Andrei Kosogov: Alfa Group Partner, LetterOne Co-Founder and the Sanctions Against Him

Oligarch Profiles / By / Updated October 11, 2026
Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square, Moscow, at dusk

Photo: designerpoint, Pixabay Content License, via Pixabay

Net worth: $1.4 billion

Forbes puts Andrei Kosogov’s net worth at $1.4 billion as of 18 October 2026 (Forbes profile). Estimates are revised continuously and Forbes and Bloomberg frequently disagree.

Sanctions status — checked 18 October 2026

Not found on the OFAC SDN, UK OFSI or EU consolidated lists.

Absence from these three lists does not mean no restrictions apply elsewhere: other countries and earlier listings are covered in the sanctions section below. Checked against the OFAC SDN list, the UK OFSI consolidated list and the EU consolidated list. Sanctions lists change without notice — verify against the primary source before relying on this.

Andrei Kosogov is a Russian financier who has worked in the Alfa Group since 1992. He was a senior manager of Alfa-Bank and one of the five founders of the investment company LetterOne. After the European Union sanctioned his partners Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven in 2022, he left LetterOne’s board and became the largest shareholder in the holding company of Alfa-Bank. He is not on the US, UK, EU or Swiss sanctions lists. Ukraine has listed him since October 2022 and Canada since February 2026.

  • Born: 15 March 1961 in Sillamäe, Estonia, then part of the Soviet Union (Kommersant, annex to Ukraine’s Decree 727/2022); Canada’s sanctions list gives the year as 1965
  • Education: Moscow Power Engineering Institute, graduated 1987
  • Known for: Alfa Group partner, former first deputy chairman of Alfa-Bank’s management board, co-founder of LetterOne
  • Sanctions as of October 2026: Ukraine (since 19 October 2022), Canada (since 19 February 2026); not listed by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union or Switzerland

Alfa Group and Alfa-Bank

Kosogov was born on 15 March 1961 in Sillamäe in Soviet Estonia and graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1987 as a heat physics engineer (Kommersant, 10 March 2023, Interfax, 17 March 2022). Forbes, Bloomberg and Ukraine’s sanctions annex give the same year of birth; Canada’s sanctions regulation of February 2026 gives 15 March 1965 (Forbes, Bloomberg Línea, 8 May 2022, Canada Gazette, SOR/2026-30).

In 1992 Mikhail Fridman hired him to set up a privatisation investment fund, and months later he became chief executive of Alfa Capital (Forbes, Kommersant). From 1998 to 2005 he was first deputy chairman of Alfa-Bank’s management board and ran its investment business (Kommersant, Interfax). A 2006 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission lists him with that title as a director of ABH Holdings, Alfa-Bank’s parent company (SEC Schedule 13D, 2006). After 2005 he withdrew from day-to-day management but kept a seat on the board of AlfaCapitalPartners and on Alfa-Bank’s investment committee (Kommersant). In 2011 Interfax described him as chairman of Alfa Asset Management and as the owner of 4.08 percent of Alfa-Bank (Interfax, 21 March 2011). Forbes now describes him as a member of the Alfa Group’s supervisory board in charge of its investment units (Forbes, updated 10 March 2026).

LetterOne and the transfers of 2022

Kosogov was one of the five founders of the LetterOne group, together with Petr Aven, Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev. Fridman and Aven resigned from their board roles on 28 February 2022, the day the EU sanctioned them, and Kosogov resigned on 4 March 2022, as the High Court in London later recorded (High Court, [2024] EWHC 2963 (Admin), 20 November 2024, Kommersant, 10 March 2023). On 7 March 2022 LetterOne announced that Khan, Kuzmichev and Kosogov had stepped down; none of the three had been sanctioned at that point (City A.M., 7 March 2022, Paperjam).

