Andrey Rotenberg. "Friends of the Prime Minister" Brothers Arkady, Boris Rotenberg, what links the tatami and Gazprom. Investor from the "high road"

11.03.2020

The name of Arkady Rotenberg is often mentioned when talking about his good friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, no high-level connections would have saved his reputation without a responsible and executive approach to each business project.

Arkady Rotenberg occupies the 40th line of the position of the richest Russian businessmen. But in addition to business projects, he has a solid experience in coaching and scientific activities.

FULL NAME: Rotenberg Arkady Romanovich.
Date of Birth: 15.12.1951.
Education: Leningrad Institute of Physical Education named after Lesgaft.
Business Start Date/Age: 1991, 40 years old.
Type of activity at the start: sports cooperative "Owl".
Current activity: billionaire, owner of the Stroygazmontazh holding, equity participation in TPS Avia, OJSC Minudobreniya, SMP Bank.
Current state:$3,000 million, according to Forbes in 2018.

One gets the impression that when state orders are shouted out in front of a slender line of oligarchs, the oligarch Rotenberg, no worse than Gaidai's hero, constantly takes the initiative: “I. Me. And I'll take it too. It is intriguing to find out in more detail what is the secret of success in the history of the king of state orders Arkady Rotenberg.

Sports childhood

Arkady Romanovich Rotenberg was born into a Jewish family on December 15, 1951 in one of the Leningrad maternity hospitals. The national pragmatism of the parents showed itself: they made sure that he grew up as a physically hardy boy, and therefore sent him to the acrobatics sports section. At the age of 12, Arkady became interested in judo, where after some time he met a guy named Vova Putin (a key place in the biography of our hero).

The guys quickly became friends and even often trained in the same pair. Sport became their common hobby for many years, and for Arkady it even grew into something more - a profession and even a whole science.

The mentor of our hero Rakhlin Anatoly recalls: the teenager Arkady could well have received the champion title - he gave such great hopes among the rest, and besides, he always emerged victorious in city competitions.

Work as a coach

After military service, Arkady goes for higher education to the Lesgaft Leningrad Institute of Physical Education. He successfully graduated in 1978. The guy does not even doubt the choice of his path - the guiding star of the sport promised to cover his further professional coaching activities.

Our hero devoted 15 years of his life to this work. And after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, he quickly got his bearings and organized the Owl cooperative, which specialized in holding competitions in various types of martial arts. Arkady taught children the techniques of sambo and judo, at one time he even served as director of the Youth Sports School.

Photo 1. The friendship between Putin and Rotenberg began on the basis of love for judo.
Source: niklife.com.ua

By the way, communication with Putin, already in adulthood, was resumed at the initiative of the future president. Returning from East Germany in 1991, he himself sought out Rotenberg and asked him to become his partner in sparring. Only now both trained in the higher school of sportsmanship.

Further business projects

In 1992, the brother of our hero, Boris, receives a lucrative offer to coach judo in the Finnish capital. It is he who convinces Arkady to engage in barter deliveries of goods from his northern neighbor to the Russian Federation (fortunately, there was capital made up in the business of organizing competitions).

It all started with barter supplies for the construction of main gas pipelines. Gazprom became the main partner (not without the support of an influential friend). To ensure security, Arkady opened security offices (JSC "Baltic Business Partners", "Grant", "Shield", "Rotna").

In 1998, V. Putin advised him to organize, together with Gennady Timchenko (then a novice oil trader), a judo sports club Yavara-Neva. Vladimir Vladimirovich himself became the honorary head of the organization. By 2010, the organization had already won the European Championships six times.

Interesting fact: a valuable plot of land on Bychiy Island was allocated for the construction of the institution. It is impossible not to note the quality of the execution of the idea.

Another brief digression from the biographical chronology of the hero: many say that the formation of a businessman's career began with the "protection" of stalls. Which, in principle, is not without plausibility, given his knowledge of martial arts. Allegedly (not officially confirmed anywhere), the aspiring entrepreneur made friends with many leaders of criminal gangs.

The year 2000 was a turning point in the career of a young businessman - since that time, he has been the head or co-owner of a number of institutions and companies (among them - "Pipe Metal Roll", "Pipe Industry" (both arose as a result of the decision of the presidential administration to find a single supplier for the monopolist "Gazprom"), "Talion", the Ufa "Investcapital" and the Latvian Multibanka. However, the main profit was still given by Gazprom.

And in 2008, Rotenberg, on the basis of five construction contractors bought from Gazprom, created the Stroygazmontazh holding (SGM-group). The organization specialized in the construction of all the same gas pipelines and power lines on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Photo 2. "SGM-group" immediately became an unconditional monopoly in the field of government orders.
Source: vspro.info

The company immediately received a large contract for the construction of a gas pipeline without a tender. The project passed along the entire Black Sea coast, through Dzhubga, Lazarevskoye and Sochi. And in 2009, the construction of the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok branch began.

Photo 3. Rotenberg began to learn how to build large-scale objects.
Source: im2.kommersant.ru

"SGM-Group"" was a serious competitor to other contractors - for example, "Stroytransgaz" Timchenko Gennady. But, unlike the latter, Arkady never let down government projects.

In 2010, the business of Arkady Rotenberg was replenished with a couple more major acquisitions - TEK Mosenergo and the Northern European Pipe Project. In the same year, the businessman and his team joined the board of nine distilleries.

Further - more: in 2010, Rotenberg became a co-owner of Mostotrest OJSC (one of the largest companies involved in building a highway from Moscow to St. Petersburg). Interestingly, during the construction of the route, all prohibitions on cutting down forests in the Khimki forest were violated. Public protests were ignored.

Loyalty to power

In connection with the growing opportunities, many have increasingly questioned the Kremlin's special predisposition towards the businessman. The billionaire denies such statements addressed to him. But the numbers speak for themselves: in 2008-2013 alone, the Rotenberg brothers received contracts funded by the budget in the amount of 1 trillion rubles.

Attention! This amount is commensurate with the annual budget of the capital of the Russian Federation!

Photo 4. There is a lot of talk about the connections between Arkady Rotenberg and the Kremlin.
Source: profi-forex.org

Own banking structure

The topic of financial turnover deserves special attention. Rotenberg felt the need for his own banking structure back in the early 2000s. To do this, in 2001, Arkady became a co-founder of SMP Bank (Sevmorput). A little later, Boris began to help him in this. In 2002, the brothers also acquired control over MBTS Bank.

The bank immediately became popular among small and medium-sized businesses. For example, in 2007, financial transactions began with Rosspirtprom. Another major client is Evrazholding.

Today this project can be called successful and dynamically developing. SMP-Bank is represented today in 40 cities (which means at least 100 branches and 900 ATMs). And in 2008, the Bashkir bank Investcapital also became the property of the Rotenbergs.

It is known that the entrepreneur had questions in various areas of business - among his acquisitions - the share of the offshore company Kadina Ltd (this is the main holder of securities from the Novorossiysk ICC). Another project is the SMP-insurance company.

Information about recent projects

In 2011, the businessman acquired Minudobreniya OJSC through the company controlled by him Laguz Management Limited. This asset is the largest producer of mineral fertilizers.

There are several other major acquisitions of the same period - the joint ownership of the Moskva Hotel and the Paritet construction company (the latter specializes in the construction of monolithic buildings).

In 2013, the billionaire becomes a member of the committee of the International Judo Federation. In the same year, another significant event took place - Rotenberg holds the post of chairman of the Prosveshchenie publishing house. This enterprise was once the largest supplier of educational literature in the Land of the Soviets.

In 2014, he buys out his brother's share in the Stroygazmontazh holding. In the same year, Arkady receives a general contract for the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Strait, which, according to the plan, should connect the Kuban and Crimea. By the way, the cost of the project is equal to 228 billion rubles.

Photo 5. The bridge across the Kerch Strait is an incredible project in its scale.
Source: forum-ukraina.net

In the same year, Rotenberg also became the owner of a controlling stake in the Red Square television group.

Other activities of the billionaire

Arkady Romanovich continues to develop in teaching and coaching activities. The athlete defended his doctoral thesis in pedagogy, became the author of 30 teaching aids, in which he described in detail the issues related to the organization of the training process.

The Rotenberg brothers presided over the football (Boris) and hockey (Arkady) Dynamo clubs - both at the same time and left these institutions in 2015. Arkady decided to focus more on popularizing children's hockey - he even headed the board of the Russian Hockey Federation. And in 2018, the Russian team even won gold at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

“That summer day in 2005 completely changed the life of a simple St. Petersburg driver, Pavel Yakshis, who worked as a truck driver. He was driving his Gazelle along Tikhoretsky Prospekt of the northern capital, when a concrete mixer suddenly stopped in front of him.

