Andrei Komarov: ChelPipe, Its Sale to TMK and the Sanctions Against Him

/ Oligarch Profiles / By
Stacked steel pipes in an outdoor storage yard

Photo: AlexHauss2608, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sanctions status — checked 4 August 2026

Listed by: US (OFAC SDN)

This person appears on the sanctions lists named above. 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 Andrei Komarov and family’s net worth at $1.5 billion as of 8 August 2026 (Forbes profile). Estimates are revised continuously and Forbes and Bloomberg frequently disagree.

Andrei Komarov is a Russian industrialist who built up the Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant group, known as ChelPipe, and sold his controlling stake to the rival pipe maker TMK in March 2021. From 2005 he represented the Chelyabinsk region in Russia’s Federation Council. In 2014 he was arrested in a commercial bribery case that, according to his lawyers, was closed in 2016 for lack of the elements of a crime. The United States has listed him since February 2024 and Ukraine since October 2022; the UK, the European Union, Canada and Switzerland have not.

  • Born: 11 October 1966; the US sanctions notice gives Chelyabinsk as his place of birth (US Federal Register, AiF Chelyabinsk)
  • Education: Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering, graduated 1990 as a mechanical engineer
  • Known for: former main owner and board chairman of ChelPipe; senator for the Chelyabinsk region from 2005
  • Sanctions as of October 2026: United States (since 23 February 2024), Ukraine (since 19 October 2022); not listed by the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia or Japan

Early career

Komarov was born on 11 October 1966 and finished school in 1984 in Chelyabinsk-65, today the closed town of Ozyorsk in the Chelyabinsk region (AiF Chelyabinsk, 13 March 2014). The US sanctions notice and Ukraine’s sanctions annex give the same date of birth and the same Russian tax number (US Federal Register, 21 February 2025, annex to Ukraine’s Decree 727/2022). In 1990 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering as a mechanical engineer specialising in low-temperature technology (AiF Chelyabinsk, Forbes, Interfax, 13 March 2014).

From 1989 to 1992 he worked as chief administrator and later assistant director of the Satirikon theatre in Moscow (AiF Chelyabinsk, Forbes Russia, 30 September 2012). From 1992 to 1996 he ran companies trading in metal products; Forbes adds that he traded cars and steel pipes (AiF Chelyabinsk, Forbes).

ChelPipe and the Federation Council

In 1996 Komarov became deputy general director of the Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) and began buying up its shares (Interfax, 13 March 2014, AiF Chelyabinsk). In 2003 he became chairman of the board of the ChTPZ group, which grew to include the Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant and the oilfield services business Rimera (AiF Chelyabinsk, Interfax). In 2002 he became co-chairman of the Pipe Industry Development Fund, a non-profit industry body (AiF Chelyabinsk, Vedomosti, 13 March 2014).

In September 2005 the Chelyabinsk regional legislature elected him as its representative in the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament (AiF Chelyabinsk, Interfax). Forbes Russia dates his term to 2005–2010; Vedomosti reported that he returned to running ChTPZ in 2011 (Forbes Russia, 5 July 2016, Vedomosti, 13 March 2014). According to the 2011 prospectus cited by Interfax, he controlled about 73 percent of the plant through a 95 percent stake in the holding company Mountrise; Forbes Russia put his share of the group at 72.9 percent in 2016 (Interfax, Forbes Russia, 25 February 2016).

The criminal case of 2014–2016

On 12 March 2014 police detained Komarov and his lawyer Alexander Shibanov in Moscow, and a criminal case for commercial bribery was opened. According to the Interior Ministry, a company of the ChTPZ group had received more than 1.8 billion rubles from the budget without justification, and the two men offered $300,000 to an official of the state company Promresurs who was checking how the money had been spent; the official reported the attempted bribe to law enforcement (Interfax, 13 March 2014, Vedomosti, 13 March 2014, The Moscow Times, 13 March 2014). Komarov was placed under house arrest, which the Moscow City Court extended in March 2015 until 12 July; in July 2015 he was released on a written undertaking not to leave (RAPSI, 11 March 2015, Delovoy Peterburg, 25 February 2016).

