The history of the Russian aluminum sector and the political history of post-Soviet Russia are closely intertwined. Privatizations or major deals in the aluminum sector coincide with serious political battles and crises in the government. Only the banking-financial sector has more influence on political events. It is well-known that since politics is a dirty game, you do not go into it wearing white gloves. Given its close ties to politics, the same can be said of the non-ferrous-metals sector.

1991

Trading began on the Moscow non-ferrous-metals exchange on Sept. 16. The exchange planned to have 45 percent of the world's non-ferrous-metals turnover within a year, and 20 percent of the world's aluminum turnover. In the end, it survived only three years.

The Yuzhuralnickel company, which worked exclusively with Cuban nickel concentrate, came to a halt because of disruptions in supplies from Cuba. Nickel concentrate supplies to the factory resumed only in 1993, organized by Zarubezhtsvetmet and Nafta-Moskva in exchange for oil.

Swiss company Marc Rich & Co. began tolling operations at the Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant (KrAZ). Later, people would say that Oleg Deripaska, Mikhail Chernoi and Yury Shlyafstein were responsible for"inventing" tolling but, in reality, it was Marc Rich who brought the practice to Russia. A year later, internal conflict forced him to leave KrAZ, leaving the road open for the AYUS company.

1992

MIKOM held its founding meeting in February, choosing Mikhail Zhivilo as president. Zhivilo tried to establish his hold over the Bratsk aluminum plant (BrAZ), one of the country's biggest aluminum producers, but had the plant under his sway for just six months. After this, MIKOM counted only Novokuznetsk aluminum plant (NkAZ) among its non-ferrous-metals assets, and soon lost that as well.

President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree on March 7, 1992, allowing foreign tolling at BrAZ. The plant, headed by Boris Gromov, came under the control of the Trans World Group (TWG), which was still in the process of forming.

In August, Igor Prokopov, the director of the Aluminy aluminum company, tried to get the government to introduce lower electricity rates for aluminum plants. The Soviet Union had abolished preferential rates for aluminum plants back in 1968. Prokopov's attempts failed in December, and soon after, the State Property Committee began taking the business apart, turning it from a holding company into a "management and consulting superstructure."

In October, aluminum plants joined efforts to raise aluminum prices 1.5 times. Over the next year, prices rose to world levels. The sudden increase in Russian aluminum on the world market sent prices tumbling to a historic low of $1,300 per ton.

Shares in the Sayansk and Bratsk aluminum plants were put open to bidding at voucher-privatization auctions.

1993

In February, a large-scale privatization of the aluminum sector took place. All the aluminum plants got new owners over the course of the year. The Volgograd and Kandalaksha plants went to RIAL (Raznoimport-Aluminum). Alinvest, a subsidiary of Aluminum-Produkt, bought the SaAZ plant and Mikhail Zhivilo's MIKOM got its hands on NkAZ. A Russian-American joint venture, at that time headed by Vladimir Balayescul, got control of IrkAZ.

In February, the European Commission called together a special committee to look into introducing quotas on aluminum imports from Russia. The initiative was lobbied by French aluminum producer Pechiney, which was experiencing losses because of dumping by Russian plants. Aluminum prices in London fell to $1,150 a ton.

At a meeting of the Sovaluminum company (the former Aluminum company) in April, Oleg Soskovets introduced Lev Chernoi, one of the TWG group's managers, to Russian aluminum-plant directors as a "potential Western partner." Six months later, Mikhail Turushev, the general director of KrAZ, signed a contract with TWG to refine 300,000 tons of aluminum a year until 2003.

Prokopov accompanied Yeltsin on a visit to Greece, where an agreement was reached on a project to build an alumina ore plant near Athens for $350 million. The project never went through.

In the summer of 1993, the management of NkAZ demanded explanations from its partner Vadim Yafyasov as to why his company had paid for a large aluminum delivery from the plant with a false payment order and then dissolved the contract. Yafyasov went to work for the Russian Metallurgy Commission and later for Yugorsky bank.

On July 6, Yeltsin signed the decree "On Particularities of the Privatization of State-Owned Non-Ferrous- and Precious-Metals Production-Enterprise Norilsk Nickel." The decree gave 51 percent of shares in the plant to the state.