To avoid a collision, Yakshis swerved to the right and immediately heard a loud, annoyed beep. It turned out that he had accidentally clipped a black Toyota Land Cruiser and a Mitsubishi Pagero. The jeeps overtook Yakshis' Gazelle and stood up, blocking her path. From the first came two athletic men, dressed in colorful Hawaiian shirts, with gold chains around their necks, and with a springy gait went to Yakshis. One of them approached the door of the Gazelle and tried to pull Yakshis out. When he failed, he hit the driver hard in the face. He took out a traumatic pistol "Wasp" and threatened: "Now I will fire." This caused only a contemptuous smirk from the attacker, and he again hit Yakshis. Then the driver really fired, the rubber bullet hit the attacker in the chest, he pulled up his T-shirt, looked at the dent and muttered through his teeth: "Well, now my people will bury you."

Later, Yashkis wrote in his testimony to the investigation that the attackers resembled "brothers". But they weren't bandits. A simple driver had the misfortune to run into one of the most powerful people in the country, co-owner of the Northern Sea Route Bank, judoka and friend of President Vladimir Putin, Boris Rotenberg.

Two months later, the trial of Pavel Yakshis took place in the Vyborgsky Court of St. Petersburg. At first, the prosecutor's office accused Pavel, who himself appeared at the police station, of "attempted murder," but then the case was reclassified as "hooliganism." Yakshis pleaded not guilty and stated that he fired accidentally, evading the blow of the attacker. In the end, the judge qualified the charge as "intentional infliction of minor bodily harm" and imposed a fine of 20,000 rubles on the defendant.

Boris Rotenberg, who suffered during the conflict, did not appear at the court session. Yakshis told the newspapers that he would file a complaint with the City Court of St. Petersburg, but then he abandoned this idea. According to Forbes magazine, shortly after the trial, he left the trucking business and went into a monastery.

In the summer of 2005, neither Pavel Yakshis nor 99.9 percent of Russian citizens had the slightest idea who Boris Rotenterg was. Now the Rotenberg family is widely known, largely due to the road conflict. True, much larger than the one that took place in St. Petersburg ten years ago.

Billionaire Correspondence Student

Arkady is considered the head of the Rotenberg family. He was born in 1951 in Leningrad. Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences. Honored Judo Coach. In the list of the richest people in Russia, according to Forbes, he ranks 60th with a capital of $ 1.4 billion. Defendant of the list of economic sanctions of the USA and the EU. Divorced. Has 4 children. Ex-wife Natalya Rotenberg lives in the UK with their two common children - Varvara and Arkady.

In September 1964, Anatoly Rakhlin, a young St. Petersburg sambo coach, went around several schools in Leningrad, gathered a group of several boys and began to train them in a small gym. Among those who signed up for the section was 12-year-old Arkady Rotenberg, who had previously been involved in artistic gymnastics. The boy immediately attracted the attention of the coach. Mobile, stable, like a cat, quick-witted and stubborn. “They fought a lot on the streets,” Rakhlin recalled. “Of course, in St. Petersburg they had to defend themselves. And Arkady was very aggressive, he liked to hurt someone somewhere ...”

Apparently, he wanted to be strong, brave. I thought that Volodya was calm, and then it turned out that he was not, he was explosive.

Six months later, another boy signed up for Rakhlin's section - Volodya Putin, who lived nearby, in Baskov Lane. “I don’t know what his motivation was to start practicing SAMBO,” Rakhlin recalls of Putin. - Apparently, he wanted to be strong, courageous. I thought that Volodya was calm, and then it turned out that he was not, he was explosive. It seems to me that this attacking style remained with him for the rest of his life."

“The wise coach was right,” Russian political scientist Andrei Piontkovsky comments on Rakhlin’s memoirs. “In order to survive in his environment, a weak boy had to become quirky and cruel, be able to adapt to a strong one and never experience moral doubts and suffering. As a result, the yard wolf cub grew up in a strong and merciless wolf who forever remembered blows and always passionately wanted to jump higher in order to overcome that humiliating wall of inequality that he had faced since childhood.

Sport firmly connected Arkady Rotenberg and Vladimir Putin. Arkady, his brother Boris, who also began studying with Rakhlin, and Volodya Putin spent almost all their free time together. Training, cleaning the gym, visiting, traveling to competitions - all this brought them together. "I'm still friends with the people I worked with then," Putin admitted in a 2000 biography-interview "From the First Person."

However, some who knew the Rotenbergs well at that time gave them by no means flattering characteristics. Here, for example, is what the master of sports in sambo, a former KGB officer, Nikolai Vashchilin, who studied in the same section with Rakhlin, says about Arkady: “I know Arkady as a poor little Jewish boy. And suddenly not a millionaire, but a billionaire! he can't reach these numbers! He graduated from the correspondence department of the Institute of Physical Education! Correspondence. In our time, it was believed that if you study at the correspondence department at the Lesgaft Institute, then you are a fool. And suddenly he is a billionaire! "

Today Nikolai Vashchilin is a pensioner receiving 10,000 rubles in pension. After giving several interviews about Vladimir Putin and people from his inner circle, he tries not to leave the house and does not meet with old acquaintances.

Between OPG and FAC

Rotenberg's sports ties with Putin did not break even when Putin took over as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations (FAC) of the St. Petersburg mayor's office. In the early 1990s, Arkady helped Putin continue his judo classes. He performed with him in training as his sparring partner, since they were in the same weight class. Thanks to this, Rotenberg has been known since that time as "Putin's coach." In 1998, Arkady became the general director of the Yavara-Neva sports club, of which Vladimir Putin was elected president.

Of course, I don’t have a direct connection with Putin, but information about our successes is passed on to the right person.

"Can sports success bring benefits? Yes, if you play sports with Vladimir Putin," writes Forbes magazine. By the way, Arkady Rotenberg himself never hesitated to emphasize his connection with the president. Once he was asked if it helped him that the head of state himself took patronage over Yavara-Neva. Arkady replied: "What do you think? We are strengthened by a moral duty to the country and the president. After all, Putin is a real judoka." And then he added: "Of course, I have no direct connection with Putin, but information about our successes is passed to the right person." Rotenberg was cunning. Putin never refused to meet him, no matter how busy he was.

But back to the early 90s. Journalist Alexander Kostin published on the website сompromat.ru under the heading "The President tightens the screws on presumptuous St. Petersburg authorities." It claims that in the 1990s, judoka Arkady Rotenberg was engaged in "protection" of trade tents and had extensive connections with members of the so-called "Tambovskaya" organized criminal group, at that time the most powerful organized criminal group in St. Petersburg. The article, in particular, says that he was doing business with one of the leaders of the "Tambovskaya" - Oleg Shuster, co-owner of the Fei Long professional wushu club, and also one of the sponsors of the cult TV series "Streets of Broken Lanterns".

Shuster was a member of the upper echelon of the "Tambov", along with a former boxing coach, later a State Duma deputy on the LDPR list, Mikhail Glushchenko (nickname "Khokhol"), authorities Vasya "Bryansky", Styopa "Ulyanovsky" and Bob "Kemerovsky". Later, Rotenberg, thanks to connections with Putin, attached Schuster as an assistant to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government, Minister of Agriculture Alexei Gordeev.

According to Yevgeny Vyshenkov, a former employee of the Criminal Investigation Department, who later headed the St. Petersburg Agency for Journalistic Investigations, the Rotenbergs were nevertheless able to stay away from obvious crime. Vyshenkov tells such a story. While working in the Criminal Investigation Department, he somehow watched the negotiations in one of the St. Petersburg restaurants. The conversation was between several strong men and a two-meter Chechen nicknamed Orbi. Vyshenkov later learned that one of the men was Arkady Rotenberg. The case in question concerned an acquaintance of his who was "run over" by the Chechens. Rotenberg was ready for any surprises, but he could not maintain a conversation in specific slang, says the former opera.

At the same time, Arkady probably acted as an intermediary between the mayor's office and representatives of organized crime groups, with whom Vice Mayor Putin could not communicate due to his position. And there was a need for this - Vladimir Putin, for example, was in charge of the development of the gambling business in the city, and all the large St. Petersburg casinos were then controlled by the "Tambovskaya" organized criminal group.

“It was a time when everyone was doing everything,” says one of the first partners of Arkady Rotenberg, Levan Pirveli. He headed the Russian-Austrian joint venture that built the Metekhi five-star hotel in Tbilisi. The entrepreneur was going to build a similar hotel in St. Petersburg together with Arkady Rotenberg. Nothing came of this idea, but Rotenberg made "the most pleasant impression" on his partner with his connections and entrepreneurial talent.

Arkady's business began to develop more actively after his younger brother Boris Rotenberg returned to the northern capital from Finland.

Boris Rotenberg was born on January 3, 1957 in Leningrad. In 1978 Graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Physical Culture and Sports. P.F. Lesgaft. He played for the city's sambo team, was a winner of the USSR Championships and USSR Cups among youths and youth. Since 1992, coach of the professional judo club "Chikara" in Helsinki. Master of sports in judo (1974). Master of sports in sambo wrestling (1980). Entered the Forbes magazine rating, taking 100th place with a fortune of $ 700 million. Divorced, has two children.

