Oleg Deripaska is the Oliver North of Russiagate. He’s the one Russian oligarch whose name you need to know. Oleg The Oligarch. Vladimir Putin’s go-to guy.
A brutal history, a mysterious past
Where Putin is concerned, Deripaska will do anything to please. He’s a big-time player in Russiagate. And the millions he paid out to Paul Manafort may turn out to be the least of it.Deripaska is one of Russia’s best-connected oligarchs. A leaked US Moscow Embassy cable called him “one of the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.”
And, of course, Paul Manafort worked for Oleg Deripaska for many 10 million dollar a year years. Who knows? Maybe they were cooking something up.
Oleg Deripaska and Donald Trump— an early adapter—are figures who just happen to be onstage for the biggest story of our time: the globalization of organized crime.
He’s a man with a mysterious past, as well as a well-documented brutal history as the one Russian gangster who was ruthless enough to be the last man standing at the end of what Russians call the Aluminum Wars.
Ever heard of the Great Patriotic Aluminum Wars? There were three of them. And bloody affairs they were too. Maybe not quite Mexican cartel bloody, but way past the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
I have several stories to tell about Oleg Deripaska. One about who he is. The other is about the strange circumstances during which Oleg the Oligarch first crossed my radar. When I first wrote about him in 2008 few knew his name, other than a few Republican lobbyists like Bob Dole holding out a beggar’s bowl and taking Deripaska’s money to get him a visa to enter the U.S.
As it happened, the FBI wasn’t having it.
Funny old FBI.
Rackets can be fun
In the criminal history of planet Earth, aluminum is the biggest racket ever run by a single organized crime family. A Russian crime family.
Ownership of Russia’s most valuable assets was up for grabs in the 1990’s. Protection rackets were run by organized crime, former KGB agents and cadres of special forces troops.
Russia’s mineral wealth was divided on the factory floors of Russia’s massive aluminum smelters in a series of violent and bloody stand-offs. Enough blood flowed during Oleg Deripaska’s “consolidation” during what Russians called “The Aluminum Wars” to float his 200-ft long yacht.
As Deripaska made his way up, he created a powerful security service of his own, and cemented his position in Russia’s ruling elite — if it wasn’t already—by marrying into Boris Yeltsin’s family in the early 2000’s.
Deripaska formed a combine with the Gambino Family of the former Soviet Union, a criminal organization led by Anton Malevsky.
It’s called the Izmailovsky crime family. And today’s its boss is called “the most powerful gangster on the planet.”
Uber-Oligarch Oleg
He’s been called Russia’s Uber-Oligarch. The story of the Russian oligarch most deeply implicated in Russiagate is filled with fake news. The reason is unknown.
The New York Times identifies him as “a former nuclear physicist.” But if Deripaska is a former nuclear physicist, John Gotti was a plumbing contractor. Gotti wasn’t a plumbing contractor. And Deripaska isn’t a “nuclear physicist.”
The Times writes he “wrested control of the Russian aluminum industry from a netherworld of organized crime figures.”
But they offer no examples of this “wresting,” which means “forcibly taking something from someone else’s grasp.”
What we’d like to ask the Times: “On this ‘wresting’ business: Were automatic weapons involved? Mortars? Rocket-propelled grenades?
Any ‘yes’ answers would detract from the picture the Times was painting of Oleg as a “former nuclear physicist.”
It isn’t just the Times.
A profile of him in the Toronto Globe and Mail profile in 2011 reports Deripaska as not being eager to publicize his numerous charities. But apparently he allows himself the occasional humble brag. He told the Globe & Mail he’d donated $250 million between 2000-09, but offered no proof. Among mainstream journalists, nobody asked.
“Tall, with boyish features, cropped blond hair and relentless blue eyes, Deripaska looks not unlike Daniel Craig – and shares the Bond actor’s reputation for toughness,” reported London’s Guardian . “Deripaska is a cunning businessman whose mere survival in the cutthroat Russian aluminum industry is a testament to his abilities.”
So, who is Oleg Deripaska? One thing seems certain. For a gangster, he gets great press.
The Aluminum King
Because of his vice-like grip on the industry, Oleg Deripaska is called Russia’s “Aluminum King.” He enjoys a reputation as the hard man of the infamously ruthless metals business.
In Siberia fights to control aluminum factories were bloody. Deripaska never faced criminal charges during that period but his associates did.
Yet when Deripaska in 2000 moved to gain control over 70 per cent of Russia’s aluminum output, the bosses of two huge aluminum smelters opted to sell their stakes to him. It was either that, or go to prison. After the sale, the pair saw their criminal charges dropped. They later filed suits in London against Deripaska for allegedly coercing them into selling their stakes. Both settled out of court.
Since that time numerous lawsuits filed in the West—where its safer—have accused Deripaska of using violence and intimidation to take over Russia’s metals companies.
Grabbing hold of a dominant global position in a strategic metal like aluminum made Oleg Deripaska—and the people he ‘fronts’ for—true Masters of the Universe.
Somehow Oleg emerged with more assets than anyone else. Today—without exaggeration— he owns it all.
Oleg Deripaska is the sole beneficiary owner of the “RusAl” Company.
Dateline: Yerevan, April 4 2006. Headline: “RUSAL” OFFICIALLY CALLS OLEG DERIPASKA ITS ONLY OWNER”
The “Russian Aluminum” Company, one of the three biggest aluminum producers in the world, was officially disclosing its ownership structure for the first time.
Announcing a credit extension for RusAl’s “Komi Aluminum Project,” The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development disclosed that Deripaska is the owner of “RusAl” and “Base Element.”
Publications around the world have reported recent years that Oleg Deripaska was on the move outside of Russia, wheeling and dealing and making investments.
Yet the New York Times has repeatedly said that the U.S. State Department has denied Deripaska a U.S. visa, supposedly over questions about his role in the so-called Aluminum Wars.
Stay tuned.
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