Elite life in Europe, real estate, billions of dollars in his bank account… And the supply of rifles for the Russian army in the brutal war against Ukraine. Oligarch Konstantin Nikolaev lives a chic wealthy life in the EU. Meanwhile, countries of the EU are in no hurry to sanction the Russian businessman.
Konstantin Nikolaev was born in Dnipro, Ukraine, but moved to Moscow to get a degree in philosophy. After graduating from the university in 1996, he and his partners, including Alexey Mordashov (a Russian billionaire and one of the richest oligarchs in Russia), created his first transportation company, Severstaltrans, where the oligarch remains a CEO to this day. In 2018, he sponsored a Russian defence project to produce night vision devices. He also financed a Russian spy Maria Butina in 2012-2014. Ukraine added Nikolaev to the sanctions lists on October 19, 2022, but the oligarch is still not sanctioned in the US and EU.
The oligarch’s wealth and his ties to Vladimir Putin
The media revealed that the billionaire has citizenship of Malta and Cyprus. According to Russian Forbes, in 2019, Nikolaev’s net worth was $1.2 billion.
The oligarch earned his first millions together with Alexey Mordashov and Igor Levitin. Subsequently, the company began to cooperate with Arkady Rotenberg (the Rotenberg brothers are Putin’s inner circle).
Tula Cartridge Plant and Wagner PMC
Nikolaev is a co-owner of the Globaltrans transportation company. This company still operates in Russia, the Baltic states and post-Soviet countries. In 2010, Nikolaev invested about 1 billion rubles in the construction of a plant for the production of sniper rifles under the Orsis brand. In addition, the Nikolaev family, together with the Rotenberg family, still runs the Tula Cartridge Plant. This was proven in 2023 by Scanner Project journalists. They paid attention to the composition of the board of directors of this plant. Stanislav Novoselov and Simon Amirov represent the interests of the Nikolaev family, while Vyacheslav Vaskov, Ruslan Isayev, Svetlana Meshaykina, and Ruslan Gurov are affiliated with the Rotenberg family. The company supplies ammunition to Russian troops during the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Cooperation with the Defence Ministry of Russia, Rosgvardia and the military-industrial complex
According to Dron Media, Orsis rifles are used during the war with Ukraine. In particular, Orsis T5000 rifles are used by mercenaries from the so-called Wagner PMC.
Despite this, Nikolaev and his family continue buying real estate in Europe and developing business there. The oligarch’s family owns a wine business in Italy. In Bolgheri (an Italian wine-growing sub-region), there is the La Madonnina farm, 7 hectares of which were bought by Nikolaev in March 2017. The exact amount of the transaction is unknown, but according to some estimates, it could be around €3-4 million.
Despite his systematic cooperation with the Russian military-industrial complex and direct involvement in the arms trade for the war in Ukraine, the United States and the European Union have not yet included Nikolaev in their sanctions lists.