Moscow "sublimation"

By the turn of the century, the Yavara-Neva club had become one of the country's most successful sports organizations, and in 2000, with the election of Vladimir Putin as president of Russia, the Rotenbergs' horizons expanded immeasurably.

Rotenberg passed his first test as an entrepreneur at the federal level in the fall of 1999, when Putin was still Russia's prime minister. Then he met a little-known businessman who sold alcohol and sporting goods, Sergei Zivenko. They became friends, and in February 2000, Rotenberg introduced Zivenko to the head of the presidential security service, Viktor Zolotov. According to the German magazine Spiegel, Zolotov facilitated the appointment of Zivenko to the post of general director of Rosspirtprom, which was transferred to about a hundred state-owned distilleries and distilleries. Rotenberg and Zivenko formalized their trade partnership by registering the wholesale company Zirot, which is located on one of the most prestigious streets in Moscow, Novy Arbat.

In 2000, Zivenko lost this post. Most likely, he was "eaten up" by Patrushev's people, who were eager to establish control over one of the most profitable business areas in Russia. However, Zivenko did not remain in the loser, he created the influential Kristall group, which included two large vodka factories. The Rotenberg brothers invested billions of rubles earned from the sale of vodka in the Northern Sea Route bank, founded by them in 2001.

Their property is absolutely protected, and their interests are comparable to those of the state.

"Rosspirtprom" is not the only state structure that turned out to be in the sphere of interests of the Rotenbergs. In 2008, Alexander Grigoriev, a KGB colleague and friend of Putin, who headed Rosrezerv, a giant procurement organization whose activities are largely classified, died suddenly. After the death of Grigoriev, Dmitry Gogin, the manager of one of the companies controlled by the Rotenbergs, became the deputy of the new head of Rosrezerv.

However, the largest state-owned enterprise with which the brothers established work was Gazprom.

“There is a layer of businessmen in Russia who are not afraid of any bureaucratic barriers and despise political risks,” Novaya Gazeta writes. “Their property is absolutely protected, and their interests are comparable to those of the state. They are untouchable. The doors of state companies are open to them. from the Russian Forbes list will gladly offer them a share in their own business."

In 2005, the director of corporate research at the British investment company Hermitage Capital Management (she advised the Hermitage fund, a minority shareholder of Gazprom), Vadim Kleiner, who claimed a seat on the board of directors of Gazprom, in his report named several intermediaries who received incomprehensible preferences from "Gazprom". One of them was Gaztaged.

This criticism cost the foreign investor dearly. In November 2005, Hermitage chief executive William Browder was banned from entering Russia. Vladimir Putin, answering journalists' questions about this, shrugged his shoulders and said that he did not know why this had happened. Putin put it roughly in the spirit that everyone who breaks the law is denied entry, and investors can hope for support.

Hermitage Capital Management worked in Russia for about ten years, Browder attracted about $4 billion in Western investments, but this did not save him. At first, Browder was not allowed into the country. In 2007, searches at the Hermitage followed. In 2008, the Russian Interior Ministry opened a criminal case against Browder and Hermitage closed its Russian office. Later, he led a campaign to investigate the theft of income tax paid by the foundation to the Russian budget in 2006, and the search for the killers of the lawyer of the foundation, Sergei Magnitsky, who revealed this theft.

In July 2013, by the verdict of a Russian court, Browder was sentenced in absentia to 9 years in a penal colony. The "Magnitsky case" has acquired the widest international resonance. However, this did not affect the business of the Rotenberg brothers. On the contrary, in the absence of Western competitors, who were cut off by decisive action by President Putin, their business began to flourish even more. In the spring of 2008, Gazprom sold five of its companies to Rotenberg's structures - Krasnodargazstroy, Volgogaz, Lengazspetsstroy, Spetsgazremstroy, and Volgogradneftemash.

Non-core, as Gazprom later announced, the assets were sold at a starting price of 8.4 billion rubles. Controlling stakes in these construction companies were acquired by Cypriot offshore companies. For the time being, the new owners did not show themselves in any way, but then extraordinary meetings of shareholders were held simultaneously in all companies, and as a result, the majority of seats on the boards of directors were received by representatives of NPV-engineering. The owner of this company is Arkady Rotenberg, and his son Igor heads its Board of Directors. This is how Stroygazmontazh was born. The corporate booklet reports that already in 2008, the revenue amounted to 54 billion rubles, and the number of employees - 11,000 people. The brainchild of the Rotenbergs, having ousted all competitors, became the main supplier of pipes and other equipment for the powerful Gazprom.

The activities of Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, however, are not limited to working with state-owned companies. In 2008, entrepreneurs Alexander Ponomarev and Alexander Skorobogatko took the Rotenbergs into their business, giving them 10 percent of the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port. State Duma deputy Ashot Yeghiazaryan attracted Arkady Rotenberg as a partner in the reconstruction of the Moskva Hotel. Ties with Vladimir Putin continued to function smoothly along the entire front. And the Rotenbergs took on everything that brought in a substantial income - and the trade in pipes, and the organization of shipping, and the production of vodka, and housing construction, and real estate.

Very often, large construction firms were stuffed into partners with the Rotenbergs. For example, the MSM-5 company attracted little-known Paritet LLC for cooperation. This company had neither workers nor construction equipment, the authorized capital was only 15,000 rubles. But the founders of Paritet are Arkady and Boris Rotenberg. Why does a large construction company need such cooperation? "Everyone has strengths. Someone knows how to build, someone has financial resources, someone has administrative resources," says Andrey Pankovsky, deputy general director and co-owner of DSK-1, one of Moscow's largest construction companies.

“The business of the Rotenbergs is trading in the right connections,” summed up the late political scientist Vladimir Pribylovsky, author of several books about Vladimir Putin’s St. Petersburg entourage. The former head of the Judo Federation, businessman Vladimir Shestakov, who emigrated to Latvia, thinks the same way. “They solve issues with one call that took me months,” Shestakov said about the Rotenbergs.

However, the activities of the Rotenbergs were not always greeted with jubilation by other "sharks" of Russian business. On one of the autumn days of 2011, employees of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) raided the office of the company "Northern European Pipe Project" of the Rotenberg brothers on Michurinsky Prospekt in Moscow with an inspection. Why did the FAS become interested in the Rotenbergs in 2011, although their companies, the main suppliers of pipes for Gazprom, have been operating since 2005? The check, as the Vedomosti newspaper found out, began by order of the then Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who, like the Rotenbergs, is in Putin's inner circle. But in the case of the Rotenbergs, Sechin had to retreat.

Black marks don't bother them

“If I hadn’t been promoted as a friend of Putin, the business would have been worse,” Arkady Rotenberg admitted in an interview.

Rotenberg's companies are building not only gas pipelines - the Mostotrest holding, in which Arkady Rotenberg and his son own about 26% of the shares, came out on top in terms of state contracts for the construction of roads and other infrastructure facilities. Mostotrest has built an understudy of Kurortny Prospekt in Sochi, the head section of the Moscow-St. Petersburg expressway. On one of the last days of his presidency, Dmitry Medvedev presented the largest contract for 34.7 billion for the improvement of roads around Skolkovo to the Rotenberg company. Another contract, for a section of the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway, Mostotrest won at the competition of the Moscow government in a fierce struggle with ARKS (co-owner Gennady Timchenko), reducing the price from the initial 29 billion to 23 billion rubles.

Finally, in 2015, the Rotenbergs took on a particularly important project that Timchenko, also a close friend of Putin, had turned down. In January 2015, the Russian government published a decree appointing Arkady Rotenberg's company Stroygazmontazh as a contractor for the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Strait to Crimea. It is planned to allocate 228 billion rubles for its construction. Arkady Rotenberg himself promises to meet the construction deadlines announced by the head of state: the bridge should be ready by 2018.

Arkady Rotenberg once admitted in an interview that he understands that the Crimean project is a "black mark" for him and complete isolation from the West. "But that doesn't really bother me," the businessman added.

In 2014, the Rotenberg brothers came under US sanctions, and Arkady Rotenberg was also included in the EU sanctions list. The American payment systems Visa and MasterCard have ceased to serve cards of customers of SMP Bank, owned by the Rotenbergs. Almost simultaneously, the property of Arkady Rotenberg was arrested in Italy. The newspaper Corriere della Sera, which reported the news, citing its sources in the Italian financial guard, estimates the value of the seized property at least 30 million euros. “I have been under sanctions for several months now, nothing surprises me anymore,” said Arkady Rotenberg. “It is surprising that in this case we are talking about some kind of real estate that is not subject to sanctions. Only accounts and assets fall under the announced sanctions, which I don’t have in Italy. This once again shows the illegitimacy of the measures and the absurdity of this situation.”