On Nov. 4, Turushev fired KrAZ Commercial Director Yury Kolpakov for "abuses during tolling operations with French company Trans Commodities." At the same time, a number of employees left Trans Commodities, including Mikhail and Lev Chernoi. This led to the setting up of Trans-C.I.S. Commodities, which later became part of TWG. A few months later, Turushev retired after being beaten nearly to death in the entrance to his apartment block. He was replaced by Kolpakov.

The Alkur company was registered in Yekaterinburg on Nov. 22, bringing together the Sevuralboxitruda company and the Urals Aluminum plant, among others. But the new company could not handle the competition; it took until 2000 – the year Viktor Vekselberg and Vasily Anisimov established the Siberian-Urals Aluminum Company (SUAL) – to create an effective holding, bringing together the different aluminum companies in the region.

At a meeting in Bratsk, the Russian Metallurgical Commission unveiled plans for cross-shareholding in aluminum plants and electrical-power stations belonging to RAO UES (Unified Energy Systems). But the plan did not have the support of UES head Anatoly Dyakov. It was revived in 1999 by new UES head Anatoly Chubais and Oleg Deripaska.

In December, Mikhail Khodorkovsky became chairman of the board of directors of rolled-titanium producer Avisma. He sold the plant in 1997 through the Kreditanstalt Grant company to corporate blackmailer Kenneth Dart.

1994

The State Property Committee stopped an investment tender for 9 percent of shares in BrAZ. Vasily Boiko, the head of the Your Financial Custodian company, said the tender was stopped on his initiative because his bid was not accepted. Boiko continued fighting to have a hand in the management of BrAZ until 1999.

In February, an Interior Ministry commission investigated increasing occurrences of false payment orders used by partner companies of TWG and Trans-C.I.S. Commodities and filed criminal charges.

In April, aluminum plants withdrew from an agreement on coordinated price changes. The Aluminum company quit the game because it did not have any more levers of influence over aluminum plants. This was followed by rumors that aluminum-export quotas would be abolished. The quotas were abolished on July 1.

An investment tender for 19 percent of shares in BrAZ was won by Malakhit, which, according to some sources, was backed by Menatep Bank, and according to others, by TWG, which ended up controlling the stake. Viktor Vekselberg's Renova company and Boiko's Your Financial Custodian company protested the result, but their complaints went unexamined.

In July 1994, shares in Norilsk Nickel were put up for sale at a voucher auction. Chubais called the lot "the jewel of privatization."

In July, Marc Rich & Co, which had not developed its presence on the Russian market, got a new owner and changed its name to Glencore International. Glencore gradually began making a return to the Russian non-ferrous-metals market.

In August, the Gaisky mining and enrichment plant (Gaisky GOK), the Mednogorsky copper and sulfur plant (MMSK) and Yuzhuralnickel bought controlling stakes in each other at a tender in order to keep out outside shareholders. But the union did not succeed, and Menatep ended up getting all the shares. A year later, Gaisky GOK director Nikolai Ivanov, who initiated the deal, was forced to leave the company, which was reorganized into the UGMK company.

On Aug. 30, a government commission on operative issues discussed for the first time whether tolling is useful or harmful to the aluminum industry. The Federal Currency and Export Control Service and the Environment Ministry spoke out against the practice, but Soskovets, who lobbied in favor of tolling, won the round.

In September, an investment tender was announced for the state stake in Sayansk Aluminum plant. Two companies, Aluminprodukt and Russky Kapital, became the main shareholders in SaAZ. In November, the plant's general director, Gennady Sirazutdinov, handed in his resignation. His place was taken by 26-year-old Oleg Deripaska, while Trans-C.I.S. Commodities Deputy President Vladimir Lisin became chairman of the board of directors.

On Sept. 17, Vladimir Sementsov, an Interior Ministry investigator, gave his bosses a plan with which to interrogate Soskovets on major fraud during aluminum-tolling operations. Sementsov was arrested a few days later and the case he was working on mysteriously disappeared from his office. Sementsov spent a year and a half in Lefortovo prison on charges of smuggling rare metals before being cleared by the Supreme Court.

On Oct. 28, Kolpakov, now the head of KrAZ, crossed off Zalog-Bank and Russky Kapital from its list of shareholders. TWG controlled 17 percent of shares in KrAZ through these two companies. This launched a war on KrAZ by various shareholders, which is not over to this day.

