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Also see: Alfa Bank; German Khan; Petr Aven; Fusion GPS; Glenn Simpson; MI6; Christopher Steele; dossier; Alex van der Zwaan; Robert Mueeler; Russia; oligarchs;
Jump to: 2017; 2018; 2019;
Undated: Mikhail Maratovich Fridman (born 21 April 1964) is a Russian business magnate, investor and philanthropist.[8] He also holds Israeli citizenship.[2][3] He co-founded Alfa-Group, a multinational Russian conglomerate. According to Forbes, he was the seventh richest Russian as of 2017.[1][9] In May 2017, he was also ranked as Russia's most important businessman by bne IntelliNews.[10]
In May 2017 Fridman, along with fellow Alfa Bank owners Petr Aven and German Khan, filed a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed for publishing the unverified Donald Trump–Russia dossier,[188][189][190] which alleges financial ties and collusion between Putin, Trump, and the three bank owners.[191][192] In October 2017 Fridman, Aven, and Khan also filed a libel suit against the private-investigation firm Fusion GPS and its founder Glenn Simpson, who had commissioned former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to compile the dossier, for circulating the dossier among journalists and allowing it to be published.[184] In April 2018 Fridman, Aven, and Khan filed a libel suit against Steele in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia,[193][194] but the suit was dismissed with prejudice the following August.[195]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Fridman
-- 2017 --
October 5: 3 Russian Businessmen File Second Defamation Lawsuit In Connection with 'Steele Dossier'
https://www.rferl.org/a/steele-dossier-trump-russia-alfa-bank-fusion-gps-aven-fridman-khan/28774687.html
November 3: Mikhail Fridman: What does it take to become an entrepreneur?
https://macmillan.yale.edu/news/mikhail-fridman-what-does-it-take-become-entrepreneur
November 13: Businessman, philanthropist Mikhail Fridman on achieving success today
https://news.yale.edu/2017/11/13/businessman-philanthropist-mikhail-fridman-achieving-success-today
-- 2018 --
February 1: Fridman says not sure how U.S. oligarchs list will impact business
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-russia-sanctions-list-fridman/update-1-fridman-says-not-sure-how-u-s-oligarchs-list-will-impact-business-idUSL8N1PR2VA
February 8: A profile in the Financial Times from 2015 called him [Mikhail Fridman] a “fierce corporate fighter.” But there’s a dark side to capitalism in Russia: organized crime. Russia is a Mafia State.
Fridman has had ties to the Solntsevskaya Bratva mafia since the 1990’s, according to a document prepared by Stratfor.
Fridman’s ties to corruption and scandals are vast ...
https://medium.com/@ninaandtito/alfa-oligarch-mikhail-fridman-b97be38078a3
April 6: Famously discreet special counsel Robert Mueller, as he shows interest in the connections between Russia’s government and Donald Trump, often leaves clues behind for those trying to follow him, rather like a hunter blazing a trail—or perhaps like the boy who recently fell into the Los Angeles sewer system. They’re not obvious, just a handprint here or there, but they’re right in front of anyone who cares to look.
One of the most tantalizing of those clues may appear in Mueller’s memorandum to the court prior to the sentencing Tuesday of Alex van der Zwaan, a 33-year-old Dutch lawyer who pleaded guilty in February to charges that he lied to Mueller’s investigators. In the March 27 memo, Mueller sketched reasons for van der Zwaan to do at least a little jail time, citing a “scarcity of mitigating factors and several aggravating circumstances” (PDF).
https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-muellers-eye-on-some-russian-oligarchs
April 11: LetterOne chairman Mikhail Fridman does not expect recent U.S. sanctions against Russian oligarchs will hamper his company's oil deal with BASF.
This is according to the Russian news agency Interfax which on Thursday cited Fridman as saying L1 and BASF still planned to consolidate oil assets “despite new spiral of sanctions pressure.”
Russian billionaire Fridman’s LetterOne and Germany’s BASF in December 2017 signed a letter of intent to merge their oil and gas businesses into a joint venture named Wintershall DEA.
https://www.offshoreenergytoday.com/fridman-l1-basf-oil-deal-not-affected-by-sanctions-pressure/
April 20: Three Russian businessmen this week filed a lawsuit against Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and a London-based corporate intelligence company, claiming the infamous document falsely accused them of being complicit in the alleged Russian effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.
https://www.courthousenews.com/russians-sue-trump-dossier-author-for-defamation/
May 23: A dozen prominent anti-Kremlin thinkers and activists have published an open letter condemning a major Washington research organization for hosting an off-the-record round-table dinner for two oligarchs listed on a U.S. Treasury-issued registry of 210 wealthy Russians identified as close to President Vladimir Putin.
The Atlantic Council, which hosted Pyotr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, principals of the U.S.-sanctioned Alfa Group, published the condemnatory letter on its website before the private dinner Monday, which was internally billed as "an outlook for the Russian economy in an era of escalating sanctions."