As a result of the sanctions, the Rotenberg family, which includes four members of the Forbes list - Arkady Rotenberg, his son Igor Rotenberg, brother Boris Rotenberg and his son Roman, lost leadership in the ranking of Russia's richest family clans in a year. According to Forbes, the combined wealth of Arkady, Boris and Igor Rotenberg has dropped to $2.95 billion over the year (last year their family fortune was estimated at $5.55 billion).

However, athletes accustomed to wrestling are not inclined to dramatize the situation. They began to get rid of risky assets and at the beginning of May 2015 they sold, in particular, their shares in the subsidiary Latvian SMP Bank to local businessmen.

In addition, Arkady and Boris began to transfer their assets to their sons, who are not on the Western sanctions lists. Igor Rotenberg, for example, received shares in Mostotrest, Gazprombureniya and TPS Real Estate from his father. Today, Igor Rotenberg is formally the owner of the largest number of shares in the family portfolio.

Igor Arkadyevich Rotenberg was born on May 9, 1973. In 2002 he graduated from the Higher School of Privatization and Entrepreneurship. In 2002-2003 - Deputy Head of the Property Department of the Fuel and Energy Complex of the Ministry of Property of Russia. In 2003-2004, he was the head of the transport and communications property department of the Ministry of State Property of Russia. In 2004-2005, he was Vice-President of JSC Russian Railways. Since 2006 - Chairman of the Board of Directors of OJSC NPV Engineering. The state is about 0.5 billion dollars. Married, three children.

Don't forget to pay your toll!

Despite Western sanctions, the Rotenbergs continue to be the "kings of state orders" in Russia. And if in 2013 their companies accounted for state contracts in the amount of 102.8 billion rubles, then in 2014 this amount increased to 184 billion.

In addition to the super project for the construction of a bridge to the Crimea, the Rotenbergs receive other large-scale contracts. In June 2015, information appeared that Gazprom was going to build the Kuban-Crimea gas pipeline worth 14.3 billion rubles and, apparently, Arkady Rotenberg's Stroygazmontazh would receive the order without a tender. The construction of the main gas pipeline to supply the peninsula is estimated at 20 billion rubles.

Back in 2010, the Rotenberg family laid their eyes on such a tidbit of the budget as appropriations for the construction of toll roads.

"I was amazed at how decisively President Vladimir Putin removed the obstacles we faced," Yves-Thibault de Silguy, president of France's largest construction group Vinci, told the French press. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has announced that it is refusing to finance the construction of the Moscow-Petersburg toll road because 14 oaks in the Khimki forest will have to be cut down. Putin personally intervened and quickly found a replacement for foreigners among creditors. Instead of the EBRD, Sberbank and Vnesheconombank agreed to issue loans for the construction of toll roads on very favorable terms.

The French companies remained in business, but control, of course, was not with them, but with private Russian investors. The Minsk direction went to the Rossiya bank, whose owner is another old acquaintance of Putin, Yuri Kovalchuk, the Moscow-St. Petersburg road was given at the mercy of the Rotenberg structures.

Corruption whistleblower Alexei Navalny recently posted online photos of two gigantic twin palaces, Arkady and Roman Rotenberg, built in Barvikha outside Moscow. “Arkady and Boris Rotenberg graduated from the Institute of Physical Education,” Navalny writes about them. “They didn’t create anything. They didn’t come up with anything new. They didn’t give us iPhones, social networks, or successful investment projects. .

Recently, the Rotenbergs have become interested in the issue of levying a vehicle tax on toll federal highways.

Back in 2010, Transport Minister Igor Levitin, whose name has also been associated with the Rotenberg brothers in recent years, proposed restoring fees to road funds that were liquidated in 2001. Then the funds were closed for political reasons: theft on road construction in the regions flourished, and the governor's corps had to be built into the vertical of power and deprived of corruption opportunities. By 2010, the vertical had been rebuilt, the election of governors had long been over, but it was understood that the way out of the economic crisis could be stimulated through road construction, for which there was not enough money in the budget

It only remained to find the necessary lobbyist for this operation. And he soon found. Sergey Chemezov, the head of Rostekhnologii, became it. He convinced the government that it was his state corporation, within the framework of fashionable import substitution, that was able to establish such a system of charging fees, which would be based on Russian technologies. But Chemezov himself did not undertake this work. He recommended that all rights be transferred to the company, headed by Igor Rotenberg. Putin agreed. As a result, Rotenberg's company had to collect tolls on federal highways. This is about 50 billion rubles a year, of which 10 billion a year will go to Russia itself for services.

And a loan in the amount of 25 billion rubles for the implementation of the project was obtained from Gazprombank, where another family member, Roman Rotenberg, serves as an adviser to the Chairman of the Board.

Roman Borisovich Rotenberg (born in 1981 in Leningrad) is an entrepreneur, manager, sports functionary. Employee of the external communications service of Gazpromexport, Advisor to the Chairman of the Board of Gazprombank, First Vice President of the Russian Hockey Federation, General Director of the sports nutrition manufacturer Doctor Sport, the main owner of the Telesport marketing agency and the Finnish stadium Hartwall Arena. In the list of the richest people in Russia, he occupies 186th place.

In 1991, the parents took 10-year-old Roman to Finland. “At first it was not easy,” he recalls, “at that time, Russian emigrants in Finland were not treated very well, they even had to fight. It didn’t seem enough to them.” Still, Roman's father Boris Rotenberg, master of sports and judo coach, trained his son from the age of five and took him with him to sports camps.

Later, at the insistence of his mother, Roman was sent to study in London at the European Business School, Faculty of International Business. After graduating from a London university, Roman decided to return to Russia. There was nothing surprising in this. The year was 2005, Putin was in his second presidential term, his father and uncle had already achieved very important heights in the Russian economy. Roman chose the position of an expert for Gazpromexport. But in 2009, an even more interesting offer awaited him: he became an adviser to the chairman of the board of Gazprom. In his own words, Roman was engaged in "attracting large clients." The chain is closed. The Rotenberg family took over the construction of the country's largest infrastructure projects.

God is dead, the Rotenbergs remain

In November-December 2015, mass protests of truck drivers who did not agree with the introduction of tolls swept through many regions of Russia. Starting from November 15, for every kilometer run on federal highways, vehicles weighing over 12 tons were to be charged 1.5 rubles (from March 2016, this amount increased to 3.73 rubles). That is, on average, for one trip of a heavy-duty truck, taking into account the huge Russian distances, one would have to pay 10-15 thousand rubles. This system was called "Plato".

Almost half of heavy trucks in Russia are owned by individual entrepreneurs who earn plus or minus 50 thousand rubles from one trip. The extra expense could easily bring them to the brink of ruin. Truckers took such a tough stance that the authorities were forced to make concessions. In December 2015, President Vladimir Putin signed a law according to which fines for non-payment of fees in the Platon system for drivers of heavy trucks are reduced by 90 times - from 450,000 rubles to 5,000. Drivers have already called the fee "Rothenberg's noose," and the protest has acquired a personalized character: for the first time in the history of Putin's Russia, it was directed against the president's closest ally.

“The surname Rotenberg is generally very popular in Dagestan now,” Novaya Gazeta wrote. “The entire federal highway is painted with posters: “Rotenberg is worse than ISIS” (a terrorist organization banned in Russia), “Russia without Rotenbergs.” Now all truckers know that the billionaire Arkady Rotenberg is a friend and ally of the president, that he has a son, Igor Rotenberg, and Igor has a small company, with which, for mysterious reasons, they entered into an agreement, outsourcing the new federal transport tax to private hands.

In connection with the conflict between the Rotenbergs and truckers, independent Russian political scientists wondered how the authorities would react to social protests and what kind of relations have developed recently within the Putin clan? And they came to the conclusion that in the case of the Rotenbergs, the matter is not only in the personal financial interests of the president. For example, did Putin rather easily dismiss his old friend Vladimir Yakunin, who was rumored in 2008 to be offered the Kremlin throne, from his post as head of Russian Railways? Why? Yakunin belonged to the president's inner "Chekist circle", ate capercaillie with Putin, but went too far, built himself a too luxurious estate with a separate house allocated for fur storage, and even undermined the "social program" - through his fault, for example, residents of many Russian cities were left without electric trains .

The Rotenbergs are another matter. They are connected with Putin not by belonging to the KGB or membership in the Ozero cooperative, but by strong emotional threads that go back to childhood.

... In 2013, at the age of 76, the former coach of Putin and the Rotenbergs, Rakhlin, died. Shortly thereafter, a rare picture went around the world - Putin, alone, without any protection, walks along some kind of long wall in St. Petersburg. Photographer Konstantin Zavrazhin, who took the picture, describes it this way: “After the memorial service, the president decided to stay away from outsiders. He proceeded on foot towards Vatutina Street, then, stopping the guards with a gesture, walked alone along the wall of the machine-building plant.”

