Alexander Svetakov: Absolut Group Founder, Developer and Philanthropist

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Photo: Denis Vdovin, Unsplash License, via Unsplash

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.

Current figure: Forbes puts Alexander Svetakov’s net worth at $2.6 billion as of 18 October 2026 (Forbes profile). Estimates are revised continuously and Forbes and Bloomberg frequently disagree.

Alexander Svetakov is the founder and board chairman of the Moscow investment group Absolut, which today builds mainly housing on land in and around New Moscow. He started in 1990 with an electronics trading business and was the majority owner of Absolut Bank, which he and his partners sold to Belgium’s KBC in 2007. He is also known for his children’s charity, Absolut-Pomoshch. He is not on the US, UK, EU or Canadian sanctions lists. Ukraine has sanctioned him since October 2022.

  • Born: 15 February 1968 in Moscow (Forbes Russia, Kompaniya)
  • Education: Moscow Institute of Electronic Mechanical Engineering (MIEM), 1993
  • Known for: founder and chairman of the board of the Absolut group; founder of the Absolut-Pomoshch charity
  • Sanctions as of October 2026: Ukraine (since 19 October 2022); not listed by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union or Canada

Early career and the Absolut trading house

Svetakov studied at the Moscow Institute of Electronic Mechanical Engineering and graduated in 1993 (Kompaniya, Forbes Russia). According to Forbes Russia, he was trading metals and pipes when he met his neighbour Gleb Galin, who was buying electronics in Singapore and bringing them to Russia. In 1990 Galin, Svetakov and two of Svetakov’s classmates founded a small company called Absolut (Forbes Russia, 2015). Kommersant dates the start of the group to the same year, with the Absolut trading house as a wholesaler of household appliances (Kommersant).

By the mid-1990s the trading house supplied appliances to Russia’s largest electronics chains. It was sold to the Latvian Elko Group in July 2018 for an undisclosed price (Forbes Russia, 2021, Kompaniya).

Absolut Bank and the sale to KBC

Absolut Bank was founded in 1993 (Kommersant). Before its sale, Svetakov was the bank’s board chairman and held 51.6 percent of its shares. His partners Andrei Truskov and Gleb Galin held 15.5 and 10.6 percent (Kommersant, April 2007). In April 2007 KBC announced that it had acquired 92.5 percent of Absolut for 761 million euros, about $1 billion, subject to approval by Russia’s central bank (AFX via CNBC, Kommersant). At the time the bank had total assets of 1.8 billion euros. According to Kommersant, the owners put the proceeds into housing and office construction in Moscow and the Moscow region and partly into securities (Kommersant).

The Absolut group and New Moscow

Forbes Russia lists Svetakov as chairman of the board of directors of the Absolut investment group (Forbes Russia). In 2021 he told Forbes that he had not been involved in the company’s day-to-day management for a long time (Forbes Russia, 2021).

From the early 2000s Absolut and a partner group, Region-R, bought more than 50,000 hectares of land west, north and north-west of Moscow. By 2006 the two groups had divided the business, and Svetakov’s companies kept 20,000 hectares. When Moscow’s city limits were extended, part of this land became New Moscow (Forbes Russia, 2021). Forbes describes him as one of the biggest property owners in the Moscow region, with most of his land in New Moscow (Forbes). In 2021 the group had seven projects, the largest being Peredelkino Blizhnee and Pervyi Moskovskiy (Forbes Russia, 2021).

According to Forbes Russia, Svetakov had sold almost all of his commercial property by 2024, but began building several new properties in 2025 because of a shortage of office space in Moscow (Forbes Russia). In RBC’s ranking of Moscow housing developers of May 2026, Absolut was in ninth place (RBC). In July 2026 the group sold its insurance company, Absolut Strakhovanie. The price and the buyers were not disclosed (Kommersant, Expert). He also sold his caviar business in 2019 (Forbes Russia, 2021, Forbes).

Absolut-Pomoshch and the government council

Svetakov founded the charity Absolut-Pomoshch in 2002. It supports institutions for children with disabilities (Forbes Russia, 2015, Kompaniya). In 2014 the foundation opened a boarding school in the village of Raisemenovskoe in the Moscow region, for which it spent more than 800 million rubles, and Forbes Russia named Svetakov its philanthropist of the year (Forbes Russia, 2015). The foundation’s projects today include the inclusive Absolut school (Forbes Russia).

From 2020 Svetakov sat on the Russian government’s advisory council on guardianship in the social sphere, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, as head of his foundation (Government of Russia, Forbes Russia, 2021). He was removed from the council when Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin approved its new membership in September 2023 (Kommersant, Kommersant). We found no record of an elected office or party membership.

Sanctions

CountryListedStatus in October 2026
Ukraine19 October 2022Listed for ten years (Presidential Decree No. 727/2022)
United StatesnoNot listed (OFAC SDN list)
United KingdomnoNot listed (UK sanctions list)
European UnionnoNot listed (EU consolidated list)
CanadanoNot listed (Canada’s consolidated autonomous sanctions list)

Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council imposed sanctions on Svetakov on 19 October 2022. The decision was put into force by Presidential Decree No. 727/2022 of the same day. The annex lists him with his date of birth and sets the measures, including the blocking of assets, for ten years (Decree No. 727/2022). The annex gives no reasons.

In 2018 Svetakov was among the Russian businessmen named in a US Treasury report to Congress, often called the Kremlin list (Kompaniya). According to Forbes Russia, the report included all Russian businessmen with an estimated fortune of $1 billion or more. Svetakov told Forbes in 2021 that the list did not prohibit anything but had a very negative effect, for example on the cost of financing (Forbes Russia, 2021).

We checked the US, UK, Canadian and Polish lists on 7 October 2026 and the EU list as of 22 September 2026. Switzerland does not list him either (SECO list of 5 October 2026). We found no record of an arrest, a charge or a criminal investigation against Svetakov.

About this profile

This profile was rewritten in October 2026. The 2022 version contained a list of other businessmen with outdated and incorrect statements about them, including a prison sentence, that could be read as referring to Svetakov. It also claimed that his father was a high-ranking Soviet official, named two wives that we could not verify and described a yacht, a private jet, homes abroad and an art collection for which we found no reliable source. It overstated the size of Absolut Bank and called him Russia’s biggest property owner. These statements 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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