Andrei Skoch: Duma Deputy, Usmanov’s Partner and the Sanctions Against Him

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Sanctions status — checked 18 October 2026

Listed by: US (OFAC SDN) · UK (OFSI) · EU

This person appears on the sanctions lists named above. Other countries are covered in the sanctions section below. Date of birth used for identification: 1966-01-30. 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 Skoch and family’s net worth at $6.8 billion as of 18 October 2026 (Forbes profile). Estimates are revised continuously and Forbes and Bloomberg frequently disagree.

Andrei Skoch has been a member of Russia’s State Duma since 1999 and is a longtime business partner of Alisher Usmanov. The family’s stake in USM, the holding company that owns the iron ore and steel group Metalloinvest, is held by his father and his daughter. The United States has sanctioned Skoch since 2018. In February and March 2022 the European Union, Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom followed, after he voted for the Duma’s appeal to recognise the separatist “republics” in eastern Ukraine. In September 2026 he was elected to the Duma again.

  • Born: 30 January 1966 in Nikolskoye, Balashikha district, Moscow region (OFAC, Forbes Russia, Dossier Center)
  • Education: studied psychology; candidate of sciences in pedagogy, 2000
  • Known for: State Duma deputy since 1999 (United Russia, Belgorod region); partner of Alisher Usmanov in USM
  • Sanctions as of October 2026: United States (since April 2018), European Union (since February 2022), Canada (since February 2022), Switzerland (since February 2022), United Kingdom (since March 2022)

Early life and business

Skoch was born in 1966 in the village of Nikolskoye near Balashikha, east of Moscow, and did his military service from 1984 (Dossier Center, OFAC). He studied psychology; sources differ on whether he graduated in 1988 or 1998 (Dossier Center, Forbes Russia). In 2000 he defended a candidate dissertation in pedagogy on charity as a means of protecting children (Dissernet, Dossier Center). The Dossier Center also describes him as an honoured coach of Russia in sambo and judo.

According to the Dossier Center, he started in business with a cooperative bakery and later worked as deputy general director of the investment company Interfin. In 1995 he founded a company called Interfinservis, and in 1999 he became deputy director for investment at the Lebedinsky iron ore plant (Dossier Center). Forbes Russia writes that he met Alisher Usmanov in the early 1990s while trying to obtain a batch of oil for the Moscow refinery (Forbes Russia).

USM and Metalloinvest

Skoch does not hold the family’s stake in his own name. In 2018 USM Holding became the sole owner of Metalloinvest, which includes the Mikhailovsky and Lebedinsky iron ore plants, the Oskol Electrometallurgical Plant and Ural Steel. Usmanov held 49 percent of USM and Vladimir Skoch, Andrei Skoch’s father, held 30 percent (Interfax, 2018, Interfax, 2014). Interfax described Andrei Skoch as Usmanov’s “long-time partner”. According to Forbes Russia, the father’s stake was split in 2020, and 15 percent went to Skoch’s daughter Varvara. Forbes Russia also lists a 61.5 percent stake in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport among the family’s assets (Forbes Russia, April 2025).

Member of the State Duma

Skoch was first elected to the State Duma in 1999 and has been re-elected at every election since (ICIJ, Vedomosti, Dossier Center). He sits in the United Russia faction (Forbes Russia). In the Duma election held on 20 September 2026, he won the Starooskolsky single-member constituency No. 80 in the Belgorod region. The Duma’s official list of the ninth convocation names him as elected there (State Duma, Meduza). According to preliminary figures published after all precincts had reported, he received 74.34 percent of the vote (Abireg).