“Putin repeatedly experienced miraculous transformations,” wrote political scientist Andrey Piontkovsky. At the same time, the former coach Rakhlin remained an indisputable authority for Putin, almost a God."

But now God has died, and among the closest old friends whom Putin infinitely trusts, perhaps only Arkady and Boris Rotenberg remained.

The main assets of Arkady Rotenberg are concentrated:

Minority co-owner (12.5%) of the Moscow Hotel.

State

Biography

Until the age of 12, he was fond of acrobatics.

1964 - began to engage in wrestling (sambo, then judo) with coach Anatoly Rakhlin, in the same group with Vladimir Putin.

1978 - graduated from the Leningrad State University of Physical Culture. P. F. Lesgaft. Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences.

For more than 15 years he worked as a judo and sambo coach in sports clubs in Leningrad.

1991 - co-founder of CJSC "Baltic Business Partners".

1993 - headed the Grant Firm.

1995 - the co-founder of Open Company "Security enterprise "Shield".

1995 - co-founder of RKK LLC.

1997 - Founder of the International Information and Analytical Center Foundation.

1998 - General Director of the St. Petersburg Judo Sports Club "Yavara-Neva", of which Vladimir Putin became the honorary president.

2000 - Member of the Board of Directors of the St. Petersburg company "Talion" (development, gambling, hotel, restaurant business).

2001: Co-owner of SMP Bank

2001 - the co-owner and the chairman of the board of directors of bank "Northern sea way" (SMP-bank).

2002 - Member of the Board of Directors of SMP Bank.

2004 - Chairman of the Board of Directors of SMP Bank.

2007: Founder "Stroygazmontazh

2008: Novorossiysk port and purchase of building contractors of Gazprom

2008 - co-owner of Kadina Ltd. (controls the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port).

2008 - Acquired five construction companies specializing in the implementation of Gazprom's investment program: Lengazspetsstroy, Volgogradneftemash, Spetsgazremstroy, Krasnodargazstroy and Volgogaz.

2009: Founder of "SMP insurance"

2009 - the founder of the insurance company "SMP-insurance".

2010: Purchase of the "Northern European pipe project

2010 - together with his brother Boris Rotenberg, they acquired the Northern European Pipe Project company.

2011: Purchase of Gazprom drilling and Minudobreniya

He is on the board of directors of the developer of the Moscow-Petersburg toll road through the Khimki forest.

2011 - acquired a subsidiary service company of Gazprom LLC Gazprom drilling.

2011 - reached an agreement on the acquisition of the enterprise Minudobreniya OJSC, located in the city of Rossosh, Voronezh Region.

2012: Court with house builders in Zhukovka, leader in terms of government orders

2012 - sued the German construction company Deutsche Werkstatten Hellerau. The plaintiffs demand termination of the contract with the contractor. The contract concerns the performance of repair work and work on the interior decoration of a residential building in the village of Zhukovka, along Rublevsky Highway.

2012 - announced his intention to build a large-scale production in the Far East.

2012 - topped the list of Forbes magazine businessmen who received the largest state orders in four years.

* 2013: Purchase of a share in Rostelecom

In February 2013, Konstantin Malofeev's Marshall Capital fund is selling its stake in a 10.7% stake in Rostelecom to the structure of businessman Arkady Rotenberg, news agencies report, citing a Marshall Capital statement.

"Under the terms of the deal, the Universal Telecom Investments Strategies fund, 100% of whose shares are owned by Marshall Capital, is selling its stake in OJSC Rostelecom, which is 10.7% of the authorized capital, to Bellared Holdings Limited, owned by Arkady Rotenberg," the statement said. message.

Sources close to the parties to the transaction disagree on the cost of the stake sold - they name amounts from 47 to 56 billion rubles.

Rotenberg is the chairman of the board of directors of SMP Bank and owns a number of other assets. Forbes estimated his fortune in 2012 at $ 1 billion. The businessman was professionally engaged in judo and was a sparring partner of Vladimir Putin. Now, according to Forbes, Rotenberg heads the Yavara-Neva judo sports club; honorary president of the club - Vladimir Putin.

Arkady Rotenberg, through the board of directors, intends to participate in the management of Rostelecom, Vedomosti writes. Artem Obolensky, president of SMP Bank, owned by Arkady and his brother Boris Rotenberg, said they support the company's current strategy and believe it will boost capitalization.

Rotenberg Arkady Romanovich - the largest domestic businessman, dollar billionaire and Honored Worker of Physical Culture of the Russian Federation. His name is invariably present in the ranking of the richest people in the country, and his professional activities and personal life attract the attention of millions of people. How did Rotenberg manage to get rich? What is the secret of his successful entrepreneurial activity? Answers to these and many other questions can be obtained by reading the biography of Arkady Romanovich.

Childhood, passion for judo

In 1951, in Leningrad, Arkady Rotenberg was born into an intelligent family. The billionaire never hid his nationality, therefore it is no secret to anyone that he is Jewish by origin. Parents taught Arkady to sports from early childhood. In the lower grades, the boy attended the acrobatics section, and at the age of 12, under the guidance of the famous Leningrad coach Anatoly Solomonovich Rakhlin, he began to master judo. Later, Arkady shared his passion for Japanese martial arts with his younger brother Boris, who was born in 1957.

In judo, Rotenberg showed great promise, repeatedly winning prizes at city olympiads. Rakhlin was pleased with the achievements of his pupil and prophesied a bright future for him in professional sports, but he subsequently chose coaching. It is noteworthy that at the same time as Rotenberg, Anatoly Solomonovich trained the young Vladimir Putin. Both boys represented the same weight category, thanks to which they repeatedly performed in pairs and went to competitions for young judokas together. Passion for wrestling made Rotenberg and Putin good friends, and over time their friendship became even stronger.

Work as a trainer, scientific activity

Shortly after graduation, Arkady Rotenberg was drafted into the army. The biography of this period of his life looks very vague, since there is no information about exactly where the current oligarch served and what he did immediately after demobilization. At 21, Rotenberg became a student at the State University of Physical Education in Leningrad, graduating in 1978. Having received a diploma, he worked as a judo and sambo coach in Leningrad sports schools for the next 15 years. In addition, Rotenberg was actively engaged in scientific activities, defended candidate and doctoral dissertations. He authored several dozen books on the organization of the training process in martial arts.

Relations with Putin

Being engaged in coaching and scientific work, Rotenberg Arkady did not lose touch with Vladimir Putin. In the early 1990s, the current President of Russia headed the Foreign Relations Committee under the St. Petersburg Mayor's Office. Despite the constant employment, he did not deny himself the pleasure of doing judo further. Vladimir Vladimirovich's constant sparring partner in training was his childhood friend Arkady Rotenberg. Long-standing friendly relations led to the fact that when in 1998 Putin initiated the creation of the Yavara-Neva judo club in St. Petersburg, he invited Arkady Romanovich to the post of general director.

Business formation

Rotenberg began his commercial career in 1991 by founding the SOVA cooperative society, which organizes and conducts competitions in judo, sambo and other types of martial arts. The sports business brought Arkady Romanovich a good income. However, wrestling was not the only thing that interested the aspiring entrepreneur during this period. Thinking about expanding his business, he began to engage in barter deliveries of goods from Finland to Russia. His brother, who was invited to work in Helsinki in the early 90s, became his assistant in this matter. Arkady and Boris Rotenberg earned their first capital by supplying products for the branches of the Gazprom oil company, specializing in the construction of gas pipelines. Barter transactions were carried out through the Baltic Business Partners company, established at the end of 1991, co-founded by Arkady Romanovich.

By the end of the 90s, Rotenberg became a well-known businessman in the northern capital, with the necessary connections and able to solve any issue with a single phone call. With his direct participation during this period, several companies were founded (Grant, RKK, Shield). In 1997, the entrepreneur became the founder of the International Information and Analytical Center. At the turn of the century, Arkady Romanovich became a member of the board of directors of the large St. Petersburg company Talion, which is engaged in restaurant, hotel, construction and gambling businesses.

banking

In 2001, Rotenberg, together with his old friend, and concurrently another friend of Putin's childhood, Konstantin Goloshchapov, bought out the Northern Sea Route Bank (abbreviated as SMP Bank) and headed its board of directors. After some time, Goloshchapov thought about leaving the business and sold his stake to his partner's younger brother. After this deal, Arkady and Boris Rotenberg became the main owners of SMP Bank. Their share of shares was 80%. To date, the Northern Sea Route continues to be under the control of the Rotenberg brothers. With more than 100 representative offices in 40 cities of Russia, it owns assets in the amount of 348 billion rubles and is one of the largest banks in the country. In 2008, the Bashkir InvestCapitalBank was acquired by the Rotenberg Bank and became one of its branches. By the end of the 2000s, the Northern Sea Route was so firmly on its feet that it began to engage in insurance activities. For these purposes, against his background, the company "SMP-insurance" was founded.

