MOSCOW, September 17 (RIA Novosti) - The placement of Russian multimillionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov under house arrest has sent AFK Sistema’s share prices into a tailspin, along with those of its major shareholdings MTS and Bashneft.
Sistema’s share prices fell by 26% in the first six minutes of trading on Moscow’s Stock Exchange today, September 17, to 26.9 rubles per share. Shares in MTS, in which Sistema owns a 53.5% controlling stake according to the Wall Street Journal, fell 5.9% to 278.1 rubles per share on the news. Shares of Bashneft, of which Sistema owns 78.8%, fell 9.4% to 1,674.9 rubles; Bashneft is one of Russia’s last remaining privately-owned oil companies.
Earlier it was reported that the Chairman of the Board of Directors of AFK Sistema, Vladimir Yevtushenko, had been charged with money laundering and placed under house arrest. Yevtushenko was Russia’s 15th richest man according to Forbes, worth over $9 billion; he is reported to own 64% of AFK Sistema.
In 1990, Yevtushenkov was appointed chairman of the Moscow City Committee of Science and Technology. In 1993 he created AFK Sistema, a holding which took control of the committee’s assets following privatization, leading to the creation of MTS, a mobile operator.
MTS brought its parent holding rapid success during the last decade’s mobile telephony boom; it rose to become the former Soviet Union’s largest mobile operator and currently has over 100 million subscribers.
Sistema went on to purchase major stakes in Russian oil companies Bashneft and Russneft. In an interview with the television station Rossiya 24, Russian business ombudsman Boris Titov stated that he was “almost 200% sure” that the arrest wasn’t politically motivated.
