Igor Ivanovich Sechin is the second most influential person in Russia after Vladimir Putin according to Forbes, the head of Rosneft, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, the right hand of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Igor Sechin is a member of the so-called St. Petersburg energy team. Was born on September 7, 1960 in St. Petersburg. Sechin began studying French in high school, and in 1984 graduated from Leningrad State University with a degree in Portuguese and French, his classmates were children of the Soviet elite.
Career
In the 1980s, Igor Sechin worked in Mozambique and Angola, officially as a translator for Soviet trade and diplomatic missions. Some believe this was the start of his KGB career. He was allegedly the USSR's representative for the sale of arms to Latin America and the Middle East. Rumor has it that in Mozambique in the 1980s, he met the international arms dealer Viktor Bout.
From 1988 to 1991, Sechin worked in the department of foreign economic relations of the city management committee of the Leningrad City Council in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). He and Putin first met during a 1990 visit to Brazil by Leningrad city officials.
In 1996, they moved to Moscow to work in the economic department of President Yeltsin's Administration in the Kremlin. When Yeltsin made Putin prime minister in 1999, Sechin became his deputy. After winning the presidential election in March 2004, Putin immediately appointed him deputy head of his administration.
Sechin is considered a very secretive and influential official. Little is known about him, and he practically does not communicate with journalists.
In 2008, Sechin took over as Deputy Prime Minister in the second cabinet of Vladimir Putin, responsible for the broad energy sector. Sechin is perceived as a gray cardinal.
Sechin is Moscow's chief specialist in warming up relations with the organization of oil exporting countries. But he has repeatedly said that Russia, the largest oil producer outside the cartel, is not ready to join the group, despite its calls.
"It would be irresponsible for Russia to join OPEC, because we cannot directly regulate the activities of our companies," he told The Wall Street Journal, "since almost all are privately owned."
However, he maintains "coordination" with the cartel due to a general interest in raising prices. He says Moscow is not in a position to cut production, but Russian oil companies will restrict production this year as falling prices will reduce their ability to produce.
Since July 2004, Sechin has also headed Russia's largest state oil company, Rosneft.
In 2003, the company was embroiled in a controversial case involving former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky was jailed on tax fraud charges. His empire, Yukos, disintegrated and swallowed up Rosneft. In 2010, Khodorkovsky was found guilty on new charges of embezzlement and money laundering and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He argued that both cases were initiated by Sechin.
On March 20, 2014, Sechin was included in the US sanctions lists. The sanctions include a travel ban to the United States, a freeze on all assets in the United States, and a ban on business transactions between American citizens and corporations and businesses that he owns.
Personal life
Igor Sechin is married and has a daughter, Inga (b 1982). Inga married Dmitry Ustinov (born 1979), the son of the former Prosecutor General, in 2003, on July 4, 2005, Inga and Dmitry had a son. But after a while, the young people divorced.
Later Inga married Timerbulat Karimov (b.1974), a former investment banker and senior vice president of VTB Bank from October 2011 to February 2014. He is a member of the board of directors of the Russian copper company Russian, which is the third largest in Russia and is owned by Igor Altushkin. Following the demotion of Vladimir Ustinov in 2006, Sechin allegedly orchestrated the appointment of Alexander Bastrykin, another ally, as chairman of the Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor's Office in 2007 in order to maintain his influence.
