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Profile Of A Sanctioned Russian Billionaire: Putin's Judo Coach
Fortune has smiled on judo coach Arkady Rotenberg, bringing his businesses Google-like growth and a key role in staging the Winter Olympics. It has now brought down on him the wrath of the U.S. government.
Rotenberg says his success has nothing to do with personal favors from his childhood sparring partner and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has denounced this week's Ukraine-linked sanctions on his companies as an affront to the spirit of free enterprise.
Following personal U.S. visa bans and asset freezes imposed on Rotenberg and his younger brother Boris last month, the new measures against pipeline construction firm Stroigazmontazh, or SGM, and banks SMP and InvestCapitalBank have, if nothing else, thrust the media-shy sportsman into the spotlight.
SGM, 51-percent owned by Arkady Rotenberg, saw revenues grow by a factor of nearly 50 after its creation in 2008 from several units sold by Gazprom. In four years, working for the state-run energy giant and others, it had laid 11,600 kilometers of pipeline — enough to reach all the way from his and Putin's native St. Petersburg to the Pacific. And back.
SMP, in which he and his brother each have a 38-percent stake, has also done well. With assets of 208 billion rubles ($5.8 billion) and about 100 branches it stands only 35th on a ranking by Interfax. But with assets growing 52 percent in the year, it is one of the fastest growing banks in Russia.
In a rare interview in 2012, he told Forbes, which puts his current wealth at $4 billion, that Putin did him no favors in securing public contracts: "Vladimir Vladimirovich doesn't protect me," he said.
But there were other benefits, he added: "If people didn't give me all this publicity, calling me a 'Friend of Putin', then my business would be worse. And so it's growing well".
The U.S. Treasury noted: "Both brothers have amassed enormous amounts of wealth during the years of Putin's rule."
It estimated the Rotenbergs' personal wealth grew by $2.5 billion in just the last two years and that Arkady Rotenberg's firms had secured $7 billion of contracts for the Winter Olympics Russia hosted at Sochi in February, part of what the Treasury called the brothers' "support to Putin's pet projects".
A spokesman for the Rotenbergs and SGM called the sanctions "illegitimate, because they undermine the very spirit of free enterprise and business".
Crony Capitalism
Arkady Rotenberg first sparred with Putin in their home city, then known as Leningrad, in the 1960s. He founded a judo club there and made Putin honorary president in 1998, two years before the former KGB agent took over in the Kremlin.
Rotenberg's enterprises have now made him the 27th richest man in Russia, according to Forbes, which estimates his firms won $28 billion in state contracts over the past five years.
For Putin's critics, that personal tale of good fortune, however, is symbolic of "crony capitalism" that they say has been the hallmark of Putin's 14-year rule. "This is privileged insider business," said Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
SGM says on its website that it implements "the most important strategic projects" of state-controlled Gazprom. These include the Southern Corridor, a network of pipelines that will supply gas to Gazprom's flagship South Stream pipeline to southern Europe.
According to the Ruslana database, and confirmed by SGM, the group's revenues have been growing by $2-3 billion a year — reaching $10.7 billion in 2012, up from $235 million in 2008. Assets grew to $5.3 billion from $370 million over the period.
An SGM spokesman said U.S. sanctions would not have a great impact as it mainly operates in Russia but that they would hurt some U.S. firms that supply it with construction equipment.
SMP said that the sanctions had hurt the bank's operations but were not causing direct losses. It said it was fulfilling all its obligations to clients and had no liquidity problems.
Another of Arkady Rotenberg's interests, Mostotrest, which calls itself Russia's biggest builder of transport infrastructure, has also grown strongly on the back of state contracts but has avoided the U.S. Treasury sanctions.
It is 38.6-percent owned by a firm controlled by Rotenberg and his son Igor and saw 2013 revenues rise 24 percent to 117 billion rubles ($3.3 billion) with another three times that much in outstanding orders. Heavily involved in the Sochi Games and also building a $3.4-billion motorway from Moscow to St. Petersburg, 92 percent of its orders are from public entities.
"It is the contractor of choice," said Kevin Whyte, analyst at VTB Capital in Moscow. "In any country and in any sector you need good relations with your clients. And in this sector the state typically accounts for the vast majority of orders."
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Different from Halliburton how?
Well, there's no dead guy who used to run it and who still gets airtime on American TV. So there's that.
American Exceptionalism. It's not "privileged insider business" when our government does it.
Like, Gaaarreeen Energy & Fisker Roadsters?
Good thing Jackie Chan is not Putin's judo coach.
Perhaps he will put a sleeper hold on Europe.
Wouldn't you like to see him show up in DC and give a few 'demos'
I'd for sure pay to watch that one!
Umm...
Bullshit!
You really need to think of some better fake bullshit, propa-hounds!
It sounds like the Warren Buffet, Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates story.
Looks like legit capitalism to me. They make money by doing real things. Not by pushing paper around and rent seeking the whole world at gunpoint with the petrodollar.
