bne IntelliNews – Sanctioned Russian banker Tinkov launches fintech project in Mexico

Prominent Russian oligarch Oleg Tinkov, the former owner of Russia’s only pure online bank, is behind the launch of an international financial startup in Mexico, banking sources have said bne IntelliNews.

Video viewed by bne IntelliNews shows Tinkov in a Mexican liquor store using the fintech card to buy an expensive bottle of tequila in the new bank’s first-ever transaction.

The launch of the new business with “Russian roots” takes place right next to the USA. Tinkov left Russia after strongly criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine, incurring the Kremlin’s wrath. The management of the bank quickly distanced itself from its “shareholder” and Tinkov was forced to sell his stake of around 30% in the bank to the oligarch Vladimir Potanin, who has extensive investments in the banking sector, allegedly for “pennies on the dollar”. Tinkov fled into self-imposed exile and has given up his Russian citizenship.

Tinkov also fell out with US authorities after he was charged with failing to pay US taxes, as he also holds a US passport and is liable to pay taxes on his worldwide income. To avoid prison in the United States, he agreed to pay a settlement of 449 million dollars. He has reportedly also now given up his US citizenship. The EU recently included Tinkoff Bank in the tenth sanctions package, the eight largest bank in Russia, and Tinkov was personally included on the list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) last March by the UK in one of the first rounds of sanctions, despite for his public opposition to the war.

As part of Tinkov’s exit from the bank that bears his name, he also got into an ugly public battle with Oliver Hughes, a British citizen and former well-respected CEO of Tinkoff Bank, who publicly rejected “defamatory” comments made by Tinkov, accusing him. to continue to run the bank in secret despite the sanctions. Hughes left Russia and the bank in April and now lives in Dubai.

Now Tinkov is financing the creation of a new fintech project in Mexico, several sources said bne IntelliNews. The businessman has spent a lot of time in Mexico, where he has a luxury guesthouse from the La Datcha Tinkoff Collection chain in Cabo San Lucas. Tinkov was spotted there at several meetings where he discussed the launch of a new fintech project being developed by his former colleagues at Tinkoff Bank, who recently left both the company and Russia.

Russian media have previously reported that Tinkoff’s former vice presidents – Italian Neri Tollardo, American Alexander Bro and Russian Danil Anisimov – launched a new project in Mexico, but did not provide further details.

The fintech company is called Different Technologies and aims to become the most important financial service for Mexican consumers, according to the company’s website. Tollardo will serve as the new company’s CEO, with Bro as head of business development and Anisimov as head of banking services, according to bne IntelliNews sources with knowledge of the agreement. The project team also includes Tinkoff alumnus David Isakhanyan (who will serve as product manager), as well as Alonso Leon de la Barra, who previously worked at Banco Azteca, and Ricardo Torres Ortiz. The latter two take over as finance manager and operations manager respectively, according to bne IntelliNews sources.

Different Technologies has already completed its first financial transaction, according to a video reviewed by bne IntelliNews. The video shows Tinkov in an off-licence, buying a bottle of tequila with an unbranded and unbranded credit card apparently issued by Different Technologies. In the video, the Russian businessman calls it the first transaction of “our” new bank and notes that it took place earlier than Tinkoff Bank, which had also announced plans to pursue an international expansion. Tinkov goes on to thank what he calls “our heroes”, naming Bro among them.

To finance the Mexican project, Tinkov used the money he made from selling his stake in Russia’s Tinkoff Bank to Potanin, who is now also subject to US, Canadian and British sanctions, according to bne IntelliNews sources. In April 2022, three months after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Tinkov sold his 35% stake in TCS Group Holding, which owns the popular digital bank, to Potanin’s Interros holding company. Potanin controls Norilsk Nickel, one of the world’s largest metallurgical companies in Russia’s far north, and is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Previously, Tinkov sold other businesses to companies associated with the oligarch Roman Abramovich.

The terms of the deal with Potanin have not been formally disclosed, but Tinkov said in a New York Times interview that he had sold his stake in Tinkoff Bank “for a kopeck”. In response, Potanin told Russian Forbes that the volume of the deal was “hundreds of millions of dollars” and could in no way be considered “chump change.”

Whatever the transaction amounted to, it is impossible to estimate the true capitalization of TCS because the company’s shares have been frozen on the London Stock Exchange. However, Tinkov is the only TCS shareholder who got at least something for his part. The stock’s international investors, including Katie Wood, Tiger Capital and other fintech aficionados, have been forced to simply freeze their stakes over the past year. Before the war, TCS was an investor’s darling, and the stock rose in the rapid recovery of the Russian stock market between 2018 and 2021.

Tinkov is a controversial figure in Russia. He is known for his often harsh statements and frequent scandals – from suing bloggers who criticized him for supporting the annexation of Crimea, to barring employment of LGBT people at his companies and publicly insulting an employee at his bank, whom he called a “dummy” and a “free drive-thru.”

Tinkov’s support for the annexation of Crimea did not prevent him from becoming one of the few Russian oligarchs to speak out against the war in Ukraine. He even renounced his Russian citizenship, a move he announced on social media this fall. Tinkov’s critics have noted that in 2017, several years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the businessman suggested on his Instagram that Putin should be made emperor, saying that he “would not vote in the election for a President Putin, but would like to vote for a Tsar Putin.” In a 2022 interview, after already being under British sanctions, Tinkov said that Emperor Putin’s comment had been “sarcasm” and a “mistake.” In March 2022, he asked the British Foreign Office to remove him from the sanctions list.

Tinkov became a US citizen in 1996 but renounced his citizenship in 2013, three days after TCS held an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in 2013, raising $1.1 billion at a share price of $17.50. A year later, shares fell to a low of $1 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but regained their value during the market’s recovery four years later to pass $20 in the months before war tensions soared in November 2021. In 2020, the United States launched a case against Tinkov, accusing him of filing a false tax return and forging a document to renounce his US citizenship.