The Bureau of Foreign Affairs, Commonwealth and Development announced on Wednesday that Potanin, owner of the Interros Group, with an estimated net worth of 13 13 billion, will face asset freezing, travel bans, transport sanctions and foreclosure of airline technical advice. Potanin is the CEO and major shareholder of the Siberian mining company Norilsk Nickel, which dominates the global supply of nickel and palladium. The company’s central role in global metal production meant that Potanin was one of the few Russian oligarchs who did not seek sanctions from Western countries other than Canada. Norilsk is a critical supplier to the automotive industry, supplying nickel for electric vehicle batteries as well as palladium for catalytic converters that reduce harmful emissions from gasoline-powered cars. The European stainless steel industry is also a major buyer of nickel. Following the announcement of the sanctions, the price of nickel rose to 9.2 percent to $ 25,295 a tonne on the London Stock Exchange before gains, while palladium climbed more than 7 percent to over $ 2,000 an ounce. . It later fell to $ 1,974, up 5%. Rhona O’Connell, a StoneX analyst, said it was unclear whether the sanctions imposed on Potanin, who owns 36% of Norilsk, would be extended to the company, but “according to common practice, this usually happens”. “Car production in the UK is 1.1 percent of the world total,” he added. “So the disruption would be more a matter of logistics than market turmoil.” However, the United Kingdom is the base for LME, the world’s leading trading place for industrial metals such as nickel. The stock exchange said it was considering what the sanctions on Potanin would mean for the market and its participants. Speaking at a conference Wednesday, a senior Norilsk executive said the company was not subject to sanctions, but its lawyers were studying the impact of “personal sanctions on our president and major shareholder”. Shares of Norilsk fell 3.3% in Moscow on Wednesday. While rival oligarchy empires have collapsed under sanctions, Potanin’s stance on a deal and his allegiance to the Kremlin have allowed him to seize bank assets from low-cost owners leaving Russia. He recently acquired Société Générale’s Rosbank subsidiary after the French group left the country and then bought Oleg Tinkov’s stake in Tinkoff online bank after the founder said he had come under pressure in the Kremlin for criticizing Putin and the war in Ukraine. The UK government said: “Potanin benefits from or supports the Russian government by owning or controlling Rosbank” because financial services are a “strategic area”.

The United States and the European Union have not yet imposed sanctions on Potanin, who spent much of his time in France before this year and was fighting for a huge divorce in England. U.S. officials are wary of repeating mistakes such as imposing sanctions on aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska in 2018, which sparked turmoil in global metal markets. Chaos forced the US into a shameful rise. Sanctions against Deripaska Rusal and En +, the second largest shareholder in Norilsk, were lifted in exchange for the oligarch’s handover. The United Kingdom has also imposed sanctions on Anna Tsivileva, president of the Russian coal mining company JSC Kolmar Group, which is Putin’s first cousin when he was ousted. Tsivileva took over the company, which operates in the carbon-rich region of Kemerovo in Siberia, where her husband Sergei Tsivilev became governor in 2018. Other names added to the UK sanctions list included several less prominent figures and companies in areas such as financial services, technology, oil pipeline construction and transportation. The UK government said the latest measures “show that nothing and no one is off the table, including Putin’s inner circle”. The United Kingdom has imposed sanctions on more than 1,000 people and 120 companies since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.