Entrepreneur Yevgeny Chichvarkin withdrew his signature for the lifting of sanctions against the shareholder of Alfa Group Herman Khan. He told The Insider about this.
According to Chichvarkin, he did this because Khan returned to Russia and he no longer needed this signature:
“I asked the lawyers to remake the letter, where only Fridman and Aven [co-owners of Alfa Group Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven] will remain. Because Khan came back, he had an extremely unpleasant situation in the UK. Britain as a state behaved monstrously towards him and his family, across all conceivable and unthinkable laws and practices. And he emotionally returned. Therefore, for him, my signature is no longer relevant, no longer needed, since he is no longer trying to prove anything to Britain and Europe. And if needed, I will be happy to discuss it with lawyers. But if he comes to a meeting with Putin, it is unlikely that at that moment he needs protection in a British or European court.”
Chichvarkin explained that Fridman, Aven and Khan needed the support of just such a composition of signatories, because they have a political reputation:
“Because we have a good reputation. It’s just that they don’t have a political reputation, since they have shied away from politics all their lives, but we have it.”
He emphasized that he was ready to support anyone who wants to “dissociate themselves from the Putin regime”:
“I will fit in for almost any person who wants to disassociate himself from the Putin regime. This is my principle position. Of course, if a person zigged, then I won’t fit in. But if the person was neutral and they were neutral, then I'll fit in."
The entrepreneur noted that he was not embarrassed by the history of cooperation between Aven and Vladimir Putin in the 1990s:
“Aven worked with Putin in the 1990s, and now it’s 2023. In 1964, Alexander Galich received the USSR KGB Prize for his coverage of the work of security agencies in World War II. And in 1967, three years later, he began to write critical songs, and in 1977 he was killed in London. He has a path at 13 years old. Courage is a gradual process. And for the 1990s, I'm definitely not ready to present anything to anyone if it was not a serious crime against a person. And Putin in the 1990s, and even the Putin of 2003 and 2007, is not the Putin of 2023. It's very different degrees of shit."
Earlier, Chichvarkin announced his decision on the air of Khodorkovsky Live. On March 16, German Khan came to a meeting of businessmen with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was held as part of the congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven tried to challenge the British sanctions through the courts. To lift the restrictions, their representatives collected the signatures of Russian oppositionists, journalists and public figures under appeals to EU officials. One of these letters was signed by Leonid Volkov, but later stated that he had made a mistake and resigned from the post of chairman of the board of the International FBK.