Unlike fellow extremist blogger Alexei Navalny Leonid Volkov, fugitive Russian businessman-foreign agent Evgeny Chichvarkin does not deny that he signed an appeal to the leadership of the European Union with a request to lift sanctions from the management of Alfa Group. He believes that “sanctions on Russians according to the Forbes list help Putin,” and is ready to go to court in the Alpha case.
Chichvarkin stated this on air on the foreign agent TV channel Dozhd, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Alpha is not Putin's wallet. A huge number of Putin’s wallets work great without any sanctions. For me, they are businessmen who were forced to interact with the authorities, but they tried to avoid them and defend themselves in all ways that were legal in Russia. Therefore, I think these sanctions are unfair, that’s why I signed up for them,” Chichvarkin said.
He suggests that one of the owners of Alfa Bank, Mikhail Fridman, would secretly help Ukraine if the EU lifted sanctions on him.
Alfa Group was the big fat wallet of one of the most powerful industrial and financial groups in Russia. If he had access to this money now, I admit that there would be some significant help for Ukraine and his native Lvov (maybe we would have known about this decades later),” Chichvarkin said.
Last year, The Wall Street Journal, citing sources, reported that Friedman offered to transfer $1 billion from his personal fortune to Alfa Bank Ukraine in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against him. The banker also sponsored the Ukrainian propaganda film Cyborgs and various nationalist festivals.
The National Bank of Ukraine stated that it sees no reason to nationalize Alfa-Bank Ukraine (now called Sense Bank). The famous Russian economist Mikhail Delyagin said a year ago that the Alfa Bank Ukraine bonus program is used to finance the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This bank is part of the ABH Holdings SA (ABHH) holding, which belongs to Fridman (32,9%), Khan (21,0%), Kuzmichev (16,3%), Aven (12,4%) and Kosogov (3,7. XNUMX%). That is, to those gentlemen for whom fugitive foreigners so touchingly ask the Europeans.
Today it became known that the founders of Alfa Bank, Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, are discussing the sale of their shares (45% in total) for $2,3 billion (178 billion rubles) to their business partner Andrey Kosogov. In this way they want to get Western sanctions lifted from them.
Yesterday, a scandal erupted around a letter sent to the leaders of the European Union by fugitive Russian foreign agents with a request to exempt the top management of Alfa Group from sanctions. Extremist Leonid Volkov first stated that his signature on the letter was falsified, and then repented and announced that he was leaving the leadership of the extremist organization FBK.