- Russian billionaire Vagit Alekperov resigned as Lukoil’s chief executive on Thursday following UK sanctions.
- Lukoil is the second largest oil company in Russia and one of the largest oil producers in the world.
- Alekperov is the eighth richest man in Russia and previously served as deputy oil minister of the Soviet Union.
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Russian billionaire Vagit Alekperov has resigned as CEO of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company.
Thursday’s announcement comes a week after the United Kingdom sanctioned Alekperov on charges that he “continues to support the Russian government” by serving as director of the country’s energy sector. Alekperov joins a handful of Russian business leaders who left their companies after invading Ukraine.
Alekperov, whose fortune is $ 18.6 billion, according to Forbes, began his oil career as a worker in the Caspian Sea. Until 1990, he was deputy minister of the Soviet Union’s oil and gas industry, according to Lukoil’s website.
In 1991, the same year that the Soviet Union disintegrated, Alekperov transformed three state-owned Lukoil oil fields, according to his Forbes biography. Alekperov is currently ranked as the eighth richest man in Russia in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Until recently, the oligarch escaped personal sanctions. In a 2004 New York Times Magazine article entitled The Triumph of the Silent Tycoon, Alekperov described himself as a man whose “impermanence was calculated” and behaved as if his greatest desire was to be ignored by the public. “.
“I can’t afford to be indifferent to politics, but I have no personal ambitions,” Alekperov told the Times in 2004. I have only one policy task to help the country and the company. I am not close to Mr Putin, but I treat him with great respect.
On March 3, Lukoil published a statement on its website calling for a “quick solution to the military conflict” in Ukraine.
“We fully support its resolution through negotiations, through diplomatic means,” the statement said. “The company strives to continue to operate steadily in all countries and regions of its presence.”
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