Sergei Kolesnikov: TechnoNICOL Co-Founder and the Polish Sanctions Against Him

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

Sergei Kolesnikov is a Russian entrepreneur and the co-owner of TechnoNICOL, a producer of roofing, waterproofing and insulation materials that he founded in 1992 with his university friend Igor Rybakov. He runs the company’s production business. He is not on the US, UK, EU, Canadian or Swiss sanctions lists. Poland put him on its national sanctions list in 2023 because of his stake in TechnoNICOL’s Polish companies, and Ukraine has listed him since 2022. He should not be confused with other Russians of the same name, including people on Western sanctions lists.

Born: 25 February 1972 (Polish Interior Ministry, annex to Ukraine’s Decree 727/2022)
Education: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT)
Known for: co-founder, co-owner and managing partner of TechnoNICOL
Sanctions as of October 2026: Ukraine (since 19 October 2022), Poland (national list, since 30 May 2023); not listed by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada or Switzerland

TechnoNICOL

Kolesnikov studied at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, where Forbes lists a Master of Science; Vedomosti gives 1995 as the year he graduated (Forbes, Vedomosti, 12 December 2023). He and Igor Rybakov were roommates there (Bloomberg via The Moscow Times, 13 September 2019). As students they worked summers as roofers, and in 1992 they opened a roof repair firm together (Business Online, 23 July 2019, Vedomosti). Forbes and the Polish Interior Ministry both date the founding of TechnoNICOL to 1992 (Forbes, Polish Interior Ministry). In the mid-1990s the company began making roofing felt at a plant in Vyborg (Mail.ru).

Forbes lists Kolesnikov as the owner of 50 percent of TechnoNICOL and as its managing partner, and describes the company as a group of 72 companies and factories in seven countries in Europe and Asia (Forbes, updated 10 March 2026). In October 2019 the two founders restructured their holdings: they kept the Russian assets in equal shares, two thirds of the European plants went to Kolesnikov, and he took charge of the production business while Rybakov kept running the sales network (Kommersant, 9 October 2019, Forbes Russia, 9 October 2019). In 2018 the two partners won the industry category of EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in Russia (Business FM, RIA Novosti, 1 October 2018). According to the company, TechnoNICOL’s revenue fell by 11 percent to 227.6 billion rubles in 2025, after 256 billion rubles in 2024 (TAdviser, citing the company).

In January 2021 Kolesnikov confirmed to the business daily RBC that he had received citizenship of Malta, saying that he had businesses in several European countries and that a Maltese passport would let him travel there without a visa (RTVI, citing RBC, 12 January 2021).

TechnoNICOL in Europe

Before February 2022 TechnoNICOL had assets in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Lithuania and Poland, Kolesnikov told Kommersant (Kommersant, 9 October 2023). In 2016 his Cypriot company Inflection agreed to take over the Stirling-based insulation maker Superglass for £8.7 million (Scottish Construction Now, 26 July 2016). After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine the company sold its British business; the building materials group Etex completed its purchase of Superglass on 22 June 2023 (RTVI, 28 May 2026, Etex, 22 June 2023). In July 2024 TechnoNICOL completed the sale of its plants in Italy and Lithuania to the French company Soprema. In its statement the company said that the risk of asset seizure in the EU was very high and pointed to what had happened in Poland (Interfax, 22 July 2024).

Sanctions

Country	Listed	Status in October 2026
Ukraine	19 October 2022	Listed (Decree 727/2022)
Poland	30 May 2023	Listed (national sanctions list of the Interior Ministry)
United States	no	Not listed (OFAC SDN list)
United Kingdom	no	Not listed (UK sanctions list)
European Union	no	Not listed (EU consolidated list)
Canada	no	Not listed (consolidated autonomous sanctions list)
Switzerland	no	Not listed (SECO sanctions list)