In March 2022 Khan and Kuzmichev left the shareholder register of ABH Holdings. As of 16 March 2022 Kosogov held 41 percent, up from 3.7 percent, against 32.9 percent for Fridman and 12.4 percent for Aven (Interfax, 17 March 2022). Khan and Kuzmichev also sold their LetterOne shares to a nominee company whose ultimate beneficial owner was Kosogov, the High Court found. According to the court, documents from the case indicate that the two men lent Kosogov the money for the purchase, more than $4 billion and $3 billion respectively, with the right to buy back their stakes within ten years (High Court, [2024] EWHC 2963 (Admin)). Kosogov was not a party to that case, which concerned a UK government order against a LetterOne subsidiary; the court dismissed LetterOne’s claim. Bloomberg reported in May 2022 that he controlled 47.2 percent of LetterOne after the transfers and had left the boards of LetterOne and ABH Holdings (Bloomberg Línea, 8 May 2022).

In March 2023 Alfa-Bank confirmed that Fridman and Aven were preparing to sell their controlling stakes and that Kosogov would become the bank’s main owner; the bank said that approval by foreign regulators might not be needed because neither Kosogov nor the seller was under sanctions (Kommersant, 10 March 2023, Interfax, 10 March 2023). The closing was delayed while approval from Cyprus was pending (The Moscow Times, 11 September 2023, Interfax, 11 September 2023). In February 2025 the Financial Times reported that Fridman and Aven had sold their 45 percent stake in Alfa-Bank and 42 percent stake in the insurer Alfa Strakhovanie to Kosogov for about $2.5 billion. The sale became possible after Russia designated both companies as economically significant under a 2023 law and a Russian court annulled the Luxembourg parent company’s rights to them in May 2024 (The Moscow Times, citing the FT, 6 February 2025, Kyiv Independent, 6 February 2025). Alfa-Bank does not publish its current shareholder structure.

Sanctions

CountryListedStatus in October 2026
Ukraine19 October 2022Listed for ten years (Decree 727/2022)
Canada19 February 2026Listed (Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations, item 1574)
United StatesnoNot listed (OFAC SDN list)
United KingdomnoNot listed (UK sanctions list)
European UnionnoNot listed (EU consolidated list)
SwitzerlandnoNot listed (SECO sanctions list)

Ukraine listed Kosogov in the sanctions decision of its National Security and Defence Council of 19 October 2022, put into force by Presidential Decree 727/2022. The measures include blocking of assets and a full stop of trade operations, for ten years; the annex gives no reasons (annex to Decree 727/2022). A week later, on 27 October 2022, the National Bank of Ukraine refused to let him acquire a significant stake in Alfa-Bank Ukraine, citing these sanctions. Earlier in 2022 it had already transferred his voting rights in that bank to an independent manager (Ekonomichna Pravda, 28 October 2022, RBC-Ukraine via UA.News, 28 October 2022, Borgexpert, 25 May 2022).

Canada added him to its Russia sanctions regulations on 19 February 2026, as one of 21 individuals. The regulation describes the people added only in broad groups, from military officials to executives of state-owned lenders, and gives no reason for listing Kosogov (Canada Gazette, SOR/2026-30).

The EU has not listed Kosogov. In its review of 22 September 2026 the EU removed Fridman from its list. The entry it kept for German Khan states that in March 2022 Khan transferred his ABH Holdings shares to “his long-time business partner Andrei Kosogov” and that the National Bank of Ukraine declared this transfer null and void (EU Implementing Regulation 2026/2160). Alfa-Bank itself is sanctioned by the United Kingdom (since 24 March 2022), the United States (since 6 April 2022) and the EU (since 25 February 2023) (US Treasury, 6 April 2022, UK sanctions list, Kommersant). We checked the US, UK and Canadian lists as of 8 October 2026, the Swiss list as of 5 October 2026 and the EU list as of its review of 22 September 2026. We found no record of a criminal investigation against Kosogov.

About this profile

This profile was rewritten in October 2026. The 2022 version claimed that Kosogov has close ties to the Kremlin and helped to shape Russian economic policy, that he sits on the boards of Sberbank and LetterOne and chairs Alfa-Bank and Altimo, that he belongs to the executive committee of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and to the trustees of the Hermitage and Pushkin museums, and that he has a Harvard MBA, a yacht, a private jet and a Russian Medal of Honour. We found no source for any of these statements; he left LetterOne’s board in March 2022. They have been removed. The net worth figure in the box at the top of this page comes from Forbes and carries its date.

Sources

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