Sechin reportedly arranged the appointment ofAlexander Bastrykin, another ally of his, as Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office in 2007 in order to retain his influence.[77][78][79]
His son Ivan (b. 1989), from his marriage to Marina, graduated from theLomonosov business school at Moscow State University and worked closely with Igor at Rosneft, as of 2018, as First Deputy Director of the Department of Joint Offshore Projects.[80] Ivan was sanctioned by the U.S. in February 2022.[81] Ivan died on 5 February 2024 under "bizarre circumstances". He was at his home mansion in the Moscow region and woke in the middle of the night complaining to his wife of kidney pain. His security service immediately called an ambulance, but they made a mistake and didn't provide the correct address of the mansion. As a result the ambulance took two hours to arrive, by which time Ivan died. The official diagnosis was blood clot. His father sought an investigation into the security detail.[82]
Varvara is his daughter from his marriage to Olga.[62][80]
^Oleg Vladimirovich Feoktistov (Russian:Олег Владимирович Феоктистов; born 3 July 1964, Moscow Oblast),[15] also known as "Oleg the Big" or "General Fix" or "General Ficus", served as a border guard in Karelia with Ivan Ivanovich Tkachev (Russian:Иван Иванович Ткачёв; born 1970), who later would head the "K" Directorate of the SEB of the FSB beginning in 2016 after the resignation of Viktor Voronin (Russian:Виктор Воронин),[16] and fought with theSoviet Army during theSoviet–Afghan War where he met the KGB military counterintelligence officer Sergei Shishin (Russian:Сергей Шишин), who later became the head of the special forces of the FSB CSS, and then the head of the FSB Economic Support Service.[17] Shishin guided Feoktistov but became embroilled in scandals during 2007 after which Shishin transferred to the Office of seconded employees, then seconded toVTB Bank, and three years later he joined the management ofRusHydro and the Igor Sechin associatedRosneft.[17] Feoktistov graduated from the FSB Academy and, in 2004, headed the newly formed FSB's Internal Security Directorate also known as the 6th Service or CSS (Russian:«Шестерка») of the FSB, which is responsible for the operational support of criminal cases andThe New Times called "Sechin's Special Forces" because it was created on an initiative of Igor Sechin while Igor Sechin was the deputy head of the presidential administration.[15][17][18][19] Declassified in 2017, Feoktistov stood at the origins of the creation of the 6th Service of the CSS of the FSB, which is nicknamed the "Sechin special forces", led almost all high-profile arrests of governors and mayors.[20] In September 2016, Feoktistov officially became the head of the security service of Rosneft.[15] FSB CSS, Colonel-General Oleg Feoktistov, seconded in October 2017 as an adviser to Peresvet Bank (Russian:банку «Пересвет»), which had the Russian Orthodox Church as the main shareholder, but receiving rehabilitation by the Rosneft owned All-Russian Bank for Regional Development (Russian:Всероссийский банк развития регионов). Igor Sechin sent his confidant Feoktistov to control the situation and exorcise demons in the Russian Orthodox Church: Feoktistov was nicknamed "the head of the CSS of the Russian Orthodox Church."[20]
^Revealed in a 16 August 2012 article inForbes, several of Sechin's Rosneft employees gained access toVyacheslav Volodin associated Prisma terminals (Russian:Терминалы «Призма»), which are also called Volodin's Prisma (Russian:Призма Володина), following the4 December 2011 Russian legislative elections and theSnow revolution, during which Volodin actively used his Prisma terminal, which he received on the eve of the elections, to counter dissidents in Russia. According to its developers at the Medialogia company (Russian:«Медиалогия»), Prisma tracks in real time 60 million sources and shows the dynamics of negative and positive comments from blogs on a particular event, can build graphs of bot attacks and individually track topics. The website for the Medialogia Company states that Prisma "monitors activities in social media that lead to an increase in social tension: escalation of riots, protest sentiments, extremism; discussion of the level of prices, wages, pensions; problems of housing and communal services, infrastructure, medicine and others." (Russian:"отслеживает в соцмедиа активности, приводящие к росту социальной напряжённости: нагнетание беспорядков, протестные настроения, экстремизм; обсуждение уровня цен, зарплат, пенсий; проблемы ЖКХ, инфраструктуры, медицины и другие")[35][36][37]
^Also, Page met with Igor Diveykin (Russian:Игорь Дивейкин), who was a deputy chief for internal policy with interests about United States elections during the meeting and, since 22 March 2021, has headedthe State Duma Apparatus replacingTatyana Gennadievna Voronova (Russian:Татьяна Геннадьевна Воронова).[41][43]
^The other owners are 40% by Ildus Fahretdinov (Russian:Ильдус Фахретдинов) through an Ufa "Investment Company" LLC (Russian:ООО «Инвестиционная компания») and 20% byOleg Chernyavsky through the Moscow "Negotsiant TK" LLC (Russian:ООО «Негоциант ТК»).[73] In 2015, Russia produced nearly 150 thousand tons of turkey by slaughter weight. The Novgorod Agropark expects to produce from 22 to 30 thousand tons per year.
^Стогней, Анастасия (Stogney, Anastasia); Малкова, Ирина (Malkova, Irina) (31 July 2019)."«Коммерческие ребята»: как ФСБ крышует российские банки" ["Commercial Guys": How the FSB Protects Russian Banks].The Bell (thebell.io) (in Russian). Archived fromthe original on 24 September 2024. Retrieved1 October 2024.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Бурибаев, Айдар (Buribaev, Aidar); Баданин, Роман (Badanin, Roman) (15 August 2012)."Как власти читают ваши блоги: расследование Forbes" [How authorities read your blogs: Forbes investigation].Forbes (in Russian). Archived fromthe original on 20 August 2021. Retrieved1 October 2024.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^"Платформа ПРИЗМА" [PRISMA Platform].«Медиалогия» (mlg.ru) (in Russian). September 2024. Archived fromthe original on 1 September 2024. Retrieved1 October 2024.
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