Why is it a surprise that Putin plays the same game as any other person of power? Putin needs friends because he has so many enemies, so of course he's going to take care of his trusty comrades.
It is from the Moscow Times. Maybe it's a piece to assure his allies.
Rotenberg? Really? Obviously the tribe has their hooks in Putin too. Has to make you wonder if there's any place on earth where the tribe doesn't control.
Somehow I thought Putin and the Russians might be different. Apparently not. Same old shit. This world is so fucked.
You do realize, the Putin Pecker Eaters are gonna swoop down on you and claw your eyes out for impugning the honor & integrity of their great KGB messiah don't you?
Here, let me take some of that load off you ;-)
You certainly have pissed off a few which such a derogatory categorization. Hard to find heroes today so some must scrape the bottom of the barrel to get their fix.
Miffed;-)
Rotenberg is a charming, medieval town in S Germany. Major tourism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothenburg_ob_der_Tauber
It was pushed as the epitome of the German 'Home Town' in 30's & 40's. 3rd Reich expelled all Joo's.
If Arkady is, he's the 1st judo champ I've heard of, or Putin crony.
Yes, but the town is Rothenburg, and he's Rotenberg.
FYI... Burg=castle, Berg=hill, so... Rothenburg=Redcastle, Rotenberg=Redhill
p.s. If you speak German, you can understand 80% Yiddish, as most of it comes from German and some from Polish. Also, in the Middle Ages, the Jews were forced to take on German last names, as the German tax collectors were tired of spelling Hebrew names. Perhaps it also allowed German Jews to get taxed less, if they had German names and could not easily be identified as money-Jews. One thing you have to hand to those people: They know how to adapt and re-invent themselves in whatever culture they live in.
dubious many had Hebrew names. Both because last names weren't a thing until after around 1100 or 1200, and because the Ashkenazi didn't speak Hebrew - modern reinvention of a language that's as similar to biblical hebrew as say Portuguese to Classical Latin.
Keep on commenting on topics you know practically nothing about.
Not too hard..The other day on Yahoo a women was proclaimed a hero because she wore her daughter's dress to the daughter's graduation. If that ain't a hero, I don't know what is.
The father should have worn the dress. That's a progressive hero if there ever was one.
father? what's that?
Miffed, why do I think you don't actually know very much about the transition from Yeltsin, the rape of Russian natural resource wealth by western-backed oligarchs [yes almost all jews, but if it helps, its the raping that matters, I'd simply argue that when the rapists are a tiny minority getting help from members of the same minority in other nation states - in a world with a modicum of intellectual freedom and scholarship, one should be able to discuss it without being pepper sprayed by the thought police. Just my opinion, love] and what Putin did to disgorge that wealth?
Before your rejoinder - do you actually know very much about this epoch>?
Oh well. Better to be dead than to be controlled by the tribe. Just ask the Palestinians. Gaza is the worlds largest open air prison camp.
Can't believe Putin is such a fool.
Not a fan of any form of government, but could you imagine how fucked up the world would be if there wasn't some entity out there making the job of hegemony a little more difficult?
You have a point, but would also appear to be validating his implicit position that some anonymous person on the interwebz might be better at gauging the intentions and trustworthiness of individual Russian oligarchs of any religion, than a damn KGB spy who has been taking their money, their freedom, and their lives.
When AllWorkedUp has collected the literal scalps of a Badri or a Berezovsky, or ripped Khodorkovsky a new asshole, or told Rothschild to fuck off because he's not going to pay, then he might have better standing for such a claim.
Politics is dirty business, why not some have Jews help the dirty work? The kids on Stormfront are never going to rule the world, defeat Zionism, or even understand how it all fits together.
I'm just going to swoop down on you for the lazy homoerotic {homophobic?} rhetoric, nmewn. It's almost beneath you, after all.
[winky face, sweetie!]
Katarina the Great brought in many German settlers.
She was Great indeed. She was into well-hung men, and even occasional horses.
Well-known European lore.
Are you not aware that the vast majority of the top 20 Russian billionaires are, and especially were Jews, right?
And you must, must, must also know that it is forbidden to mention it, lest you be inundated with thought police, each trying to out do each other with hackneyed references to Hitler/Nazis/Holocaust in order to both demonstrate Godwin's Law, and reassert the notion that even honest, factual discussions of disproportionate Jewish power are per se "anti-Semitic"?
You'll learn. Oh, you'll learn.
mwa.
mwa ha.
mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
[ahem]
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/At-Putins-side-an-army...
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/04/forbes-jewish-billionaires.html
http://takimag.com/article/jewish_wealth_by_the_numbers_steve_sailer/pri...
Also, espousing any sort of narrative where Putin is essentially defending Russia from predatory western/mic/banking/neocon interests will frequently yield you rather graphic sexual imagery, from people who obviously don't know the pleasures of nightly sex with a woman who does a lot of kegels.
ta!
repeat
are you quite sure? from where, prithee?
