For most of Russia’s billionaire oligarchs, their interest in our region ends at the Maldives - a safe haven for their super yachts - but that was not always the case when it comes to Australia.
When Russian President Vladmir Putin made his first and only visit to Australia in 2007 for the APEC summit, Australia rolled out the red carpet for the Russian leader and his oligarch allies.
But it did not start with this pre-APEC business summit. The oligarchs had set their sights on Australian miners even before the clarion call from John Howard’s government for them to invest. It could have been very different. In 2007, Rashnikov had been seeking Foreign Investment Review Board approval to lift his Fortescue stake to 20 per cent in what would have been an incredibly lucrative move for the oligarch.
Australia was a sideshow, says University of NSW Associate Professor Stephen Fortescue, a political scientist whose research is focused on the oligarchs and the Russian mining and metals industry.“The oligarchs in Australia have not been that important in the grand scheme of things,” he says.
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