Sale of pipes and construction of gas pipelines

In 2002, Arkady Romanovich's brother Boris decided to go into the pipe business, acquiring a 25% stake in Gaztaged, the largest monopolist in this area. The remaining share of 75% belonged to a subsidiary of Gazprom - Gazkomplektimpeks. Soon an older brother joined Boris. After the liquidation of Gaztaged, the Rotenbergs jointly created the companies Pipe Metal Roll and Pipe Industry, which sell pipes to Gazprom. A properly built business strategy allowed them to quickly become competitive in the market and win profitable tenders.

Working closely with Gazprom, Rotenberg thought about starting his own business for the construction of gas pipelines. At the end of 2007, he creates the Stroygazmontazh company, which a few months later acquires 5 subsidiary construction enterprises from Gazprom. The purchase cost the businessman almost 8.4 billion rubles and allowed him to create a large competitive company that brings huge profits. In March 2008, Arkady Rotenberg's Stroygazmontazh won a tender for the construction of the onshore part of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Soon, the businessman, without competition, receives orders for the construction of gas pipelines from Dzhubga to Sochi and from Sakhalin to Vladivostok, and also wins a number of lucrative tenders. His "Stroygazmontazh" becomes a prosperous holding company and a monopoly in the gas construction market.

State and secret of success

Today Rotenberg Arkady continues to actively develop his business and has established himself as a serious and reliable partner. The companies belonging to him fulfilled state orders for an amount exceeding 1 trillion rubles. Thanks to successful commercial activities, Arkady Romanovich managed to make a fortune of 1 billion rubles by 2012 and take 1153rd place in the world ranking of the rich, compiled by Forbes magazine. In subsequent years, Rotenberg increased his capital to $3.9 billion.

What is the secret of the St. Petersburg oligarch's success? According to skeptics, influential friends of Arkady Rotenberg provide him with patronage in doing business. Speaking of the entrepreneur's friendships, they first of all mean Vladimir Putin, whom he has known since adolescence. It is noteworthy that the period of formation of the Rotenberg empire begins immediately after the current President came to power. It was at this time that Arkady Romanovich acquired a bank, became a monopolist in gas construction, and his companies received lucrative government orders for astronomical sums. However, Rotenberg himself in every possible way denies the fact of Vladimir Vladimirovich's involvement in the development of his business. He claims that successful entrepreneurial activity is the result of many years of hard work, and close acquaintance with Putin has nothing to do with it. Like it or not, it is not known, but it is obvious that Rotenberg Arkady is often mentioned in the media as the best friend of Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Billionaire's Wives

Arkady Romanovich was married twice. The first time he married in early youth. His chosen one was a girl named Galina. She gave birth to her husband's daughter Lilia, sons Igor and Pavel. The businessman prefers not to disclose information about his first marriage. In 2005, Arkady Rotenberg married for the second time. His wife Natalya gave him a daughter, Varvara, and a son, Arkady. In 2013, the couple decided to divorce. After the dissolution of the marriage, Natalya Rotenberg, together with her children, moved to a permanent place of residence in England. Interestingly, for the second time, Arkady Romanovich divorced almost simultaneously with his friend Putin. The information that Vladimir Vladimirovich and his wife Lyudmila no longer live together was leaked to the media shortly after Natalya ceased to be the legal wife of Arkady Rotenberg.

Life and activities of children

Today Arkady Rotenberg is free from marital obligations. The children of the oligarch live separately from him. The eldest son Igor, born in 1973, followed in his father's footsteps and went into business. He is a co-owner of a number of profitable companies, including Gazprom-burenie, Glosav, TEK Mosenergo, etc. Thanks to commercial activities, the fortune of the eldest son of Rotenberg in 2015 amounted to $ 470 million. Igor Arkadyevich is married and has three children.

The youngest son from his first marriage, Igor, is now 16 years old. Despite his young age, he is considered a fairly promising Russian hockey player. Since 2014, he has been playing as a striker in the Dynamo-99 hockey club in St. Petersburg, and is also a member of the Russian junior team. Igor's mentor is a well-known coach Evgeny Filinov.

Information about what the daughter of Arkady Romanovich from her first marriage, Lilia, does not get into the media. As for the children of the oligarch, born to him by Natalya Rotenberg, they are still small enough to attract the attention of journalists. The younger offspring of a billionaire live with their mother, who is the legal representative of their interests.

Businessman and sanctions

Due to the conflict situation that arose as a result of the annexation of the Crimean peninsula to Russia, in the summer of 2014, Arkady Romanovich Rotenberg, along with other politicians and businessmen close to Vladimir Putin, was included in the list of citizens who were subject to visa and economic sanctions from the United States and countries European Union. Two months later, the Italian authorities decided to confiscate all the oligarch's real estate located on their territory. As a result, Rotenberg lost four villas in different parts of the Apennine Peninsula, a hotel in Rome, apartments in Cagliari and two companies. According to experts, the total value of the seized real estate has reached 30 million euros.

The sanctions not only hurt the billionaire’s pocket, but also deprived him of the opportunity to pay alimony to children from his second marriage living in the UK, because all international money transfers from persons on the EU “black list” were frozen. In this regard, the ex-wife of Arkady Rotenberg, Natalya, filed a claim for property claims against him. As a result of a long legal battle, the ex-wife of the oligarch managed to ensure that the deductions for the maintenance of their children were transferred to her Russian account.

Despite the tough policy of the United States and the European Union towards Russians close to Vladimir Putin, Rotenberg Arkady continues to be one of the most successful domestic businessmen. Losses from sanctions to him and other citizens of the Russian Federation, whose foreign property turned out to be arrested, were reimbursed from the state budget. This became possible thanks to the draft law adopted by the State Duma in October 2014, popularly called the Rotenberg Law.

The activities of the oligarch in recent years

In the midst of sanctions, Arkady Romanovich continues to implement new projects and make bold plans for the future. In 2014, he acquired a controlling stake in the domestic television holding Krasny Kvadrat, which filmed most of the television programs for Channel One. In the same year, Stroygazmontazh, Arkady Rotenberg's company, received a state order for the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Strait, which should connect Crimea with territorial Russia. The billionaire, who started his career with sports, does not forget about him today. Since 2015, he has been supporting the development of children's hockey in the country. Rotenberg also continues to hold the post of general director of the Yavara-Neva judo club and is the Vice President of the Russian Judo Federation.

That hot June day Pavel Yakshis, moonlighting as a freight forwarder, remembered for the rest of his life. He was driving his GAZelle, loaded with furniture, along Tikhoretsky Prospekt of the Northern Capital, when a concrete mixer braked sharply in front of him. Yakshis took to the right, an angry horn sounded from behind, and after a couple of seconds the black Toyota Land Cruiser cut by him, overtaking Yakshis with a roar, blocked the road. The tinted window rolled down, and the passenger, a man with a broad face and a strong neck, inquired from Yakshis where he had learned to ride. A skirmish followed using non-parliamentary expressions, then the heated debaters spat at each other in turn, the doors of the jeep flung open, and two stocky men in colorful Hawaiian shirts and gold chains around their necks headed towards the GAZelle with a springy gait. “Everything resembled “brothers”,” Yakshis wrote in his testimony to the investigation two days later.

But they weren't bandits. Yakshis managed to spit on Boris Rotenberg, co-owner of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) bank, judoka and friend of Vladimir Putin. However, even if the GAZelle driver knew the name of the person with whom he had a road conflict, she would not tell him anything. Boris Rotenberg and his older brother Arkady are not one of those who love publicity. The turnover of their business, according to the most conservative estimates, is $3 billion a year. They have interests in the construction projects of Moscow, the Ministry of Defense and Gazprom. Their enterprises supply pipes to the gas concern, making a good profit, although the pipes themselves are not produced. At the same time, the Rotenberg business empire does not have a single headquarters and a clear management structure, and only a limited circle of acquaintances and partners has access to the brothers.

How did they manage to build such a large-scale business? The answer to this question should be sought in the events that took place 45 years ago.

In September 1964, a young sambo coach Anatoly Rakhlin, having visited several schools in the Leninsky district of Leningrad, gathered a group of five boys and began to train them in a small gym. Among those who signed up for the section was 12-year-old Arkady Rotenberg, who had previously been involved in artistic gymnastics. The boy immediately attracted the attention of the coach. Mobile, coordinated, stable like a cat, quick-witted and stubborn, Rakhlin later spoke of Arcadia.

Six months later, another boy signed up for Rakhlin's section - Volodya Putin, who lived nearby, in Baskov Lane. “I don't know what was his motive for starting SAMBO,” Rakhlin recalls of Putin. “Apparently, he wanted to be strong, courageous.” Then Borya Rotenberg began to go to training. Like any younger brother, Borya looked with delight at the successes of Arkady and dreamed of being no worse. The brothers, Volodya Putin and four other guys from the first set formed the backbone of the section. In 1972, the section moved to a larger building, and the coach began to teach them not homegrown sambo, but Japanese judo.

