Oleg Tinkov: Tinkoff Bank Founder, the US Tax Case and Lifted Sanctions

/ Oligarch Profiles / By
Russian ruble banknotes and payment cards

Photo: Vardan Papikyan, Unsplash License, via Unsplash

Sanctions status — checked 18 October 2026

Not found on the OFAC SDN, UK OFSI or EU consolidated lists.
Previously listed: UK (24 March 2022 – 20 July 2023)

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.

No current figure: Forbes no longer publishes a live net worth estimate for Oleg Tinkov; its last posted valuation dates from 5 April 2021 (Forbes profile).

Oleg Tinkov is a Russian-born businessman who founded Tinkoff Credit Systems, later Tinkoff Bank, one of Russia’s first branchless banks. In April 2022, days after he condemned the war against Ukraine on Instagram, his family trusts sold their 35 percent stake in the bank’s holding company to Vladimir Potanin’s Interros. The United Kingdom and Australia sanctioned him in 2022 and removed him from their lists in July 2023. In 2021 he pleaded guilty in the United States to filing a false tax return. No country lists him personally today.

  • Born: 25 December 1967 in Polysayevo, Kemerovo region (OFSI notice of 20 July 2023, Australian instrument F2022L00568)
  • Education: studied at the Leningrad Mining Institute without finishing; a six-month marketing course at the University of California, Berkeley
  • Known for: founder of Tinkoff Bank; earlier the Technoshock electronics stores, the Daria convenience food company and the Tinkoff brewery; owner of the Tinkoff-Saxo cycling team from 2013 to 2016
  • Citizenship: born in the Soviet Union; a naturalised US citizen from 1996 until he gave it up in 2013; he announced in October 2022 that he had renounced his Russian citizenship
  • Sanctions as of October 2026: not listed by any country we checked. The United Kingdom (24 March 2022 to 20 July 2023) and Australia (April 2022 to July 2023) listed him and later removed him. The bank he founded has been sanctioned since 2023, after he had sold his stake.

Early career

Tinkov was born on 25 December 1967 in Polysayevo in the Kemerovo region of Siberia; the British and Australian sanctions entries give the same date and place, and the St Petersburg business paper Delovoy Peterburg the same date (OFSI, 20 July 2023, F2022L00568, item 104, Delovoy Peterburg, 12 March 2009). He studied at the Leningrad Mining Institute but did not graduate, and later completed a six-month marketing programme at the University of California, Berkeley (Delovoy Peterburg, Inrng, June 2012, Forbes).

In the early 1990s he traded electronics in St Petersburg. His company Petrosib ran the Technoshock electronics stores and the MusicShock music stores; he sold it in 1997 (Delovoy Peterburg, Lenta.ru reference profile, Inrng). In 1998 he founded Daria, a maker of frozen dumplings and other convenience food, and opened the first Tinkoff brewery restaurant in St Petersburg; he sold Daria in 2001 to concentrate on beer (Delovoy Peterburg, Lenta.ru, Kommersant, 4 August 2003). In July 2005 InBev agreed to buy the Tinkoff brewery for an enterprise value of €167 million (InBev announcement, 19 July 2005). The restaurant chain, eight restaurants by 2005, was sold in 2009 (Lenta.ru).

Tinkoff Bank

In November 2006 Tinkov bought the small Moscow lender Khimmashbank and renamed it Tinkoff Credit Systems, a branchless bank that served its customers online (Lenta.ru, Delovoy Peterburg, vc.ru, 8 July 2024). Its holding company, TCS Group Holding, listed global depositary receipts on the London Stock Exchange in October 2013 and raised $1.087 billion (EMEA Finance, 23 October 2013). According to the US Justice Department, Tinkov held the majority of the shares indirectly and sold a small part of his stake in the offering for more than $192 million (IRS Criminal Investigation, 1 October 2021).

Tinkov’s stake in TCS Group was transferred to a family trust, a process he started in October 2019 and which took effect on 19 March 2020. In April 2020 a spokesperson said he would step down as chairman of the bank’s board to focus on his health (TASS, 2 April 2020).