The open letter criticizing the Atlantic Council, co-signed by major Kremlin detractors such as former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and prominent scholars Andrei Piontkovsky and Sarah Chayes, was published in tandem with an Atlantic Council response, in which it defended its decision. The council said that "in order to do our work well — in this case concerning Russia — we need the best information and the best networks possible."
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-think-tank-takes-heat-for-hosting-putin-linked-oligarchs/4406945.html
June 4: In London, Leading Philanthropists Tell How Torah Changed Their Lives
https://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/4049555/jewish/In-London-Leading-Philanthropists-Tell-How-Torah-Changed-Their-Lives.htm
August 21: Author of Trump-Russia dossier wins libel case in US court
Suit against Christopher Steele by three Russian oligarchs thrown out by judge
The former MI6 officer Christopher Steele has won a legal battle in the United States against three Russian oligarchs who sued him over allegations made in his dossier about the Trump campaign and its links with Moscow.
The oligarchs – Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan – claimed that Steele and his intelligence firm, Orbis, defamed them in the dossier, which was leaked and published in early 2017. The Russians own stakes in Moscow-based Alfa Bank. All are billionaires.
On Monday, a judge in the District of Columbia, Anthony C Epstein, upheld a motion by Steele to have the oligarchs’ case thrown out. Epstein did not determine whether the dossier – which Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed as “fake” – was “accurate or not accurate”.
But the judge concluded that it was covered by the US first amendment, which protects free speech. He ruled that the oligarchs had failed to prove a key part of their case: that Steele knew that some information in the dossier was inaccurate, and had acted “with reckless disregard as to its falsity”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/21/author-of-trump-russia-dossier-wins-libel-case-in-us-court-christopher-steele
September 26: In Steele dossier suit, a skirmish over Russian oligarchs' international profile
Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan, all billionaire investors in Russia’s Alfa Bank, allege they were defamed by one of the reports included in the dossier that suggested a longstanding, shady relationship between the men and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/steele-dossier-suit-skirmish-russian-oligarchs-international-profile/story?id=58111345
November 26: Four large communal charities have been given a funding boost from a philanthropic group backed by Ukrainian-born magnate Mikhail Fridman.
It is the second round of donations by the Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG) to UK Jewish organisations this year.
The group claims to have already enjoyed “early success” in its outreach efforts in the UK, having partnered with Moishe House, a community hub for young Jews, and the PJ Library, which distributes Jewish children’s books in four languages.
https://www.thejc.com/community/community-news/mikhail-fridman-genesis-philanthropy-group-jw3-jlc-charities-1.472993
December 13: Mikhail Fridman ... and Pyotr (Peter) Aven ... have launched an effort to persuade high Russian and American government officials that they are in the process of selling their Russian bank, and also that they are not doing anything of the kind.
Uncharacteristically clumsy of them is the assessment of Russian sources. “Fridman has been trying to sell Alfa Bank for a long time,” one source says, “but can’t get his price. He has gone public this time after Alfa Bank officials got the message that someone important in Moscow is offended that he was not involved in the deal.”
http://johnhelmer.net/the-sale-of-alfa-bank-that-mikhail-fridman-and-pyotr-aven-talk-out-of-both-sides-of-their-mouths-isnt-news-why-now-is-news/
December 16: Mikhail Fridman shows the downside of being a Russian oligarch
It’s hard to be neither too close nor too distant from Vladimir Putin
One question, with two meanings, has bookended Vladimir Putin’s reign: who’s next? As he tamed Russia’s tycoons in the early 2000s, Moscow’s power-brokers wondered whom he would next dispatch to exile or prison. After the dismemberment of Ukraine, the question took on a new connotation: who will be next to suffer Western sanctions? In both cases, a name in the frame has been Mikhail Fridman.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/12/08/mikhail-fridman-shows-the-downside-of-being-a-russian-oligarch
December 5: Kremlin to buy Alfa Bank from oligarch Fridman
The Kremlin is lining up an audacious deal for one of its proxies to acquire Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private lender by assets and a vital cornerstone of the nation’s financial scene since the early 1990s, bne IntelliNews can reveal.
Either state-controlled VTB Group or Gazprombank, Russia’s second-largest and third-largest lender, respectively, will be allowed to swallow up Alfa. Mikhail Fridman, the billionaire oligarch founder of the bank who relocated to London in 2015, has agreed in principle to do a deal although the price may still be a sticking point, according to well-placed banking sources.
When asked by a bne IntelliNews correspondent at dinner in the 90's if he would ever sell Alfa Bank, at that time the biggest and most profitable privately owned bank on the market, Fridman replied: “Of course. I will always sell. If the price is right. And for Alfa Bank it will have to be a very good price indeed.”
http://www.intellinews.com/kremlin-to-buy-alfa-bank-from-oligarch-fridman-153149/
-- 2019 --
February 1: Fridman is the largest shareholder of Alfa Group, an investment company that owns stakes in Alfa Bank, Russia's sixth biggest bank, and X5, a Russian food retailer. Through Luxembourg-based LetterOne he owns stakes in German oil and gas producer DEA and the international mobile-phone operator Veon.
https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/mikhail-m-fridman/
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