For those who were engaged in the section, the coach meant almost more than the parents. Arkady, Boris and Volodya spent almost all their free time together. Training, cleaning the gym, visiting, traveling to competitions - all this brought them together. “I am still friends with those people with whom I worked then,” Putin admitted in 2000 in his biography “From the First Person”.

But outside the training hall, the fate of friends developed in different ways. Vladimir Putin studied at the law faculty of Leningrad University, then went to the authorities and left for the GDR. Rotenberg graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Physical Culture. P. F. Lesgaft. After graduation, Arkady got a job as a children's coach, and Boris became an instructor at the police school. If not for the collapse of the USSR, the paths of childhood friends would most likely have diverged: an intelligence officer and a coach in a seedy city club had little in common. But it turned out differently.

In 2007, Arkady Rotenberg defended his doctoral dissertation "Pedagogical system for managing the personal growth of combat athletes." “Representatives of the aggressive part of society”, “easily amenable to criminalization”, “reduced intelligence”, “potentially dangerous” - this is how Rotenberg described stereotypes in relation to combat athletes in his work. Pavel Yakshis, who ran into Boris Rotenberg in 2005 on Tikhoretsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, testifies that everything is so. As follows from the testimony of Yakshis, Rotenberg grabbed his hand, tried to drag him out of the GAZelle through the window and struck him several times in the face. The frightened Yakshis grabbed the Osa traumatic pistol and fired at Rotenberg. The rubber bullet hit the athlete in the chest. Rotenberg dusted himself off, pulled up his shirt and looked at the abrasion. "You're done," he gritted through his teeth. "I'll get you." This was followed by an intricate curse, which, as Yakshis showed the investigator, amounted to a threat to kill, "using the genitals." Rotenberg began dialing a number on his mobile phone and promised Yakshis that the "guys" would arrive. The driver of the GAZelle immediately withdrew. (Later, the court found Yakshis guilty of exceeding the limits of necessary self-defense and fined him 20,000 rubles; now, according to his lawyer, he has left St. Petersburg and is going to become a monk.)

Decisiveness, readiness to go to the end, physical strength - these qualities of athletes made them the driving force behind the Russian "criminal revolution" of the 1990s. In St. Petersburg, athletes were especially visible, says former athlete Yevgeny Vyshenkov. At that time he worked in the criminal investigation department, and today he is the deputy director of the St. Petersburg Agency for Journalistic Investigations. The Rotenbergs, he said, were able to stay away from obvious crime. Vyshenkov tells such a story. While working in the criminal investigation department, he somehow watched the negotiations in one of the St. Petersburg restaurants. The conversation was between several strong men and a two-meter Chechen nicknamed Orbi. Vyshenkov later learned that one of the men was Arkady Rotenberg. The case in question concerned an acquaintance of his who had been "run over" by the Chechens. Rotenberg was ready for any surprises, but he could not maintain a conversation in specific slang, says the former opera.

“It was a time when everyone was doing everything,” says businessman Levan Pirveli, now living in Austria, one of the first partners of Arkady Rotenberg. At the very beginning of the 1990s, Pirveli headed the Soviet-Austrian joint venture, which built the Metekhi hotel in Tbilisi. It is believed that the real owner of this five-star hotel was David Sanikidze, a friend of the recently deceased Vyacheslav Ivankov (Yaponchik). Pirveli says that he was going to build a hotel in St. Petersburg - the Baltic Business Partners company was created for this. Pirveli's partners in this company were Arkady Rotenberg and St. Petersburg businessman Igor Shitikov. Although the hotel was never built, Rotenberg made "the most pleasant impression" on Pirveli. The third partner, Shitikov, received 2.5 years in prison a couple of years later on charges of embezzlement of state property on an especially large scale, forgery and the production of forged documents.

The youngest of the Rotenbergs, Boris, worked as a judo coach in Finland from 1992 to 1998. The elder stayed in St. Petersburg, registered several companies and the Shield Private Security Company, which guarded the School of Higher Sportsmanship on Kamenny Island, where masters of sports trained in various types of martial arts and where Vice Mayor Vladimir Putin visited. Arkady Rotenberg regularly went to the tatami with him, who at the same time, together with several athletes, established the St. Petersburg Sambo Federation.

The Federation was a serious resource for those times - the community of athletes was close-knit and influential. Once in the early 1990s, St. Petersburg businessman Boris Ivanov (better known as Bob the Collector) tried to get the city administration to decide to equip a club with a night disco in the building of a sports school. The wrestlers could be on the street. But, as former investigator Vyshenkov says, a delegation of several dozen people came to Bob, who did not demand anything, they simply promised to come to the first disco and "have a good time." Ivanov refused the project.

Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, of course, knew many "athletes". Including those with whom vice-mayor Putin could not communicate due to his position. But there was a need - Vladimir Putin, for example, ex officio oversaw the development of the gambling business in the city, and large St. Petersburg casinos were then controlled by organized crime, in particular, the Tambov organized criminal group. But the real rise of the Rotenbergs occurred after the Moscow period of their childhood friend's career began.

In 1998, St. Petersburg oil traders Gennady Timchenko and Andrey Katkov became sponsors of the Yawara-Neva professional sports judo club. Arkady Rotenberg became its general director, and the head of the Federal Security Service, Vladimir Putin, became president. Soon, Yavara-Neva became one of the most successful sports organizations in the country, and in 2000, with the election of Vladimir Putin as president of Russia, the horizons of the Rotenbergs' possibilities rapidly expanded.

Their first experience of working at the federal level was their collaboration with Sergei Zivenko, until then a little-known sports goods dealer. According to the German magazine Spiegel, in February 2000, Rotenberg arranged for Zivenko to meet with Viktor Zolotov, then the head of personal security at that time. about. President Vladimir Putin. A few months later, the newly elected president of the Russian Federation signed a decree on the creation of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rosspirtprom, to which about a hundred state distilleries and distilleries were transferred, Sergey Zivenko headed the “alcohol ministry”. Rotenberg and Zivenko officially formalized their partnership by registering the Zirot wholesale company (from the first letters of the names of the founders) with an office on Novy Arbat. Zivenko refused to discuss this story with Forbes.

In 2002, he was fired from FSUE. But he did not leave empty-handed: Zivenko created the Kristall group, which included two large distilleries. The Rotenbergs also did not lose. The financial flows of Rosspirtprom enterprises began to pass through the Northern Sea Route (NSR) bank, created by the brothers in 2001. Over time, structures associated with SMP Bank entered the authorized capital of a dozen distilleries. Forbes interlocutors claim that the leaders of Rosspirtprom, who came after Zivenko, Petr Myasoedov and Igor Chuyan, were also connected with the Rotenbergs.

"Rosspirtprom" is not the only state structure that turned out to be in the sphere of interests of the Rotenbergs. Last year, a KGB colleague and friend of Putin, Alexander Grigoriev, who headed Rosrezerv, a giant procurement organization whose activities are largely classified, died suddenly. After the death of Grigoriev, Dmitry Gogin, the manager of one of the companies associated with the Rotenbergs, became deputy to the new head of Rosrezerv. A St. Petersburg businessman who dealt with Rosrezerv expressed the opinion in an interview with Forbes that this structure, which now has the status of a federal agency, was part of the Rotenbergs' sphere of influence.

However, the largest state-owned enterprise with which the brothers established work was Gazprom.

In 2006, Maxim Mironov, a young Russian economist who moved to the United States, published an interesting study. Using a pirated database of financial transactions of Russian banks, Mironov identified several unknown companies through whose accounts, in the complete absence of production activity, gigantic sums were pumped. The record holder was Gaztaged LLC, which passed through itself in 2003-2004 about $ 1 billion. “I did not pursue the task of finding out who and where is stealing money,” Mironov says in an interview with Forbes. He was only trying to assess the extent of tax evasion in Russia, not assuming that he had stumbled upon one of the largest intermediary schemes in Russian business.

In 2002, the managers of Rem Vyakhirev at Gazprom were replaced by members of Vladimir Putin's team, headed by Alexei Miller. The new management took up the reorganization of commodity and financial flows associated with purchases. At stake was $ 4.5 billion - for such an amount, Gazprom then bought a wide variety of products every year: from pipes to compressors and other equipment. The newly created subsidiary of Gazprom, the company Gazkomplektimpeks, was responsible for the supply, through which by 2004 75% of all purchases began to pass. The changes did not end there - several intermediaries immediately appeared between suppliers and Gazkomplektimpeks, says Vadim Kleyner, executive director of Hermitage Capital Management. In 2005, Kleiner, who ran for the board of directors of Gazprom from minority shareholders, published a report from which it was clear that Gazkomplektimpeks conducted pipe purchases (and this is about 30% of all Gazprom purchases) through the same Gaztaged ”, about which Mironov wrote.

