- Russian billionaire Vagit Alekperov resigned as CEO of Lukoil on Thursday following British sanctions.
- Lukoil is the second largest oil company in Russia and one of the world’s largest oil producers.
- Alekperov is Russia’s eighth richest man and was a former Soviet Union deputy oil minister.
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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 UK sanctioned Alekperov, claiming he “continues to support the government of Russia” by serving as director of the country’s energy sector. Alekperov joins a handful of Russian business leaders who left their firms after invading Ukraine.
Alekperov, valued by Forbes at $18.6 billion, began his oil career as a driller in the Caspian Sea. By 1990, he was Deputy Minister for the Oil and Gas Industry of the Soviet Union, according to the Lukoil website.
In 1991 — the same year the Soviet Union collapsed — Alekperov converted three state-owned oil fields into Lukoil, according to his Forbes biography. Alekperov is currently the eighth richest person in Russia on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
The oligarch had escaped personal sanctions until recently. In a 2004 New York Times Magazine article entitled “The Triumph of the Quiet Tycoon,” Alekperov is described as a man whose “unimpression is calculated” and who “acts as if it were his greatest desire to be ignored by the public”.
“I cannot afford to be indifferent to politics, but I have no personal ambitions,” Alekperov told the Times in 2004. “I have only one duty associated with politics, which is the country and the to help companies. 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 “speedy resolution to the military conflict” in Ukraine.
“We fully support its solution through negotiations and through diplomatic channels,” the statement said. “The company strives to continue stable work in all countries and regions of its presence.”