Background: AAR & Rosneft
Last week, it was announced that TNK-BP’s Russian shareholders won a Swedish court injunction that will block BP’s tie-up with Rosneft until early next month at least. Approaching the situation with a nubile eye, you might be forgiven for mistaking it all for some kind of shocking drama. But the fact is that the likes of this latest TNK-BP dispute happen all the time. It’s a function of the fact that anyone who has serious power in the country also has ties to the Kremlin, and no company more so than Alfa, it seems. Interesting to keep in mind that Mikhail Fridman’s arm of the Alfa-Access-Renova triumvirate, which owns the Russian half of TNK-BP, has long had close ties with the government. Back in 2004, Stratfor reported that Alfa Group was Vladimir Putin’s ‘power center‘, which he was going to need in order to stay in control (the piece was archived externally):
The Alfa Group appears able and willing — under the condition that it is recognized as a new power center and allowed to cut a larger slice of Russian wealth for itself — to align with Putin and try to help him. Fridman and Aven are not typical oligarchs who habitually fight the president’s power and deceive foreign investors, although they have been rumored extensively in the past to do just that. Today, they are in the good graces of Western media and the co-owners of TNK-BP, and are credited with splitting the united front Khodorkovsky tried to mount against the president in 2003. Alfa is on the winning side, with Putin and the West.”