Poland’s Interior Ministry put Kolesnikov on its national sanctions list on 30 May 2023, together with Igor Rybakov. The measures include a freeze of all funds and economic resources, a ban on making funds available to him, exclusion from public procurement and entry on Poland’s list of foreigners whose stay is undesirable. The ministry stated that the two men are the beneficial owners of TechnoNICOL’s Polish companies, since renamed Boerner, and that Kolesnikov holds his stake through the Cypriot company Inflection Management Corporation, of which he is the sole shareholder. It also wrote that the two partners belong to the 100 people who became billionaires in Russia during Putin’s presidency (Polish Interior Ministry, Interfax via X-Compliance, 30 May 2023). This is a measure under Polish national law, not a court ruling.

Ukraine listed Kolesnikov 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 (annex to Decree 727/2022).

We checked the US, UK and Canadian lists as of 8 October 2026, the Swiss list as of 5 October 2026 and the EU list as of its review of 22 September 2026 and found no entry for Sergei Anatolyevich Kolesnikov or for TechnoNICOL. Entries under the same surname on these lists belong to other people.

The dispute over the Polish plants

On 25 July 2023 Poland’s Minister of Development and Technology placed the companies Boerner Insulation and Boerner Service under temporary compulsory administration (Polish Ministry of Development and Technology, 28 December 2023, The Moscow Times, 28 July 2023). Kolesnikov said the company had been profitable and had enough money in its accounts, so that no outside management was needed (Kommersant, 9 October 2023). In 2025 the insulation plant at Wykroty became part of Holcim Polska (Global Insulation, 20 October 2025, RTVI, 28 May 2026).

Before the sale, the group’s Cypriot companies Inflection Management Corporation and Rybakov Industrial Management turned to an emergency arbitrator of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, and in October 2024 the group said it would start arbitration proceedings against Poland, describing the forced sale as expropriation (Vedomosti, 21 October 2024). According to Poland, the emergency arbitrator refused to halt the sale (Global Arbitration Review, 3 October 2024). We found no published outcome of the main arbitration.

In May 2026 Kolesnikov and Rybakov sued Poland, PKO Bank Polski, Holcim, Holcim Polska and the former administrator at the Moscow Arbitration Court for 9.4 billion rubles (Interfax, 28 May 2026, RIA Novosti, 28 May 2026). The court joined the Bank of Russia as a third party and scheduled the main hearing for 25 November 2026 (InvestFuture, citing RIA Novosti, 3 June 2026, Prime, 17 August 2026). The case was still open in October 2026.

Public roles and biathlon

Kolesnikov has been active in the business association Delovaya Rossiya. In December 2015, as a member of the presidium of its general council, he was one of many people who received a letter of thanks from the Russian president for public activity (Presidential Order 409-rp, 16 December 2015). As president of TechnoNICOL he appears on the Kremlin’s list of participants of a meeting with heads of Russian industrial companies in June 2015, and in September 2016 he spoke at Putin’s meeting with prospective investors in the Far East (Kremlin, 18 June 2015, Kremlin, 2 September 2016). In April 2025 Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin met him to discuss the company’s work under sanctions, import substitution and training (Government of Russia, 16 April 2025). We found no source for the claim in an earlier version of this page that he has close personal ties to Putin.

Forbes writes that Kolesnikov finances biathlon schools, built two biathlon stadiums and financed an ecopark near Ryazan with a biathlon track (Forbes). In December 2025 he told RBC Sport that he would not run for president of the Russian Biathlon Union and that TechnoNICOL would remain a sponsor (Fontanka, 30 December 2025).

About this profile

This profile was rewritten in October 2026. The 2022 version gave his year of birth as 1872 and the founding year of TechnoNICOL as 1993, called him a co-owner of the gas producer Novatek and said that he met Rybakov at school. It also claimed that he has close ties to Putin that made him richer, and that other members of the Russian elite see him as a threat. We found no source for any of these statements, and the first four are wrong. They have been removed. The net worth figure in the box at the top of this page comes from Forbes and carries its date.