Sanctions

CountryListedStatus in October 2026
United States6 April 2018Listed (OFAC SDN list); designated again on 24 March 2022
European Union23 February 2022Listed (Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/261)
Canada24 February 2022Listed (Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations)
Switzerland25 February 2022Listed (SECO)
Australia26 February 2022Listed (Australian consolidated list)
United Kingdom15 March 2022Listed (UK sanctions list, RUS0669)

The US Treasury designated Skoch on 6 April 2018 as one of 17 senior Russian government officials. The legal ground was his office: “Andrei Skoch is being designated for being an official of the Government of the Russian Federation. Skoch is a deputy of the Russian Federation’s State Duma.” In the same press release, the Treasury also said that Skoch “has longstanding ties to Russian organized criminal groups” (US Treasury, sm0338, ICIJ). Skoch has denied this (ICIJ, The Insider). On 24 March 2022 the Treasury sanctioned the Duma and 328 of its members and designated Skoch again (US Treasury, jy0677, jy0802).

On 2 June 2022 the Treasury identified the Cayman Islands-flagged yacht Madame Gu, a helicopter kept on board and the private plane P4-MGU as blocked property in which Skoch has an interest (US Treasury, jy0802, Federal Register). According to Forbes Russia, the yacht has been moored in Dubai since March 2022 (Forbes Russia, April 2025). On 12 April 2023 the United States also designated his father Vladimir Skoch, citing the aerospace sector, and his daughter Varvara as his adult child (Federal Register). The United Kingdom listed both on 11 April 2023 (UK sanctions list).

The European Union listed Skoch on 23 February 2022 together with 335 other members of the State Duma. All of them had voted for resolution No. 58243-8, which asked Vladimir Putin to recognise the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/261). The United Kingdom listed him on 15 March 2022 on the same ground (UK sanctions list). Canada listed him on 24 February 2022 and Switzerland on 25 February 2022. The EU list of 22 September 2026, the Swiss list of 5 October 2026 and the US, UK and Canadian lists of October 2026 still include him.

Australia listed him by an instrument dated 25 February 2022, which took effect the next day, as a “Member of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation”; its consolidated list of 16 October 2026 still includes him (Autonomous Sanctions Amendment (No. 4) Instrument 2022, Australian Sanctions Consolidated List, 16 October 2026). Forbes Russia writes that Japan and Ukraine have also sanctioned him (Forbes Russia). We could not check these two listings against a primary source; the annex to Ukraine’s Decree 727/2022 does not name him. Poland does not list him. We found no court challenge by Skoch against his listings.

Media reports and court rulings

In 2012 The Guardian published a photograph from 1994 showing Skoch with men it described as alleged Russian gangsters. Skoch told the Financial Times that he knew two of them, but denied that he or they had any links to organised crime (Delovoy Peterburg, summarising the FT and The Guardian). In 2013 a compliance officer at the offshore law firm Appleby cited press reports linking Skoch to “criminal groups”; ICIJ reported this in 2022, based on the leaked Paradise Papers (ICIJ).

In February 2018 Novaya Gazeta linked Skoch to a bribery case. Skoch called the report nonsense (Vedomosti). He sued, and on 21 March 2019 the Oktyabrsky district court in Belgorod upheld his defamation claim. It ordered Novaya Gazeta, TV Rain (Dozhd), Rosbalt, Fonar TV and the Federal Investigations Agency to delete their articles and awarded him one rouble from each (Mediazona, OCCRP). We found no criminal charge against Skoch in Russia or elsewhere.

About this profile

This profile was rewritten in October 2026. The 2022 version said that the United States sanctioned Skoch because of connections to organised crime and that he was “allegedly the leader of a criminal group himself”. The legal ground of the US designation was his office as a Duma deputy, and the leadership claim rests on a single sentence in the US Treasury’s 2018 press release, for which we found no second independent source. The old version also called him a native of the Belgorod region, said he studied at an “Institute of Physical Culture”, appeared in the Panama Papers and owned 30 percent of Metalloinvest. He was born in the Moscow region, his dissertation was in pedagogy, we found no source for the Panama Papers claim, and the stake is held by his father and daughter through USM. These statements have been corrected or 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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