Sergey Viktorovich Chemezov (born 20 August 1952) is the CEO of Rostec Corporation, a state-owned defense conglomerate. A former KGB agent and high-ranking general, Chemezov befriended Vladimir Putin when both were stationed in East Germany in the 1980s. In 2007, Putin appointed him as CEO of Rostec. The Pandora Papers leaks revealed that Chemezov and his family maintained a large network of offshore wealth, including a $600 million superyacht.

Biography

Chemezov was born on 20 August 1952 in the city of Cheremkhovo in Irkutsk Oblast. Chemezov graduated with honours from Irkutsk Institute of National Economy (presently Baikal State University of Economics and Law) in 1975 and then completed his postgraduate education at the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia. Chemezov has a doctorate in economics and is also a professor and full member of the Military Academy. At the Irkutsk Scientific and Research Institute of Rare and Nonferrous Metals, Chemezov provided economic assessment of deposits as an engineer, a research associate, and chief laboratory assistant for six months from 15 October 1975 to 28 April 1976 while he was waiting for his paperwork to process to enter the ranks of the KGB.

East Germany and Putin

From 1980 to 1988 as KGB, he worked at "Luch" Research-Industrial Association which was the KGB surveillance operation gathering scientific and technical intelligence in the communist controlled German Democratic Republic (GDR). From 1983 to 1988, Chemezov served as the head of the Luch Association representative office in East Germany, where he met Vladimir Putin and Nikolay Tokarev. Tokarev, Chemezov and Putin worked for their KGB boss Lazar Matveev while in East Germany and both Chemezov and Putin lived in the same block of flats in Dresden. There they became friends. According to their colleague and former KGB officer Vladimir Gortanov (also known as Usoltsev), Chemezov worked in Directorate K, which is counterintelligence, and attempted to recruit KGB operatives from West Germany's counterintelligence community especially the West German military counterintelligence or at least from the West German criminal police. From 1988 to 1996, Chemezov, as the KGB controller with the 3rd department of the 11th department of the 5th department of the KGB, was deputy CEO of the "Sovintersport" Foreign Trade Association under the leadership of Viktor Galaev. Sovintersport, which held a monopoly on Soviet sports with the West, is a portmanteau of Soviet, International, Export, and Sport formed by Putin and Chemezov.

Kremlin aide to Putin

From 1996 to 1999, he was chairman of the Department for Foreign Economic Relations within the Office for Presidential Affairs, serving under Putin. Later he transitioned to the position of chairman of the Department for Foreign Economic Relations of the Presidential Administration of Russia. During this time and although both Ukraine and Georgia objected, Chemezov was pivotal in securing for Russia, Russia's correct share from the former USSR's state property, state archives and state debts.

Head of Promexport and Rosoboronexport

From September 1999 to November 2000, Chemezov served as CEO of Promexport. In August 2000, he became a member of the Presidential Committee on Military and Engineering Cooperation between Russia and Foreign Countries. From November 2000 to April 2004, Chemezov served as first deputy CEO of Rosoboronexport and then as its CEO from 2004 to 2007. After Rosoboronexport obtained an 66% stake in VSMPO-Avisma in October 2006, Sergey Chemezov became chairman of VSMPO-AVISMA in November 2006.

CEO of Rostec

On 26 November 2007, Putin appointed by decree Chemezov as CEO of Russian Technologies Corporation, which was renamed Rostec in late 2012. He is credited with the consolidation of hundreds of state-owned enterprises that were made his responsibility as the fruit of government decree. In the decade after his appearance, the total volume of exports doubled to just under $14 billion. At the 6th United Russia party convention held on 2 December 2006, Chemezov was elected to the party's Supreme Council. At the 7th party convention on 26 May 2012, Chemezov was reelected. In 2011, Chemezov, Makarov, and Alexei Miller, chairman of Gazprom, were the supervisory board of Team Katyusha, which was formed in 2008, and, along with Novikombank and Transneft , their companies, Rostec, ITERA, and Gazprom, respectively, were the major sponsors of Katyusha.

Sanctions

On 28 April 2014, he was barred by the Obama administration from entering the United States due to the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation. Sanctioned by the UK government in 2014 in relation to Russo-Ukrainian War. On 12 September 2014 as part of a much wider expansion of its programme, Chemezov was sanctioned by the European Union over the war in Ukraine. The same day, Chemerov was mentioned in a communiqué of the US Treasury because the firm he directs was subjected to sanctions as part of a sweeping ban on the Russian defence sector. The joint September 2014 sanctions packages had been agreed in principle at the 2014 NATO Wales summit. Through Serguei Adoniev's charitable contributions, Chemezov had become an influence in the Novaya Gazeta press since 2014. In February 2019, the Alexei Navalny linked Anti-Corruption Foundation discovered Chemezov's wife's Ekaterina Ignatova's apartment in the building located at the former site of the Moskva Hotel with a market value of about 5 billion rubles. On 3 March 2022, the United States imposed visa restrictions and froze assets of Chemezov, his wife, sons, stepdaughter due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. On 15 March 2022, Spain temporarily seized Chemezov's $140m yacht 'Valerie' in Barcelona because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Offices

Chemezov has served as a member of the Board of Directors for: Chemezov has served as chairman of the Board of Directors for:

Academic activity, social activism and patronage

Family

Chemezov married his first wife Lyuba when he was 18 years old. Chemezov is married to Yekaterina Ignatova, who is a trained planning engineer. She is a co-founder and seventy percent stockholder of Kate LLC, a company that develops and manufactures automatic gearboxes. Ignatova is also the majority shareholder (along with Gor Nahapetyan, the managing director of Troika Dialog) of Étage, a chain of nineteen restaurants in Moscow. She has an apartment at 28 on Povarskaya Street in Moscow. Chemezov has four children. He is a thirty percent shareholder of Medfarmtekhologia, a member of the board of directors of AvtoVAZEnergo, and chairman of the board of directors of Interbusinessgroup, which holds via structural companies such commercial organizations as Independent Insurance Group LLC, Oborontsement JSC, and Oborontsement-energo LLC. Since 2003, Stanislav Chemezov has been the co-owner (together with Vladimir Artyakov's son, Dmitri) of the Meridian hotel facilities in Gelendzhik. Stanislav Chemezov is the only founder of Interbusinessgroup LLC which has the shares in several construction companies, Russian Industrial Nanotechnologies, I.A.D. business industry and shares in Natural and Organic Products LLC which is one of several companies clustered around Andrey Dolzhich's Virgin Islands firm Natural and Organic Products, Inc that sells soil improvers to Persian Gulf countries including the soil near Bahrain's Royal Palace which now have palm trees growing in soil improvers from Dolzhich's firm. According to other information accessed in May 2009, Chemezov's second son was studying in a medical institute. His youngest son Sergey was in primary school and his daughter was a graduate student at MGIMO University.

Awards