Viktor Vekselberg

Early life

Viktor Vekselberg was born in 1957 to a Ukrainian Jewish father and a Russian mother in Drohobych, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (although some reports state that he was born in Lviv). Members of Vekselberg's family were killed and buried in a mass grave during the Nazi repressions in Drohobych. Vekselberg's father fought for the Soviet Union during World War II. Andrew Intrater is Vekselberg's cousin. In 1979, he graduated from the Moscow State University of Railway Engineering. After that, he worked as a researcher and headed the laboratory of the Design Bureau for rodless pumps "Konnas".

Sanctions & controversy

Vekselberg is one of many Russian "oligarchs" named in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2017. In March 2018, members from Robert Mueller's team of special counsel investigators questioned Vekselberg at a New York area airport. According to journalist Stephen Smith, Vekselberg is close to the Kremlin. In April 2018, the United States Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Vekselberg and Renova Group through designation under Executive Order 13662 ("Blocking Property of Additional Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine"). United States imposed sanctions on him and 23 other Russian nationals in relation to Russia's annexation of Crimea, officially freezing up to $2 billion in assets. Also he has been sanctioned by The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) "for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy". In February 2021, Vekselberg complained that approximately $1.5 billion of his funds were frozen in American and Swiss bank accounts and that he was not allowed to send at least part of them to charity. Between 2018 and 2020 a US business PURE Insurance assisted Vekselberg with $315,891 of transactions in breach of sanctions and was accordingly fined $466,200 by OFAC in 2023. On September 1, 2022, several properties believed to be linked to Vekselberg were searched by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. The inspection included an apartment in Manhattan; an estate in the Hamptons, New York; and property on Fisher Island in Florida. Officials were seen carrying boxes out of the two New York locations. In March 2022, following Russia's invasion against Ukraine, the United States strengthened its sanctions and the UK, Poland and Australia also placed sanctions on Vekselberg, thereby seizing his assets and imposing a travel ban. During the Lady R incident Vekselberg was noted in the media as a possible source of Russian foreign influence over the South Africa's governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), through his 49% ownership stake in United Manganese of Kalahari which is a joint venture with the ANC owned Chancellor House. United Manganese of Kalahari made a US$1.3 million donation to the party in 2022.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, United States President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14068, "Prohibiting Certain Imports, Exports, and New Investment With Respect to Continued Russian Federation Aggression," an order of economic sanctions under the United States International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The order targeted two properties of Vekselberg worth an estimated $180 million: an Airbus A319-115 jet and the motoryacht Tango. Estimates of the value of the Tango range from $90 million (U.S. Department of Justice estimate) to $120 million (from the website Superyachtfan.com). In April 2022, the yacht was seized by Civil Guard of Spain and U.S. federal age

The fortune

Vekselberg is a Russian Jewish Congress Consul for Countering Antisemitism, a member of the Bureau of the Presidium of the Congress. Vekselberg has provided support to local Jewish communities throughout Russia and Ukraine in the course of the past decades. With his support, Synagogues and Jewish Community centers have been restored, built and renovated in Ekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Moscow, and Saratov. Since the 1990s, Vekselberg has funded the maintaining of the Bronnitsky Wood Memorial near Drohobych to honor the memory of Jews murdered by Nazis during World War II. He donated $4.5 million to the construction of the $50 million Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, and until February 2021 he was the chairman of the museum's board of trustees. Then Vekselberg was elected as honorary chairman of the board of trustees. He finances the restoration and construction of synagogues in Russia, including the construction of the Choral Synagogue in Saratov. In June 2018, a synagoge in Drogobych, Vekselberg's native town in Western Ukraine, was restored from ruins and reopened its doors to public. Vekselberg financed the restoration works and managed to track down the Torah scroll which had been taken out from Drohobych during the Holocaust and later to be hidden in Israel in 1946. He donated this scroll to the synagogue in the loving memory of his father, Felix Solomonovich Vekselberg. In 2019, a monument was opened in Moscow to commemorate resistance heroes in concentration camps and ghettos. Vekselberg donated $300,000 to its creation. In 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic broke out, Viktor Vekselberg donated over 2 billion rubles to buy medical equipment, personal protective equipment, and food for socially vulnerable groups of citizens. In 2021, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov awarded Viktor Vekselberg, among other leaders of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, for helping to bring back Russian tourists from abroad.

Personal life

He is married to Marina and has two children, a daughter and a son. He identifies himself as multi-national and does not attend weekly synagogue or church services. He has also identified as Jewish. He has a daughter and grandson who live in New York. Vekselberg reportedly lives in Switzerland.