Gleb Fetisov: Senator, Banker, Film Producer and the Moi Bank Case

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Photo: Igor Gordeev (Игорь Гордеев), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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

Gleb Fetisov is a Russian-born economist, former senator and film producer. He held stakes in Alfa Group businesses and later owned the Moscow lender Moi Bank. In 2012 he co-founded an opposition party, the Green Alliance. In 2014 he was arrested on suspicion of fraud at the bank he had sold, and he spent about 18 months in custody. The case never went to trial and was closed in 2020. He now lives in Cyprus and works as a film producer. Among his films is Loveless, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

  • Born: 5 June 1966 in Elektrostal, Moscow region (Federation Council, Moscow State University)
  • Education: economics at Moscow State University (1988), Doctor of Economic Sciences (2003), corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 2008
  • Known for: senator for the Voronezh region (2001–2009), co-founder of the Green Alliance party, producer of Loveless and Sobibor
  • Sanctions as of October 2026: none in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union or Canada; listed by Ukraine since October 2022

Economist and businessman

Fetisov graduated from the economics faculty of Moscow State University in 1988 and from the Financial Academy under the Russian Government in 1995. He earned a doctorate in economics in 2003. From 2003 to 2010 he headed the university’s department of macroeconomic regulation and planning. In 2008 he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow State University chronicle).

In business he was linked to the Alfa Group for many years. In 1996 a court appointed him bankruptcy administrator of the Achinsk alumina plant in the Krasnoyarsk region (Kommersant). Before he joined the Federation Council in 2001, he was president of the Alfa-Eco group (Federation Council). According to Forbes Russia, he bought a 30 percent stake in Alfa-Eco in 1998 at Mikhail Fridman’s suggestion. In 2004 he became the owner of 14.35 percent of Altimo, the Alfa Group’s telecoms holding, which held shares in VimpelCom. He sold that stake to the Alfa Group’s shareholders in 2014 (Forbes Russia, Kommersant).

In the mid-2000s Fetisov bought the small Gubernsky bank, which he later renamed Moi Bank (“My Bank”) (Forbes Russia, 2014). In November 2013 he signed an agreement to sell it to two groups of private investors. On 31 January 2014 the Central Bank revoked the bank’s licence. The state Deposit Insurance Agency then had to pay out more than 6 billion rubles to depositors (The Moscow Times).

Senator and party leader

From July 2001 to May 2009 Fetisov represented the Voronezh region in the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament. From 2002 he was deputy chair, and from October 2007 first deputy chair, of its committee on financial markets (Federation Council).

In April 2012 he and Oleg Mitvol founded the party Green Alliance – People’s Party, which Fetisov led (RIA Novosti). In January 2014 the party joined forces with the Kremlin critic Gennady Gudkov to form the Alliance of Greens and Social Democrats, with Fetisov and Gudkov as co-chairs (The Moscow Times). On 12 December 2015 he resigned as co-chair and said he was leaving politics to focus on his health and family. He said his departure had nothing to do with the criminal case against him (Interfax).

The Moi Bank case, 2014–2020

On 28 February 2014, Russia’s Investigative Committee detained Fetisov at a Moscow airport on suspicion of fraud at Moi Bank (The Moscow Times). According to investigators, the case was opened at the request of the Central Bank (RAPSI). He was charged with large-scale fraud, and investigators put the damage at 1.9 billion rubles (Interfax). Fetisov denied the charges throughout. In February 2015 he transferred more than 14 billion rubles of his own money to the Deposit Insurance Agency (Kommersant, RAPSI).

He was held in pre-trial detention until mid-August 2015 and then under house arrest. The house arrest ended on 21 August 2015, after he had spent the longest period allowed in detention and the Prosecutor General’s Office had not asked for an extension (Meduza, RAPSI). The Prosecutor General’s Office did not approve the indictment and returned the case to investigators (RIA Novosti, Vedomosti). In 2017 a Moscow district court sent the file back to the prosecutor because of deficiencies (Kommersant).

In November 2020 his lawyer said that investigators had closed the case after six years (RIA Novosti). Vedomosti and Kommersant reported, citing a source at TASS, that the charge had been reclassified as abuse of powers and the prosecution ended because the statute of limitations had expired (Vedomosti, Kommersant). The case never reached a verdict.

There was also a civil dispute with one of the buyers of the bank. According to Vedomosti, citing RBC, the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) found in 2017 that Fetisov was not involved in Moi Bank’s bankruptcy and awarded him a total of $29.9 million (Vedomosti). bne IntelliNews reported the same amount (via The Moscow Times). The award itself has not been published.

Was the case political?

Fetisov’s spokesman called the accusation politically motivated. A political analyst at the Fund for the Development of Civil Society, which The Moscow Times described as headed by a former Kremlin official, said the case was unrelated to politics (The Moscow Times, 28 February 2014, 2 March 2014).

Two Western institutions mentioned the case. In a resolution of 13 March 2014, the European Parliament wrote that “leaders of the opposition parties and movements are subject to harassment by the Russian authorities, with some being detained under various allegations”. It named Fetisov as co-chair of the Alliance of Greens and Social Democrats (European Parliament resolution). The US State Department’s human rights report for 2014 noted that “the heads of three major independent opposition parties were in state custody in connection with criminal cases”, including Fetisov (US State Department). Neither text assessed whether the charges were well founded.

Sanctions

CountryListedStatus in October 2026
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)
Ukraine19 October 2022Listed (National Security and Defense Council)

We checked the US, UK and Canadian lists on 6 October 2026 and the EU list as of 22 September 2026 and found no entry for Fetisov. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council imposed sanctions on him on 19 October 2022. The decision was put into effect by Presidential Decree No. 727/2022, and the annex lists him by name and date of birth without stating a reason (Verkhovna Rada legislation database).

Film producer

Fetisov founded the production company Fetisoff Illusion, now based in Limassol, Cyprus (Fetisoff Illusion – Europe). He was one of three producers of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless (Variety). The film won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in January 2018 (RFE/RL). His company also co-produced Sobibor (2018), Russia’s submission for the 2019 Oscars (The Hollywood Reporter). He is credited as an executive producer of Jon Favreau’s Chef (2014) (Variety).

At the end of 2019 the Fetisov family’s charitable foundation established the Fetisov Journalism Awards, with a prize fund of 520,000 Swiss francs (Forbes Russia, Fetisov Journalism Awards). According to Forbes Russia, he lives in Limassol and became a Cypriot citizen in June 2022.

About this profile

This profile was rewritten in October 2026. An earlier version from 2022 contained serious allegations against him, an office he never held, and statements about his companies for which we found no source. It also described him as the current owner of Moi Bank. 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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