Putin's Judo-Playing Friend Says Premier Didn't Help Him Win Gazprom Deals
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin didn’t help his judo-playing friend of 40 years, Arkady Rotenberg, become a millionaire supplying pipes to natural-gas producer OAO Gazprom, the businessman said.
“Knowing high government officials has never hurt anyone in our country but it’s by far not helped everyone,” said Rotenberg, 58, in an interview in Kommersant today. “For me it’s unacceptable to use such connections.”
Rotenberg, a professional martial arts coach, said the discipline gleaned from sports and “genetic makeup” played the decisive role in making him and his brother Boris successful businessmen. Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, 53, appeared in the final two spots on this year’s Forbes list of Russia’s 100 richest people, with an estimated worth of $700 million each.
The 57-year-old premier practiced judo with the Rotenberg brothers in the 1960s, and Arkady Rotenberg later ran a St. Petersburg sports club whose honorary head was Putin. The brothers now own SMP Bank and Stroygazmontazh, one of the largest suppliers of pipes to Gazprom.
The brothers built up their pipe business gradually and have been dealing with Gazprom for years, Rotenberg told Kommersant. Stroygazmontazh won 19 Gazprom tenders last year, he said, declining to give the total volume of contracts.
Stroygazmontazh was also awarded contracts without a tender to build one pipeline to supply gas to Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, and another to Vladivostok, host of the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
No Others
“There aren’t any other companies in Russia that can even theoretically realize these kinds of projects within such deadlines,” Rotenberg said. Just the process of organizing a tender can take up to a year, he said.
Stroygazmontazh doesn’t let friendship interfere while competing with OAO Stroytransgaz, the pipeline builder owned by oil trader Gennady Timchenko, Rotenberg said. Timchenko was one of the founding members of the judo club Rotenberg ran in St. Petersburg.
Rotenberg said he views his relationship with Putin as a “responsibility,” because he doesn’t want to let his old friend down. The two men still have “friendly” relations, he said, though they don’t see each other as often as before.
The businessman told Kommersant he didn’t know he was worth $700 million and said he’d get back to the newspaper once he’d counted his fortune.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lucian Kim in Moscow at lkim3@bloomberg.net
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