On 25 February 2016 his law firm Goltsblat BLP announced that the case against Komarov and Shibanov had been closed for lack of the elements of a crime and that both had been granted the right to rehabilitation, meaning compensation for unlawful prosecution (Interfax, 25 February 2016, Vedomosti, 25 February 2016). Delovoy Peterburg reported that Komarov did not intend to seek compensation (Delovoy Peterburg). The closing decision itself has not been published; Forbes Russia noted that the law enforcement agencies did not comment (Forbes Russia, 5 July 2016). We found no later report that contradicts the closure.

Sale of ChelPipe in 2021

On 9 March 2021 TMK, controlled by Dmitry Pumpyansky, agreed to buy Komarov’s 86.54 percent of ChTPZ for 84.2 billion rubles, valuing the whole company at 97.3 billion rubles; the deal closed on 16 March 2021 (Kommersant, 9 March 2021, Interfax, 16 March 2021). The oilfield services division Rimera was not part of the deal: shortly before, ChelPipe sold it to Komarov for 6.776 billion rubles (TMK via ROGTEC, 16 March 2021, Interfax, 9 March 2021). Forbes describes the sale as his 87 percent stake for $1.13 billion (Forbes). He has held no stake in ChelPipe since then.

After the sale he turned to precious metals. In early 2022 he became the beneficiary of the Fedorova Tundra platinum and palladium project in the Murmansk region by acquiring 99.99 percent of Fedorovo Minerals (Prime, January 2022). By December 2023 the Russian company register showed him with 19 percent of Fedorovo Minerals; Interfax reported that he had soon handed control of the project to his associates (Interfax, 12 December 2023, Interfax, 13 February 2024).

Sanctions

CountryListedStatus in October 2026
Ukraine19 October 2022Listed for ten years (Decree 727/2022)
United States23 February 2024Listed (OFAC SDN list, designated by the State Department)
United KingdomnoNot listed (UK sanctions list)
European UnionnoNot listed (EU consolidated list)
CanadanoNot listed (Canada’s consolidated list)
SwitzerlandnoNot listed (SECO sanctions list)

Ukraine listed Komarov 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 run for ten years; the annex gives no reasons (annex to Decree 727/2022).

The US designation was made by the State Department on 23 February 2024, on the day the Treasury and the State Department announced they were “sanctioning over 500 targets to impose additional costs for Russia’s repression, human rights abuses, and aggression against Ukraine” (US Treasury, 23 February 2024). The notice gives as the legal ground that he is “operating or having operated in the construction sector of the Russian Federation economy”, and adds a secondary sanctions warning for operating in a sector “determined to support Russia’s military-industrial base”; it gives no further reasons (US Federal Register, 21 February 2025, US Federal Register, 12 June 2024). The same action covered ChelPipe itself, for operating in the metals and mining sector, and the company LLC Oktyabr as owned or controlled by Komarov. The industry site GMK Center described him at the time as ChelPipe’s “former shareholder” (US Federal Register, 12 June 2024, GMK Center, 26 February 2024).

On 15 January 2025 the State Department also designated Artem Andreyevich Komarov, whom Forbes Russia identified in 2016 as Komarov’s son, and Klim Andreyevich Komarov, both for operating in Russia’s manufacturing sector. The State Department described Klim Komarov as the founder and sole shareholder of the pipe maker Terra Stal Grupp and Artem Komarov as the founder and board chairman of the ceramic flux maker Keramax (US Federal Register, 21 February 2025, US State Department, 15 January 2025, Forbes Russia, 5 July 2016). We checked the US, UK and Canadian lists as of 8 October 2026, the Swiss list as of 5 October 2026, New Zealand’s register and Poland’s national list as of 11 October 2026, Japan’s list as of 2 October 2026, Australia’s consolidated list as of 7 October 2026 (Australian Sanctions Consolidated List, 7 October 2026) and the EU list as of its review of 22 September 2026.

About this profile

This profile was rewritten in October 2026. The 2022 version mixed up Komarov with other people. It claimed that he chaired Metalloinvest and Gazprom Neft, sat on the board of Sberbank, worked for Alfa Group and TNK-BP, studied economics at Moscow State University and the Plekhanov Academy, holds an INSEAD MBA and a doctorate in particle physics, was born in Moscow on 1 October 1966, made $800 million from an oil trading company, and still runs ChelPipe as chief executive. It also described him as a symbol of crony capitalism who buys political influence and speculated that he owns a yacht. We found no source for any of these statements; he sold ChelPipe in 2021. 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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