The UK has removed Igor Makarov, a Russian oligarch and founder of Russian gas company ITERA, from the sanctions list after he renounced his Russian citizenship in favour of Cypriot citizenship last year.
The UK has excluded businessman and founder of the Itera group Igor Makarov from the sanctions list, according to the website of the government of the kingdom.
Makarov last year renounced Russian citizenship in favor of Cypriot citizenship. In 2023, the businessman occupied 57th place in the ranking of the richest billionaires in Russia with a fortune of $2.2 billion, and at the moment, according to Forbes, he ranks fifth in the list of the richest Cypriots.
Who Is Igor Makarov ?
Makarov was born in 1962 in Ashgabat, was a professional cyclist, was a member of the USSR Olympic team, and a winner of international competitions. After the collapse of the USSR, Makarov founded Russia’s first independent gas company, Itera. The company operated nine fields in Siberia. After the sale of Itera, he founded a new holding company, Areti International, headquartered in Switzerland. In 2022, Canada and Great Britain imposed sanctions against Makarov.
Before this, nine billionaires renounced Russian citizenship. Among them are Alisher Usmanov’s former partner Vasily Anisimov (net worth $1.6 billion), founder and main owner of the Freedom holding Timur Turlov (net worth $2.4 billion), founder of the Troika Dialog investment company Ruben Vardanyan ($1.3 billion), founder of the investment company DST Global company Yuri Milner ($7.3 billion), founder of Revolut Nikolay Storonsky ($7.1 billion), founder of the energy company Areti Igor Makarov ($2.2 billion), founder of Tinkoff Group Oleg Tinkov ($0.86 billion after sale Tinkoff Bank), as well as the creators of Veem Software Andrey Baronov ($0.77 billion) and Ratmir Timashev ($0.68 billion).
This is not the first time that the UK has lifted restrictions against a Russian. Last summer, sanctions were lifted from the former owner of Tinkoff Bank Oleg Tinkov, as well as the former first deputy chairman of Sberbank Lev Khasis. Tinkov came under sanctions from the kingdom after the start of the war in Ukraine – in March 2022. Khasis was blacklisted on March 24, 2022, although he left the bank and emigrated to the United States a few days before the start of the war.
