24 Facts About Vladimir Potanin

Vladimir Olegovich Potanin is a Russian oligarch.

Vladimir Potanin acquired his wealth notably through the controversial loans-for-shares program in Russia in the early to mid-1990s.

In 1993, Vladimir Potanin became president of the newly formed United Export Import Bank .

Vladimir Potanin was a close supporter of Anatoly Chubais who introduced Vladimir Potanin to Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

In 1995, Vladimir Potanin was instrumental in the creation of the "loans for shares" auctions that became a pillar of Russia's post-Soviet economic reform.

In 1997, Boris Jordan introduced George Soros to Vladimir Potanin which led to the Soros Group supported by Vladimir Potanin, Anatoly Chubais, and Alfred Koch to have the controlling stake in the Russian communications monopoly over the Berezovsky-Gusinsky group.

Since August 1998, Vladimir Potanin has held the positions of both president and chairman of the board of directors of the Interros Company.

On November 25,1998, Vladimir Potanin recommended Boris Jordan to be Chairman of Sidanko which Jordan held until February 1999 when he stepped down.

However, Vladimir Potanin refused the deal and it never came to pass.

Vladimir Potanin was named as one of the biggest polluters in the Russian Arctic, and the city of Norilsk was named among the most polluted places on Earth.

Vladimir Potanin was inspired to develop the Rosa Khutor ski resort in the Mzymta valley near Sochi after skiing with Putin in Austria in 2003.

Vladimir Potanin invested more than $2 billion into the resort after Sochi was picked for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in 2007.

Vladimir Potanin allegedly urged Putin to approve expansion in the area to create a "Russian Courchevel", despite oppositional pressure from environmental groups who claimed it would further damage the region.

Between 2005 and 2010, Vladimir Potanin invested $500,000 in starting a leopard breeding initiative in the Mzymta valley.

Vladimir Potanin became the first major Russian investor to acquire assets in Iran after the sanctions against the country over its missile program were lifted in 2016.

Vladimir Potanin is a member of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, a lobby group that sent Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev a proposal for alternative cryptocurrency regulations in October 2018.

In May 2015, Vladimir Potanin was named a co-defendant in a case in which state-owned Vnesheconombank was looking for damages for losses from the liquidation of Roskhlebprodukt, in which he indirectly owned a stake.

Vladimir Potanin was a member of the Civic Chamber of Russia until 2014.

In 2016, Potanin's charitable organization, the Vladimir Potanin Foundation, donated works of art to be displayed at the Centre Pompidou's exhibition of Russian and Soviet art along with another 40 donors including Vladimir Semenikhin, the Tsukanov Family Foundation and others.

Vladimir Potanin was sanctioned by the UK government in 2022 in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian War.

The FBI announced in July 2018 that ByteGrid, a data solutions provider contracted to store Maryland State Board of Elections data, was owned by a private equity firm in which Vladimir Potanin is an investor.

In 2014, Vladimir Potanin married for a second time, to Ekaterina, with whom he has two children.

Vladimir Potanin is the only Russian to have signed The Giving Pledge, with a promise to donate at least half of his wealth to charity.

The claim was preceded by a smaller claim of $7 billion in 2015, after Vladimir Potanin had offered a divorce settlement including a monthly allowance of $250,000 as well as real estate in Moscow, London and New York.