Sergei Matvienko (R) estimated the political risks of doing business in Estonia. With his mother Valentina Matvienko (L), Governor of St. Petersburg.
Photo: Mikhail Razuvaev
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Valentina Matvienko’s Son Curtails Business in Estonia
// Because of the Bronze Soldier’s removal
Son of the Governor of St. Petersburg, businessman, VTB-Capital’s chairman Sergei Matvienko announced on Friday that he exits the project of building an elite villa community in Estonia. He decided to quit the project due to political reasons, taking the removal of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn as his personal insult. The businessman’s partners in the Estonian project say they are not going to give it up yet.
Almost a month after the scandal around the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn, Russian businessman Sergei Matvienko said in his interview to NTV company that he takes the monument’s removal as a personal insult to himself, and will no longer develop his Estonian project of building elite houses. “My grandfather fought in the Great Patriotic War, and I do not see any possibility to develop business in the country treating the memory of Soviet Soldiers with disrespect,” said the businessman.
In 2005, Matvienko on shares with Lukoil Eesti’s director general Evgeny Bolshakov and with St. Petersburg Bank’s co-owner Alexander Saveliev bought an island of 10 hectares on the Pirita river several kilometers off Tallinn. The partners intended to build eight elite villas on the desert island, and to establish helicopter flights between St. Petersburg and Tallinn.
Meanwhile, Matvienko’s partners do not hurry making similar statements. Bolshakov refrains from commenting the situation, and St. Petersburg Bank’s press service said on Friday that Saveliev is not going to give up the Estonian project so far.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 26, 2007
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