Russian oligarchs Fridman and Aven sell stakes in Alfa Bank in a bid to get rid of sanctions, FT reports

Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven have sold their stakes in Alfa Bank and Alfa Insurance to their longtime business partner Andrei Kosogov, the Financial Times reports. The newspaper has learned of the completion of a deal worth 240 billion rubles ($2.5 billion), signed back in 2023.

Fridman and Aven jointly owned 45% of the bank and 42% of the insurance company. As the FT notes, the oligarchs were counting on the sale of their stakes to help them challenge EU sanctions imposed on them in 2022 over their ties to Russian authorities. Due to the sanctions, Fridman, Aven, and their business partners German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev were forced to sell their stakes in the Luxembourg-registered investment group LetterOne and resign from its board of directors.

Fridman and Aven tried to challenge the imposition of sanctions in the European Court of Justice, but the court only changed the grounds on which the sanctions were being extended — without canceling them. The U.S. and the UK also imposed sanctions against the businessmen.

Kosogov is currently the largest shareholder of both Alfa Bank and LetterOne. He served as First Deputy Chairman of Alfa Bank's Management Board from 1998 to 2005 and headed the investment department. He has also bought out Khan's and Kuzmichev's stakes in LetterOne.