Judging by the founding documents of LLC Gaztaged, in 2003 the owner of 25% of its capital was the Baza-torg company, the sole founder of which was Boris Rotenberg. The remaining 75% of Gaztaged belonged to Gazkomplektimpeks. Maxim Mironov traced the further path of Gazprom's money. Through Gaztaged, funds rushed to two companies - Pipe Trading House and Gazstalkonstruktsiya, and from them to dozens of LLCs, judging by the names and founders, which had nothing to do with large pipe manufacturers. Olga Shkalova was the director of Gazstalkonstruktsiya LLC in 2003–2004. Now she heads the Pipe Industry company with an annual revenue of $540 million, which buys about 10% of the entire production of the Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant (ChTPZ). The founder of the company is Boris Rotenberg. Another 11% of ChTPZ pipes pass through the Pipe Metal Roll Company. Founder - Arkady Rotenberg. According to the results of 2008, the revenue of this company amounted to $440 million, profit - $66 million.

In total, the companies to which the Rotenbergs are related resold pipes worth $980 million last year, receiving $146 million in net profit. Profitability - 15%, prohibitive for a trader. Sergey Kupriyanov, spokesman for the chairman of the board of Gazprom, confirmed that the concern had purchased pipes through Gaztaged, but cooperation with this company was terminated in early 2006. ChTPZ did not answer the question of why Rosneft, Lukoil, Surgutneftegaz were listed among the largest buyers in the plant's statements for the first quarter of this year, but Gazprom was not listed. Intermediary companies - "Pipe Industry" and "Pipe Metal Roll" - are noted in the reporting. The ChelPipe representative admitted that 37% of its products really went to Gazprom.

The activities of Arkady and Boris Rotenberg are not limited to working with state-owned companies. In 2008, Forbes Golden Hundred entrepreneurs Alexander Ponomarev and Alexander Skorobogatko took the Rotenbergs into their business, giving them 10% of the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port - the market value of this block of shares is now $ 300 million. And State Duma deputy Ashot Yeghiazaryan attracted Arkady Rotenberg as a partner in the reconstruction of the Moskva Hotel.

Here is the story of one of the latest partnerships. At the beginning of June 2009, the State Order Department of the Ministry of Defense summed up the results of the auction for the right to build 950,000 sq. m. m of housing near Podolsk. The cost of the order is 33.7 billion rubles. Budget funding. It would seem that a tidbit for builders, but the fight for budget money did not take place. Six companies participated in the auction, but the price decreased by only 0.5% compared to the original one. The winner was Mosstroymekhanizatsiya-5 (MSM-5). Some people found this suspicious. “The results were planned in advance,” says Aleksey Shepel, co-owner of the construction company S.Holding. - Exhibited huge plots, which greatly narrowed the circle of applicants. If the Ministry of Defense broke up the land into [smaller] lots, many small companies would be able to participate.” Although what does small mean ...

Obid Yasinov, the owner of MSM-5, attracted Moscow construction "giants" as subcontractors - Glavstroy, PIK and Coalco. MSM-5 itself will build only about a quarter of the total, but even here Yasinov has a partner - a certain Paritet LLC. This company has neither workers nor construction equipment, the authorized capital is 15,000 rubles. The founders of Paritet are Arkady and Boris Rotenberg. Why does a large construction company need such cooperation? “Everyone has strengths. Someone knows how to build, someone has financial resources, someone has administrative resources,” says Andrey Pankovsky, deputy general director and co-owner of DSK-1, one of the largest Moscow construction companies.

How is this "administrative resource" designed?

The empire of Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, which has interests in various business areas, is not at all like a corporation in the classical sense of the word. Hundreds of clerks do not work for the Rotenbergs. There is no analytical department and no sales department. Until last year, their business was a collection of financial schemes and intermediary operations. Financial flows were pumped through several companies, in which a significant part of the money settled. These companies were mostly headed by former judo athletes. At the same time, they manage numerous sports organizations and foundations related to judo.

The reception of Arkady Rotenberg is located in the building of the Russian Judo Federation, and most of his positions are connected with judo. Almost the only post of Arkady Rotenberg, who gives out an entrepreneur in him, is the chairman of the board of directors of the Northern Sea Route Bank. Rotenberg's secretary in the Judo Federation, answering the question of how to organize an interview with Arkady Romanovich, advised to contact Dmitry Kalantyrsky, Chairman of the Board of SMP Bank, and gave his contact numbers - "he deals with these issues" (several requests for an interview have come to nothing brought).

Perhaps the most important of the titles of Arkady Rotenberg is the director of the Yavara-Neva sports club already mentioned. And it does not matter that the revenue of this company is negligible. The title of honorary president of the club is Vladimir Putin. “The Honorary President does not weaken his interest in Yavara-Neva, he is aware of the club's affairs, problems and events,” the club's website states. Whoever needs it will understand.

“The business of the Rotenbergs is trading in the necessary connections,” sums up Vladimir Pribylovsky, president of the Panorama Foundation, author of several books about Vladimir Putin’s St. Petersburg entourage. The former head of the Judo Federation, businessman Vladimir Shestakov, who emigrated to Latvia, thinks the same way. “They solve issues with one call that took me months,” Shestakov says about the people who are part of the Rotenberg entourage.

There is also an appropriate infrastructure. For example, many of Russia's largest companies line up to sponsor events held by the National Union of Judo Veterans Arkady Rotenberg. Among the sponsors are Evraz, Coalco, VTB and the SOK group.

From the amorphous mass of sports unions and firms, the first company with a large staff and manufacturing business has recently spun off. It happened in the blink of an eye.

In May 2008, Gazprom put up for sale controlling stakes in five of its contractors: Lengazspetsstroy, Krasnodargazstroy, Spetsgazremstroy, Volgogradneftemash and Volgogaz. Non-core, as Gazprom later announced, the assets were sold at a starting price of 8.4 billion rubles. Controlling stakes in these construction companies were acquired by Cypriot offshore companies. Until the fall, the new owners did not show themselves in any way, but then extraordinary meetings of shareholders were held in all companies at the same time, and as a result, the majority of seats on the boards of directors were received by representatives of the NPV-engineering company. The owner of this company is Arkady Rotenberg, and his son Igor heads the board of directors. Thus, Stroygazmontazh was born. Its corporate booklet reports that in 2008, revenue was 54 billion rubles, and the number of employees - 11,000 people.

After the change of boards of directors in the former Gazprom subsidiaries, all of them, as one, acted as guarantors of Stroygazmontazh for the return of loans, guaranteeing all their property. Stroygazmontazh immediately attracted a loan from VTB for 15.5 billion rubles under these guarantees - almost twice as much as the guarantor companies were valued when they were sold by Gazprom. Another 360 million rubles were received by the new shareholders of the former construction divisions of the gas monopoly in the form of dividends for 2008. This is dozens of times more than Gazprom received from them in 2007.

Having sold the construction subsidiaries to the Rotenbergs, Gazprom does not forget to feed them with orders. Since last summer, Stroygazmontazh has won four major contracts at the main construction sites of Gazprom - the onshore part of the Nord Stream, the gas pipeline in Greater Sochi and the Sakhalin - Khabarovsk - Vladivostok pipeline.

To manage a large construction business, the Rotenbergs, perhaps for the first time, needed professional managers. A landing party of young managers landed on the boards of directors of construction companies, whose biographies are united by the line "worked in the Ministry of Property" or "in the property department of Russian Railways." They were found by Igor Rotenberg, who in 2001-2005 headed the relevant departments of the ministry and the railway monopoly.

Will there be other such companies? Vladimir Putin is not going to retire yet. So the new generation of the Rotenberg family has time to build a large business on the site of intermediary schemes and systems of informal relationships, which it will not be shameful to tell investors about. Perhaps someday these companies will go public. Their story will be reduced to one line in the corporate newsletter. Who will be interested in the details?

Andrey Rotenberg. "Friends of the Prime Minister" Brothers Arkady, Boris Rotenberg, what links the tatami and Gazprom. Investor from the "high road"

Sports childhood

Work as a coach

Further business projects

Loyalty to power

Own banking structure

Information about recent projects

Other activities of the billionaire

State

Biography

2001: Co-owner of SMP Bank

2007: Founder "Stroygazmontazh

2008: Novorossiysk port and purchase of building contractors of Gazprom

2009: Founder of "SMP insurance"

2010: Purchase of the "Northern European pipe project

2011: Purchase of Gazprom drilling and Minudobreniya

2012: Court with house builders in Zhukovka, leader in terms of government orders

* 2013: Purchase of a share in Rostelecom

Childhood, passion for judo

Work as a trainer, scientific activity

Relations with Putin

Business formation

banking

Sale of pipes and construction of gas pipelines

State and secret of success

Billionaire's Wives

Life and activities of children

Businessman and sanctions

The activities of the oligarch in recent years

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