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Russian Oligarch Who Slammed Ukraine War Loses $1-B Hotel Complex
- By The Financial District
- Dec 22, 2022
- 2 min read
A Russian court has ordered the seizure of $1-billion luxury resort belonging to a tycoon who criticized Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Nataliya Vasilyeva reported for UK’s The Telegraph.
Photo Insert: Oleg Deripaska is one of the few Russian tycoons to have voiced cautious criticism of the invasion of Ukraine.
The court order to seize the Imeretinskiy hotel and marina in Sochi, owned by Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate, came after he was urged by the Kremlin to stop publicly criticizing the war, the Financial Times (FT) also reported.
Deripaska is one of the few Russian tycoons to have voiced cautious criticism of the invasion of Ukraine. He tweeted in March, calling for peace, saying that “we have already passed a point of no return”.
He also warned that “destroying Ukraine would be a colossal mistake.” FT quoted a source close to Deripaska, saying that the Kremlin had asked him to “calm down” with his remarks about Ukraine.
Though the legal dispute stems from a 2021 claim brought by Sirius, an educational hub set up by President Vladimir Putin at the venue of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, the FT report suggests Deripaska’s criticism of the war may have influenced the case.
Deripaska was among several dozen oligarchs and state companies who contributed real estate and funding to set up Sirius, whose staff and students were supposed to use Deripaska’s Imeretinsky hotel complex and marina in Sochi.
Sirius, however, took Deripaska’s company RogSibAl to court last year for violating a tenancy agreement, arguing that it had failed to build a marina despite photographic evidence to the contrary. In a separate case, Russian prosecutors sought to seize and nationalize the resort.
An injunction to “seize all real estate” belonging to the company was issued in mid-September, according to publicly available court documents. Deripaska has previously been linked to the UK’s Conservative Party.
