Bankster and goldsmith Alexander Nesis
Are the Nesis brothers, who got rich on Russian gold, distancing themselves from Russia?
Last week, Polymetal came under US blocking sanctions. But they only touched upon a Russian legal entity - the parent company Polymetal International plc and enterprises in Kazakhstan can operate on international markets as before.
It is noteworthy that after the start of the CBO, large American investors increased their stakes in Polymetal International.
Since its founding in 1998, Polymetal has been closely associated with the Nesis family that came out of St. Petersburg . The elder brother Alexander was the key beneficiary of the company, and the younger Vitaly was directly in charge of the business. In March last year, Polymetal International plc made a public statement: the company does not consider itself a legal entity owned or acting on behalf of or at the direction of a “Russian-related person”.
Russia, goodbye
The statement noted that Alexander Nesis is a resident of Switzerland with citizenship of Russia, Malta and Israel. It was also clarified that Russian shareholders have small shares in the company. After that, Polymetal International plc announced that it was going to register in a jurisdiction friendly to Russia. It can be said that for some time the Nesis brothers tried to sit on two chairs. And quite successfully. However, the new US sanctions have somewhat complicated this task.
Meanwhile, tension is growing around the assets of the Russian Polymetal (and these are deposits with huge reserves of rare and precious metals). Some of them can hypothetically be arrested at the suit of the bankruptcy trustee of the bankrupt company Otkritie Holding. The story there is quite confusing, so we will retell it in general terms.
Various assets of Alexander Nesis (including Polymetal International) were included in the ICT group he created. Among them was Nomos-Bank. In 2012, Nomos-Bank merged with the Otkritie investment group, which was backed by an associate of Anatoly Chubais Boris Mintsand Vadim Belyaev (Wolfson) . A number of other transactions led to the fact that Mints and Wolfson ended up outside the Russian Federation with millions of dollars, and Otkritie Bank fell under the reorganization of the Central Bank with a hole in the capital of 300 billion rubles. Part of the debt was inherited by the state bank Trust, which, with the help of lawyers, is trying to get Boris Mintsin London. And now another injured party, Otkritie Holding, considered that it was damaged by the actions of the ICT group. We are talking about two transactions to withdraw assets from Otkritie in favor of ICT for billions of rubles. The lawsuit was filed in March. It is difficult to say now whether the plaintiff will be able to seize the gold assets as an interim measure, the ownership of ICT and Polymetal is too complicated. The Russian part of the ICT group completed the liquidation process at the beginning of the year. But in Cyprus there is a parent company of the holding ICT Holding Ltd. It is she, in particular, who owns a large stake in Polymetal International.
Sell or hide?
Special mention should be made of the status of Polymetal International. For a long time the company was registered on the island of Jersey. Now this jurisdiction is recognized in Russia as unfriendly. And although Polymetal International emphasized in its latest statements that it is located in Cyprus, the abbreviation "plc" in its full name remains to this day. And she points to the "registration" in the United Kingdom, to which the island of Jersey formally belongs.
Meanwhile, recently there were reports that Alexander Nesis planned to re-register Polymetal International in Kazakhstan. In its appeals to shareholders, the company's management says that it has enlisted the support of the Kazakh authorities in exchange for investments. The transfer of the hydrometallurgical plant project to Kazakhstan has already been announced. At the same time, earlier such a facility worth 500 million rubles was planned to be built in the Khabarovsk Territory, and this production was to become the largest of its kind in Russia. However, now the company is silent about the prospects for construction in the Khabarovsk Territory, but talks about a similar plant in Kazakhstan. At the same time, the amount of investments increased to 730 million dollars.
It is easy to assume that one of the motives for moving from the island of Jersey to Kazakhstan was getting rid of the status of a resident of an unfriendly Russian jurisdiction. This could be required for a more profitable sale of Russian assets. After all, it is known that investors from hostile countries are released from Russia only with a 50% discount. Apparently, Alexander Nesis is not ready to put up with such a loss and will try to sell the Russian mines and processing plants that have become “toxic” for him at a higher price.
True, the question arises, who is able to buy such a gold giant as Polymetal? The company's assets in Russia and Kazakhstan are worth more than $5 billion and are distributed between the countries approximately equally in terms of profitability. It is clear that in this situation it is more profitable for Alexander Nesis to find a suitable frontier for his Russian business and make a cashless deal with him (for example, through an exchange of shares).
Who claims the Nesis gold
Another high-profile investment by Vladislav Sviblov is the purchase of 40% in Highland Gold in 2020. The seller was the structures of Roman Abramovich. The transaction price is $574 million. The loan was again provided by VTB.
In 2021, Sviblov's structures gained control over the Trans-Siberian Gold (TSG) gold miner. Prior to this transaction, the ownership scheme was closed to the UFG group of funds. The co-founder of UFG was the late Boris Federov, who headed the State Tax Service under Yeltsin. He had foreign partners, including Deutsche Bank. It is estimated that, in total, at the end of 2021, Sviblov consolidated assets that allow his group to enter the top five leaders in domestic gold mining, and at the same time in the top 30 global gold miners.
Last year, the international company Kinross Gold sold its Russian gold mining operations to the structures of Vladislav Sviblov for $340 million at a 50% discount. As a result, Forbes placed the businessman in second place in the ranking of the largest acquirers of assets of companies leaving Russia.
Another contender for the Russian mines of the Nesis brothers is the UMMC already mentioned above. Until March 2022, the company was linked to billionaire Iskandar Makhmudov. The current beneficiaries are hidden, but the ambitions of the "copper giant" in the gold mining industry are known. It was reported that in 2022, UMMC began buying up gold mining assets, acquiring a controlling stake in Susumanzoloto and a stake in Petropavlovsk. In addition, UMMC tried to buy the Vysochaishy (GV Gold) company.