Mikhail Fridman, a Russian oligarch who complained that the West forgot his good deeds when it imposed sanctions, and his business partner Petr Aven are planning to sell their stake in Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private bank, The Moscow Times reports.

Mykhailo Fridman complains that he can no longer afford to live in LondonPhoto: Mykhailo Japaridze / TASS / Profimedia

The Financial Times writes that Friedman, co-founder of Alfa Group, and Aven, who headed the bank until last March, decided to try to get Western sanctions lifted against them because of their ties to the Kremlin.

Four people familiar with the Alfa Bank sale negotiations told the FT that Andriy Kosogov, another business partner of the two, has agreed to buy their 45% stake in the company.

Kosogov has not yet come under a series of Western sanctions against Russian officials, businessmen and propagandists.

A source told the FT that Friedman and Aven “want to do everything they can to get rid of Russian assets to get the sanctions lifted.”

Kosogov did not want to comment on the information, but the press secretary confirmed the transaction.

Who is Mykhailo Fridman?

Friedman attracted international attention after complaining last year that he was living on just £2,500 a month after the sanctions were imposed and that the West had forgotten his “good works”.

He was born in Ukraine, got rich in Russia, and then moved to Great Britain, where he has been living in London since 2015.

Friedman said in an interview with Bloomberg after the start of the Russian invasion and the introduction of Western sanctions against him that “I honestly believed that we were such good friends of the Western world that we could not be punished.”

In this regard, the oligarch recalled that “the Alpha scholarship program probably has hundreds of graduates, many of them successful people.”

Last March, when asked why he didn’t just leave Russia and sell Alfa Group, since he had already made a significant fortune, Friedman replied that “it’s not easy to sell such a large company.”

“Also, I’m emotionally attached to the company I built from the ground up,” he added.

Friedman is one of the 7 Russian oligarchs that Radio Europa Liberă reported in January that they could avoid EU sanctions with the help of Hungary.

Bloomberg currently estimates his fortune at $11.6 billion, compared to more than $14 billion before the start of the war in Ukraine.

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