Ex-Execs from Russian sanctioned bank set up shop in Mexico but distance themselves from its founder – Forbes billionaire Oleg Tinkov.
A BNE Intellinews article posted March 6 alleges Oleg Tinkov used the money he raised from selling his stake in Tinkoff Bank in Russia to another sanctioned oligarch to help kick start a fintech project south of the American border. The Mexican start-up’s co-founders say that is not the case, though on video Oleg calls the project “ours”.
Former executives from Tinkoff Bank in Russia, including one American and one Italian who had been working for Oleg in Moscow for years, set up shop in Mexico after the west sanctioned Russian business for the war Ukraine. Their latest fintech company, called Different Technologies, is registered as a U.S. company.
Mexico, like every emerging market, has not adopted any of the Western sanctions policies against Russian businesses or individuals. The Russia sanctions are not unified across the Western sanctions regimes. UK, Australia and Ukraine have introduced sanctions against the luxury loving, yacht-owning Russian oligarch Oleg Tinkov, while the EU sanctioned his bank. The U.S. has not sanctioned Tinkoff Bank, nor Oleg, though he has a criminal record in the U.S. He was once a U.S. citizen going back to 1996, but renounced it in 2013 to avoid taxes on a billion dollar earnings. He was fined and paid over $500 million in a tax fraud case here in 2021. That’s the extent of his run-ins with the long arm of U.S. law.
Western sanctions upended life for many top-tier Tinkoff executives, including Oleg himself. Others have had to make a new life outside of Russia.
“I’m one of the founders of Different Technologies, along with three others. We started it in June,” says Neri Tollardo, Different Technologies’ CEO and the former Vice President of Strategy at Tinkoff Bank in Moscow. “After studying a number of markets, we realized that going international for a Russian company was not going to work anymore. For that, we quit, left Russia and started afresh. I lived in Russia for nine years. We moved to Mexico to start Different Technologies,” Tollardo says. Tollardo is from Italy.
Is the sanctioned billionaire on board?
Drama surrounding Oleg would make him toxic for a start-up, or any business. Different Technologies’ founders say the venture is all theirs.
“We are in touch with Oleg. We have all worked with him for a long time. But he is just an advisor for us. He has no formal role with us. He is not a shareholder. He has no investment in the product,” Tollardo says. “We started this from scratch. We had a very successful bank in Russia. We would be crazy not to do this,” he says. “For us, it is very reasonable to tap into Oleg’s knowledge and experience as a serial entrepreneur. He didn’t start this company. Former Tinkoff executives started this company.”
Tollardo was joined in Mexico by an American named Alexander Bro, who worked at Tinkoff as Vice President of Non-Financial Services for over nine years. He is now Chief Business Development Officer at Different Technologies.
At least two Russian executives are part of the team as well — David Isakhanian, a software developer and former head of mobile apps at Tinkoff, and Danil Anisimov, ex-head of product development and a fund manager for Tinkoff Bank for nearly 12 years. They are part of a legion of Russian executives who have left the country as sanctions have made it much harder to run a globally-focused business from Moscow.
Oleg in Mexico: The $3,800 Cosmico Tequila Bottle
Some have wondered how a handful of Tinkoff executives could have started a company in Mexico City, but it is not impossible to imagine if they have enough capital to fund the venture. Plus the product is already built, for the most part. This new venture operates in a similar concept to Tinkoff Bank — it’s an online financial business. Despite small overhead and the fact that there is no need for bank branches, or big office towers with lots of employees, a fintech startup generally takes months of work and millions, even tens of millions dollars in seed capital. Three other “Tinkoff refugees” raised $16 million for a fintech startup modelled on Tinkoff Bank in the Philippines, Reuters reported in October.
Different Technologies’ Moscow team has partnered with some local executives that either helped run or were developers at fintech companies in Mexico. It is unclear how much money they put into the project themselves, if any.
University of Michigan alum, Alonso Leon de la Barra, is Different Technologies’ CFO. La Barra was the CFO of ID Finance, a Mexican fintech company. Ricardo Torres, another Mexican Veep at Different, worked at credit card solutions company Konfio.