The US tax case

Tinkov became a naturalised US citizen in 1996. Three days after the 2013 stock market listing he gave up his US citizenship at the US embassy in Moscow, which made him liable to report and pay tax on the gain in his worldwide assets (IRS-CI, 1 October 2021). A federal grand jury indicted him on 26 September 2019; the indictment was unsealed on 5 March 2020, after his arrest in London on 26 February 2020 (IRS-CI, 29 October 2021, RFE/RL, 6 March 2020). The United States sought his extradition; he contested it on medical grounds (IRS-CI, 29 October 2021).

On 1 October 2021 Tinkov pleaded guilty to one count of filing a false tax return, a felony. According to the plea agreement, his 2013 return reported income of only $205,317, and his expatriation statement reported a net worth of only $300,000, while his assets after the listing were worth more than $1.1 billion; the tax loss was $248,525,339 (IRS-CI, 1 October 2021, Reuters, 2 October 2021, Interfax, 4 October 2021). On 29 October 2021 US District Judge Jon S. Tigar sentenced him to time served and one year of supervised release and fined him $250,000, the statutory maximum. Before sentencing he paid $508,936,184 in tax, interest and a fraud penalty of nearly $100 million (IRS-CI, 29 October 2021, AFP via The Moscow Times, 1 November 2021). This is the only criminal case against him that we found.

Criticism of the war and the sale of his stake

On 19 April 2022 Tinkov wrote on Instagram: “I don’t see ANY beneficiary of this crazy war! Innocent people and soldiers are dying” (RFE/RL, 20 April 2022, AFP via International Business Times, 19 April 2022). The bank said it would not comment on his “private opinion” and that he no longer took decisions in the companies of the Tinkoff brand (AFP via IBTimes).

On 28 April 2022 Interros, the investment group of Vladimir Potanin, announced that it was buying a 35 percent stake in TCS Group from Tinkov’s family, with the approval of the Bank of Russia; TCS said that the family trusts had disposed of their entire interest. The price was not disclosed (Interfax, 28 April 2022, TASS, 28 April 2022, AFP via The Moscow Times, 29 April 2022). In an interview with The New York Times published on 1 May 2022, Tinkov said he had been forced to sell because of his statements and had received about 3 percent of what he believed the stake was worth: “They made me sell it because of my pronouncements.” This is his account. The bank said there had been “no threats of any kind against the bank’s leadership”, and the Kremlin did not respond to the newspaper (The Moscow Times, 2 May 2022, Novaya Gazeta Europe, 2 May 2022).

At the end of October 2022 Tinkov posted on Instagram a document ending his Russian citizenship: “I have taken the decision to exit my Russian citizenship” (RFE/RL, 31 October 2022, Al Jazeera, 1 November 2022, Semafor, 2 November 2022). On 16 February 2024 Russia’s Justice Ministry added him to its register of “foreign agents”, saying among other things that he had spoken out against what Russia calls its “special military operation” (Interfax, 16 February 2024, Meduza, 16 February 2024, AFP via The Moscow Times, 16 February 2024). In June 2024 the bank renamed itself T-Bank (The Moscow Times, 5 June 2024, vc.ru).

Sanctions

CountryListedStatus in October 2026
United Kingdom24 March 2022Removed on 20 July 2023; no reasons published
Australia7 April 2022Revoked in July 2023 (in force 22 July 2023)
United StatesnoNot listed; the bank was designated in July 2023
European UnionnoNot listed; the bank was listed in February 2023
CanadanoNot listed; the bank was listed in July 2023
SwitzerlandnoNot listed; the bank was listed in March 2023
UkrainenoNot listed (Decree 727/2022)
New Zealand, JapannoNot on the current lists

