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Kremlin hardliner the secret behind Rosneft's success
By Lucie Godeau
AFP
MOSCOW
Petroleumworld.com 07 12 06
Powerful Kremlin insider Igor Sechin has steered Rosneft from relative obscurity to become the second biggest player in Russian oil in his two years as chairman.
State-owned Rosneft is now planning a listing on the London and Moscow stock exchanges this month that could raise up to 11.6 billion dollars in one of the biggest initial public offerings (IPOs) ever.
But 45-year-old Sechin, also a deputy head of President Vladimir Putin's administration, has made no announcements to international investors.
In fact, the secretive Kremlin official is rarely even seen in public.
Analysts say Sechin's power is wielded behind the scenes, extending from the corridors of the Kremlin into the upper echelons of the Russian establishment.
Many point to him as the driving force in the legal campaign against Russian oil giant Yukos, which critics said masked a move by the Kremlin to nationalise the company, until then the country's top oil producer.
The Yukos enquiry was officially coordinated by former Russian prosecutor general Vladimir Ustinov, whose son is married to Sechin's daughter.
The affair ended with the jailing of Yukos' powerful chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Putin critic, and the sale in 2004 of the company's main production asset, Yuganskneftegaz, to Rosneft.
Critics blasted the deal as opaque, even by Russian standards, and said it was a ploy to gift Rosneft Yukos' crown jewel at a knock-down rate.
Sechin has been a trusted Putin ally since the start of the 1990s when the future Russian president was working as deputy mayor in Saint Petersburg.
Born in 1960 in Saint Petersburg, he studied French and Portuguese, at Leningrad State University, also Putin's alma mater.
After graduating in 1984, Sechin worked in Angola and Mozambique as a military interpreter. Although Sechin has never acknowledged working for the secret services, the type of posting to which he was assigned was often a cover for such work.
Sechin's current Kremlin role is key as he is responsible for appointments in the Russian administration and for approving draft laws and decrees.
But his ambitions for Rosneft have come up against those of another powerful Putin ally, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister and chairman of state-controlled gas giant Gazprom.
A mooted merger between Gazprom and Rosneft announced at the start of 2005 fell through because of fierce infighting in the Kremlin, when Medvedev was head of the presidential administration.
AFP 12 0639 GMT 07 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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