I do wonder if the people junking you actually engage in deliberative thought, or if its Pavlovian - you mentioned Jews and suggested they had excessive or disproportionate power, therefore - you are bad!
Seldom do I see a coherent rejoinder, perhaps because there is none.
I'm willing, genuinely - to hear alternative takes, but I do think it distills to this notion, and I'll call it brainwashing, that you can not discuss disproportionate power, if it regards Jews. You can discuss it as to males, whites, Afrikaners, etc. - but, ostensibly because of the Jews qua Eternal Victim meme - the fact there was no serious history of anti-Semitism in the United States, and the fact 2.5% of the population has such wildly disproportionate power, and that many of whom have allegiance to a foreign, colonialist and expansionist state - it is "hate"...
It simply doesn't make a lick of sense, which is why I bother to challenge this kind of reflexive response. AIPAC and like groups have excessive influence, plainly, because it is supported by a large minority, of a minority, which itself has financial and media power far in excess of their numbers.
And here's the kicker - any group in power seeks to maintain it. The conflation of discussion of Jewish/Zionist power with classical anti-semitism is simply the easiest [if irrational] emotive means to achieve black-listing, largely, of the discussion of that power - even as "white privilege" is taught by liberal Jewish professors at a large handful of the more over-rated colleges across the land.
Ultimately - one should be able to discuss privilege and power. Those who feel free to make sweeping, absurd statements about Arabs or Muslims, but who summon Hitler and Nazis when indisputible evidence of Israeli war crimes, or Jewish influence on foreign policy or immigration is substantiated, are fundamentally dishonest, hypocritical, and should be called out for being such at all times.
After all, there were many reasons the US was lied into Iraq, and into killing many hundreds of thousands, but the Jewish neocons in the media, and in the Pentagon and State department and Beltway think tanks were probably the major political impetus - and they wanted Iraq destroyed to benefit Israel. This is abundantly subtantiated and is beyond dispute. And given all the dead, who should not be, I will call them liars and hypocrites who dare deny it.
Rantus terminum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV34D8mygzs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFd4FdbJxs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOVdE_3anU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZGo6mWjk4Y
Ow, My Balls!
Yeah, this Rotenberg is Jewish, an Israeli citizen, too.
The Jewish population in Russia is estimated to be between 200,000 and 400,000 people depending on who's counting. That's between .1 and .2% of the population. One or two out of a thousand for those of you suffering from poor math. So why do the oligarchs, mostly Jews, control 62% of the Russian economy? Why do the Russians allow this?
The U.S. "treasury" does not like plagiarism of it's model.
500000 kids who died in Iraq due to US politicians
enough said?
yep Saddam was a really nice guy? Bush was an idiot but Saddam was evil!
are you one of the h-trolls on duty tonight?
You are a MSM conditioned moron. Saddam was only evil after he stopped playing nice with the USA. When we were dealing with the revolution mess (which we caused) in Iran, he was our bestest buddy. He was generously killing all the Iranians he could. And so what if he killed a bunch of Kurds while he was at it. We didn't care as long as he kept killing Iranians and allowing our intelligence? dorks to operate freely in his country. He was a real humanitarian..........as long as he did our wet work.
Really, does anyone give a fuck about visa bans unless you were already halfway to the US on a plane?
so this russian increased his wealth by 2.5 b. in the last 2 years, if i've read right zuckenburg did that in a couple days in the last 2 yrs.
of course facebook, google, verizon, and a dozen others in americans communication corporationist society don't have any govt. connections.
I don't think the case could be made against Putin as being "anti Jewish" or an "antisemite". Maybe he is an antizionist if such a thing bothers the Russian.
He's first and foremost a Russian leader and the Russian people like him very much. He and the rest of Russia have been pretty mute and restrained despite the sanctions and the verbal abuse against them.
Maybe our leadership should take that as an example of how to earn some respect from its citizens. Quit yapping about a red line and how bad the other side behaves when everyone knows you've created the mess and are making things worse, not better.
Sanctions are just a more rigid and quick way to alter global trade and skew trade to their advantage. Its been done through history in different forms and with varying strategies.
Putin is a powerful man. He controls Russia and he is making alliances with China and India as well as other major economies. He is a threat to US interests which are the same as the UK interests fyi.
If anyone can bring this house of cards down and level the playing field which is stacked almost exclusively in favor of US/UK/Israel then it is the alliance between Russia and China.
Putin is certainly not anti-jewish and probably Zionism agnostic (at best) a supporter at worst, he has made not a single anti-jewish anti-zionist statement, ever! Even the (officialy) pro-zionist puppets let sometimes slip how they hate jews/zionism. That makes Putin not just a puppet but a puppeteer, he's 100% invested. He's probably being "used" by his Zionist buddies to change the guard of old Western Zionists to new Easters/Asian Zionists.