Alfa Group co-founder Mikhail Fridman left the UK and now lives in Israel, a source close to the businessman told RBC.
The information was confirmed by Alfa Group, adding that “the businessman is now in Moscow and now plans to visit Russia regularly.” Friedman himself later told Bloomberg that he actually moved to Israel from the UK a week ago, but amid the Hamas attack on the country, he flew to Moscow.
“It is impossible to live in the UK under sanctions,” he explained to the agency the decision to move. He noted that he plans to return to Israel and live there permanently “when everything settles down.”
Mikhail Fridman is under sanctions from the EU, Great Britain and the United States because of the war in Ukraine. At the same time, Friedman continued to live in the UK: in March 2022, in an interview with Bloomberg, the businessman complained that his accounts were frozen and he did not know how to pay the cleaner. The British Crime Agency (NCA) was investigating Friedman for circumventing restrictions, but it has already been closed.
The businessman tried to get out of sanctions. The Wall Street Journal wrote that Friedman proposed transferring $1 billion to Alfa-Bank Ukraine in order to lift UK sanctions.
In addition, Alexei Navalny's ally Leonid Volkov signed a letter requesting the lifting of sanctions against Fridman and his colleagues from Alfa Group. The appeal was addressed to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell.
For the oligarchs and the court. What do we know about letters from Russian public figures asking for sanctions to be lifted from bankers from Alfa Group
Updated at 19:48: Added Friedman’s comment to Bloomberg, in connection with which title changed.