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A Russian oligarch and confidant of President Vladimir Putin has been accused of using a fake identity to hide his multimillion-dollar salary.
The report about Igor Sechin, CEO of state-controlled oil giant Rosneft, comes from anti-corruption foundation FBK. The organization continues to investigate Russian officials despite the jailing of its founder, opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
FBK's latest subject, Sechin, served as chief of staff when Putin was deputy mayor of St Petersburg in the mid-1990s. After Putin became president in 2000, Sechin oversaw security services and energy issues in Russia. He was appointed chairman of the board of Rosneft in 2004 and became its CEO in 2012.
Sechin was among the Russian officials blacklisted by the European Union in response to Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. His assets were frozen and, in March 2022, two superyachts reportedly belonging to him were seized by Spanish and Italian authorities.
In Russia, the salaries of state-owned company CEOs are kept secret and organizations trying to reveal them have been punished in the courts.
To try to find out how much Sechin is paid, FBK analyzed a data leak from Russia's Federal Tax Service that revealed officials' salaries in 2018 and 2020. Sechin's name does not appear in the data, but the group said he was listed under the pseudonym Sergei Andreyevich Terentyev.
The group concluded that Terentyev and Sechin were the same person—they had the same data in the tax register, including date of birth, passport details and personal tax number.
In a video for its YouTube channel, FBK said Sechin's "luxuries" included mansions and yachts that had been "bought at the expense of Rosneft," half of whose shares are state-owned.
"We are all shareholders of Rosneft," said FBK's Sergei Yezhov. "Do we have the right to know what our hired manager is paid? Absolutely."
In 2020, "Sechin's annual income is 3,317,000,000 rubles," he said. At 2020 exchange rates, this is around $46 million.
Yezhov added that this amount was comparable to the budget of the entire town of Apatity in the Murmansk region, which has a population of almost 49,000.
His 2020 earnings included 3.07 billion rubles from Rosneft, 244 million rubles from the Russian Regional Development Bank, Rosneft's bank, and 2 million rubles from Rosneftegaz, a company that owns Rosneft's shares on behalf of the state.
FBK's video did not mention what Sechin has earned this year.
Newsweek has contacted Rosneft for comment.
Independent Russian-language news outlet Agentsvo wrote on Telegram that Sechin's salary would have put him 17th in the list of the highest-paid American executives for 2020. He was paid more than the bosses of Microsoft, Netflix and eBay, according to Agentsvo.
The Russian tax records became public after hackers gained access to the website of a state IT contractor, investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov wrote on Telegram.
About the writer
Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more