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Revealed: Major Tory donor is investor in Russian state-owned oil firm

Rosneft's CEO Igor Sechin was sanctioned by the UK on Thursday. Mercantile and Maritime Energy has shares in a major project by the firm

By Solomon Hughes
Revealed: Major Tory donor is investor in Russian state-owned oil firm
Mercantile & Maritime Energy was a major Tory donor in the year of Boris Johnson's election victory
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One of the Tory party’s biggest donors is a major investor in Russia’s state-owned oil firm, Rosneft, openDemocracy can reveal.

Energy firm Mercantile & Maritime (MME), whose UK subsidiary gave the Conservatives £500,000 during the 2019 election campaign, is a co-investor in a massive Rosneft oil project.

Rosneft is close to Vladimir Putin and has been supplying fuel to Russia’s troops in Ukraine. The business is largely state-owned and is run by Igor Sechin, a key Putin ally who was sanctioned by the UK on Thursday following accusations of foot-dragging, and previously by the EU, leading to France seizing his superyacht.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0