United Kingdom. Britain designated Tinkov on 24 March 2022 under list reference RUS1098, as a former stakeholder in TCS Group Holding and founder of Tinkoff Bank (OFSI notice, 20 July 2023, RFE/RL, 24 March 2022, Interfax, 24 March 2022). The government’s published reason said that he “is a prominent Russian businessman” who had been involved in obtaining a benefit from or supporting the Government of Russia as a previous owner and director of TCS Group and Tinkoff Bank, entities in the financial sector, “a sector of strategic significance to the Government of Russia” (OFSI notice). This is the government’s stated reason for the designation, not a finding by a court. On 20 July 2023 the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation removed him from the list; he was “no longer subject to an asset freeze or trust services sanctions”. The notice gives no reasons (OFSI notice, 20 July 2023, Interfax, 20 July 2023, The Moscow Times, 20 July 2023). His lawyers said they had argued since February 2023 that he had been wrongly targeted (Corker Binning, 20 July 2023).

Australia. Australia designated him in an instrument dated 7 April 2022 (F2022L00568, item 104). Foreign Minister Penny Wong revoked the designation in an instrument dated 17 July 2023, which took effect on 22 July 2023. According to the explanatory statement, she did so on her own initiative “as she was satisfied that it was in Australia’s foreign policy interests to do so”, after consulting government agencies and partners including the United Kingdom (F2023L01021 and explanatory statement).

The bank, not the person. Sanctions against Tinkoff Bank came after Tinkov had sold his stake. The European Union listed Tinkoff Bank on 25 February 2023 (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/429), Switzerland followed in March 2023, Britain on 18 May 2023 (OFSI notice, 19 May 2023) and Canada on 19 July 2023. The US Treasury designated the bank on 20 July 2023 and noted that it was partially owned by Vladimir Potanin, whom the United States had designated (US Treasury, 20 July 2023). The bank, now called T-Bank, remains on these lists, and Japan lists it too. Tinkov himself is on none of the sanctions lists we checked, including those of the United States, the European Union, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, Japan, Poland and Ukraine.

Illness, foundation and cycling

Tinkov was diagnosed with leukaemia in October 2019 and had a bone marrow transplant in July 2020; on 19 December 2020 he announced complete remission (Meduza, 30 June 2020, Interfax, 10 July 2020, Meduza, 19 December 2020, Lenta.ru, 19 December 2020). In July 2020 he announced a family foundation to fight blood cancer and support bone marrow donation (Meduza, 26 July 2020, The Insider, 26 July 2020). After the foreign agent designation he said in early 2024 that he would close the foundation and end this work (Mediazona, 29 February 2024, Forbes Kazakhstan, 1 March 2024, RFE/RL, 11 March 2024).

A former amateur cyclist, Tinkov sponsored professional cycling teams from 2006. In late 2013 he bought the World Tour team of Bjarne Riis, which raced as Tinkoff-Saxo (The Copenhagen Post, 15 October 2015, Lenta.ru). In December 2015 he announced that he would leave the sport at the end of 2016, saying he had spent more than €60 million on it (road.cc, 14 December 2015). In January 2021 BOAT International reported that he had taken delivery in 2020 of La Datcha, a 77-metre expedition yacht also offered for charter (BOAT International, 15 January 2021). We did not confirm who owns the yacht today.

About this profile

This profile was rewritten in October 2026. The 2022 version said Tinkov made his fortune in technology; his main business was banking. It said he graduated in applied mathematics in 1988; he did not complete his studies. It described Technoshock and the brewery restaurants as still operating, with more than 60 restaurants, and called MusicShock the largest music retailer in Russia; he sold these businesses between 1997 and 2009. It claimed that Richard Branson suggested the bank to him in 2005, listed donations, homes in the Alps, New York and Moscow, a Caribbean island, a ski resort, a private plane and a $250 million yacht, and cited the search engine Yandex as calling him an inspiration. We found no source for any of this and removed it, together with details about his family. It said “some people” accused him of filing a false tax return; he pleaded guilty to that offence in 2021. It did not mention that Britain and Australia lifted their sanctions in 2023. The net worth figure in the box at the top of this page comes from Forbes and carries its date.

Sources

Articles You Might Enjoy Reading

What Do Russian Oligarchs Think Of Putin?

Which Companies Are Owned By Russian Oligarchs?

Who Are The Russian Oligarchs Sanctioned?