Sanctioned Russian billionaire retains control of Aughinish parent company, Sweden findsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\nIn 2002, Deripaska founded EN+, a large energy conglomerate which took over the metals manufacturer Rusal. Rusal later purchased both Kubal and Aughinish Alumina.<\/p>\n
In 2018, the US treasury moved to sanction Deripaska and all of his assets, including Aughinish and Kubal, over allegations of interference in the US presidential election.<\/p>\n
This could have been devastating for the Co Limerick region. Aughinish employs about 470 people directly and another 500 on contract. <\/p>\n
The Irish Government engaged in an intensive lobbying campaign in Washington to remove the sanctions. Eventually, a deal was worked out in January 2019 where EN+ and Rusal would avoid sanctions if Deripaska agreed to reduce his stake in the parent company.<\/p>\n
His shareholding would be reduced to 44.95 per cent while his voting rights would reduce to 35 per cent, meaning he no longer controlled decision-making at EN+.<\/p>\n
As part of the deal, the board would be reconstituted to include eight members (of 12) which did not have any links to Deripaska.<\/p>\n
The new board members included Christopher Burnham, a former undersecretary general of the United Nations; Thurgood Marshall jnr, an American lawyer and son of the first black US Supreme Court judge; and James Schwab, a former senior official in the US department of state.<\/p>\n
Further sanctions followed in 2022, this time from the EU targeting Deripaska for his role in supplying the Russian military following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
But the 2019 deal shielded Rusal and Aughinish from any impacts. Then came the Swedish taxman.<\/p>\n
The Skatteverket ruling runs to 73 pages and details the structure and history of Rusal\u2019s ownership, including a bewildering series of complex share trades. But its findings can be summed up in one sentence: the 2019 deal is a sham.<\/p>\n
It determined Deripaska continues to control EN+ and by extension Rusal. This is chiefly down to a decree from Russian president Vladimir Putin which invalidates the voting rights of company shareholders from \u201cunfriendly nations\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the case of EN+, when those voting rights are excluded, Deripaska\u2019s share of voting rights increases to more than 70 per cent, \u201csufficient for both simple and qualified majority\u201d votes.<\/p>\n
If he controls EN+, he also controls Rusal and all of its assets, it stated. This group includes Kubal and Aughinish.<\/p>\n
Sweden is not the first to arrive at this conclusion. In 2023, the Italian government froze the assets of Eurallumina, a Rusal-owned smelter in Sardinia, on the basis that Deripaska was still the majority owner.<\/p>\n
This leaves Ireland as one of only two EU countries to have failed to take action against Rusal assets in their countries (Rusal also owns a small aluminium plant in Germany).<\/p>\n
As Ireland takes up the EU council presidency and the Government finalises a report on the links between Aughinish and the Russian arms industry, the pressure on Dublin to be seen to be taking some sort of action may become unbearable.<\/p>\n
* This article was amended on July 2nd <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Swedish tax rulings do not generally have much impact on matters of geopolitics. But the latest judgment of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[163884,61,60,1396,43,204681,3589,1859,5936],"class_list":["post-529202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-aughinish-alumina","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-limerick","tag-news","tag-rusal","tag-russia","tag-sweden","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}