Profile Igor Setsjin, CEO of Rosneft The Darth Vader of the oil industry Igor Setsjin owes his power to his friendship with Putin, his position within the FSB and his job as head of Rosneft NRC Next, Thursday December 1st, 2016 By Eva Cukier

Amsterdam. Not so long ago, Igor Setsjin, CEO of Rosneft, had an unpleasant experience: his name was raised in an investigation by the independent Russian Novja Gazeta. The occasion was a series of vacation photos of a luxurious yacht that his much younger second wife, Olga Rozjkova-Setsjina, had put on Instagram. Roman Anin, a curious investigative reporter of Novaja Gazeta, discovered that the interior on the photo’s matched exactly with that of one of the most expensive yachts in the world: the Dutch built St. Princess Olga.

Even though Rozjkova married one of the most powerful men in Russia in 2013, the purchase or lease of this yacht would have burned a large hole in her wealthy husband’s housekeeping ledger. The Setsjins dragged the newspaper and Anin in court for libel. Although Setsjin made little effort to dispute the facts, the judge ruled in his favor: Novaja Gazeta had to remove the articles from its website. The newspaper appealed the ruling.

This typifies Setsjin: the powerful boss of oil company Rosneft is used to getting his way. Even in the Kremlin Setsjin manages to exploit situations in his own favor, earlier NRC Handelsblad articles showed about the way in which Rosneft manipulated the judicial process in Armenia and The and how he silences critical media using law suits. The 56-year-old Setjsin owes that power to his yearlong friendship with Putin, to his unshakable position within the Russian security service FSB, and his job as boss of Rosneft.

Arms dealing One of Setsjin’s largest breaks in life is that he was born in Leningrad, the current St. Petersburg, the same city in which Putin was born eight years before him. Setsjin grew up in a family of metal workers, but went on to study French and Portuguese. His knowledge of languages led to a job in diplomacy during the eighties: he worked as a translator in Angola and Mozambique. According to several investigations, Setsjin was the link between the in 2011 in the US convicted notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout and the Russian government. Both men deny the accusations.

Putin, then deputy Mayor of Leningrad, met Setsjin during an official trip to Brazil. They clicked due to a shared love for the communist past, and Putin hired Setsjin. When Putin was named Prime Minister in 1999 by then president Jeltsin, Setsjin accompanied him to Moscow as his confidant.

In his younger years, Setsjin was in the KGB, the current FSB. He likes to operate in the shadows, and is known as extremely secretive. His nickname is ‘Darth Vader’, after the dark character from Star Wars. During Putin’s first term as president, a joke went around diplomatic circles that Setsjin in fact didn’t exist, but was a fictive bogeyman designed to spread fear. Back in 2003 the Russian newspaper Kommersant already described him as one of the most important members of the Petersburg clan siloviki, the collection of politicians with roots in the security service (sila is Russian for ‘power’).

Rosneft A key moment came in 2004 when Setsjin got a place in the board of directors at Rosneft, the state- owned oil company that was carved out after the fall of the Soviet Union and existed in the fringe (production back then was about 13 million tons, now it’s 200 million). Setsjin came at exactly the right moment. At the end of 2003, oil tycoon Michail Chodorkovski, owner of Yukos, was arrested on charges of fraud. Rosneft, through a smart construction, got the bulk of Yukos’ shares. Chodorkovski, who spent years in jail after two lost court cases, accused Setsjin to be the mastermind behind the take over.

Setsjin was none the worse for Yukos, but was now regularly pulled from the corridors of power into the spotlight. That was interesting, because due to the Yukos take over, Rosneft became increasingly more powerful. In 2008, Putin named him deputy prime minister for Energy in his second cabinet; in 2012, when Putin returned as president, Setsjin became CEO of Rosneft. In the same year Rosneft made a deal with shareholder BP, which sold her significant stake in the Russian joint venture TNK- BP to Rosneft.

DISCLAIMER: The English version is a translation from the Dutch original NRC article and is for information purposes only. 1 In case of a discrepancy, the Dutch original will prevail.

Stock market listing That transaction gave Rosneft almost half of all Russian oil production and allowed the company to grow out to the largest publically listed Oil Company in the world. In return, BP got two seats on the board and became, with 19,75 percent of the shares, the second largest shareholder in the company, after the Russian state.

That Setsjin has earned a lot of money during his glorious career is evident. The online business newspaper RBK estimated his yearly income at nearly 9 million Euros in 2016 based on Rosneft figures. That appears to be inadequate considering the lifestyle of the Setsjins, as revealed by like RBK, Novaja Gazeta and Vedomosti. The lawsuits that Setsjin filed against these newspapers prove one thing: the former KGB man doesn’t like to exist in the daylight.

DISCLAIMER: The English version is a translation from the Dutch original NRC article and is for information purposes only. 2 In case of a discrepancy, the Dutch original will prevail.