Before that, Oleg’s only obvious ties to Mexico was his luxury property, La Datcha, on the shores of Cabo San Lucas where his yacht was also seen. It’s part of the Tinkoff Luxury properties collection. Rumor has it he spends part of his time there now, and one look at the place makes it understandable as to why. The beachfront property is straight out of Travel & Leisure magazine — a dream house for the super-rich and the Russian jet set who have grown tired of Dubai.
A video circulating around Russia this month showed Oleg in a Mexican liquor store recently trying out a new credit card. In the video, we hear a man off camera speaking Russian as he films colorful tequila bottles. He zooms in on one in particular — a colorful $3,800 bottle of Cosmico Tequila. A clerk behind the counter dressed in a black long sleeve V-neck picks up the bottle and asks in Spanish, “¿Éste?” and Oleg responds to her in Russian, “da”.
We then see the card in his hand. It has numbers on it like a regular credit card. It’s a chip reader. He flips it over and you can see the three-digit security code on the back and the expiration date. It’s a risky move to film this, but Oleg is not afraid of risky moves. There is no logo on the card. There is no name attached to it. This is a test drive.
The clerk moves behind a plexiglass counter to ring him up behind an HP desktop computer. She puts the card in a handheld payments reader. He types in a pin number. Oleg waits to see if the transaction works. He points to the screen. Success! The receipt prints.
It is at this moment when he turns the camera on himself for the first time. He is dressed in 1980s Miami Vice: a tan sport coat and white T-shirt with dark black shades. He makes a peace sign with his fingers, then flips off the camera in typical Oleg-fashion.
The camera then turns to two younger guys. Oleg thanks them in Russian, saying “spasibo”, and calls the project “ours” (“nash” in Russian). One of them is Alexander Bro. Oleg says his name like they are old college friends. Bro is dressed like a typical Silicon Valley bro in a white T-shirt and blue zip-up hoodie. He doesn’t seem too pleased to be on camera. Bro is standing near another man, but it is unclear who.
None of this is to suggest that Oleg has anything to do with Different Technologies other than as an advisor. And if he did, as an investor, none of that would be in breach of American sanctions.
Oleg was forced to sell his 35% stake in TCS Group Holding, the holding company that owns Tinkoff Bank, in April last year. He sold it to avoid company risk after the UK, Australia and Ukraine hit him with sanctions. TCS Group’s stocks were suspended from trading on the London Stock Exchange, where they were listed, in March 2022.
U.S.-sanctioned Russian oligarch, Vladimir Potanin, bought Tinkov’s and his family’s position in TCS Group. Oleg sold other businesses to companies whose ownership included billionaire Roman Abramovich. Being a Russian billionaire comes with complications today. Both of those men are also sanctioned. They’d be better off middle class and less intriguing.
Russian Sanctions and its Discontents
The sanctions against Russia’s business elite had two targets – hurt the Russian economy by sealing it off from Western talent and commercial transactions; and use these executives as influencers in hopes they could lobby Moscow to stop the war.
But Oleg has about as much say in Russian foreign policy as Jeff Bezos has in the White House. Oleg renounced his Russian citizenship recently, famously calling the war “insane”.
He has been chastised by the UK for his 2014 comments on the annexation of Crimea, something that has been used to single him out as a “Putin supporter” (once cheekily saying he should be Tsar for life). He did say he supported the Russian takeover of Crimea. Then again, most Crimeans supported the annexation, according to polls in the U.S. and Europe.
According to a March 1 report by Bloomberg, former oil man and exiled Russian ‘oligarch’ Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent years in a Russian prison after a conflict with President Vladimir Putin regarding Yukos Oil, wrote to the British Foreign Office last month to appeal for sanctions relief for Oleg Tinkov.
“I believe the decision to impose sanctions on him was wrong,” Bloomberg reported. He cited Oleg’s criticism of the war. “Lifting sanctions should be very clearly linked to public disengagement from this regime and its war,” Khodorkovsky said.
Numerous sanctioned Russians living abroad have come out against the war, often with the sidebar that their criticism will put them in good graces with those in charge of sanctions in Washington and Brussels. None have succeeded.