1995

In mid-January, Vladimir Polevanov, the new head of the State Property Committee, announced plans to nationalize the aluminum industry. Chubais had him dismissed by spring.

In February, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin signed a resolution bringing all the aluminum companies in Krasnoyarsk Krai into a single integrated holding – Tanako. The scheme involved 20 percent of shares in KrAZ. On the initiative of Kolpakov and KrAZ's commercial director, Kornei Gibert, the Tanako project brought Anatoly Bykov to the plant. Kolpakov's team needed Bykov to protect it from TWG's attempts to get KrAZ under its control.

On April 6, SaAZ commercial director Valery Tokarev was victim of a murder attempt.

On April 10, Vadim Yafyasov, Kolpakov's deputy and a former deputy president of Yugorsky Bank, was murdered. Yafyasov had arrived at KrAZ in March and was supposed to resolve the conflict between KrAZ's management and TWG.

On May 9, the board of directors of Norilsk Nickel set conditions for transferring state shares in the company to trustee management by Oneximbank. But, under pressure from other banks, Vladimir Potanin agreed to put the shares up for auction. This was the emergence of the loans-for-shares idea. A few weeks later, a "consortium of banks" published the idea in a letter to the government.

On July 19, Oleg Kantor, the head of Yugorsky Bank and Yafyasov's former boss, was killed near Moscow. Rumors went around Moscow that Yafyasov and Kantor were killed on the orders of the Chernoi brothers, who owned TWG. Six years later, Mikhail Zhivilo made the same accusation in a New York court.

On June 25, Lev Chernoi sent an open letter from the Venezuelan capital Caracas to the Interior Ministry investigating committee that suspected him of being involved in the murders of Kantor and Yafyasov. Chernoi declared his innocence and said that business in Russia is a fatally dangerous affair.

In August, AYUS, the Mikrodin group and TWG began a battle to gain control of the Novosibirsk electrode plant (NovEZ), the main supplier of electrodes to the country's major aluminum plants. All three contenders ended up pulling out of the battle, which is still going on today.

On Sept. 7, Felix Lvov, the manager of AYUS' Russian activities, was found dead. A week earlier, the news came out that AYUS would take part in bidding for the state stake (36.6 percent) in KrAZ. Earlier, Yugorsky Bank had also tried to acquire this stake.

On Oct. 6, the shareholders in Gaisky GOK agreed with the plant's management to work together. This was the starting point for building what has become Russia's largest copper holding. It was also the first example of cooperation between Iskander Makhmudov, at that time a member of the Sayana Bank managing board, and Oleg Deripaska, the general director of SaAZ.

On Nov. 19, Oneximbank won a loans-for-shares auction for Norilsk Nickel. Rossiisky Kredit bank, whose bid to participate in the auction was withdrawn, said it would challenge the result in court. Oneximbank paid $170 million for 28 percent of shares in Norilsk Nickel, while Kont, a subsidiary of Rossiisky Kredit, had offered $355 million.

At the end of 1995, Tanako and KrAZ got control of the Achinsky aluminum-ore plant (AGK).

In December, Inkombank got control of Sameko, one of Europe's largest rolled-aluminum producers. Deripaska held negotiations with Sameko, but found the price too high.

1996

On Jan. 30, a criminal case was opened against the managers of Norilsk Nickel. The Norilsk prosecutors accused them of misappropriating money from loans.

On March 28, a presentation was organized in London for Krazpa Metals, KrAZ's sales partner. Glencore held 50 percent of Krazpa's shares. Krazpa took over KrAZ from AYUS, whose joint venture with KrAZ, Sibalko, fell apart after Lvov's murder the year before. The "big five" in Russia's aluminum-trading companies were TWG, Renova, RIAL, Trustconsult and Glencore.

On April 13, Oneximbank scored a victory over Norilsk Nickel's management. A government order dismissed Norilsk Nickel president Anatoly Filatov. Vsevolod Generalov, the deputy chairman of the Russian Metallurgical Commission, was appointed to replace him. Norilsk Nickel's board of directors was replaced soon after.

On April 23, Generalov took two weeks off. From there, he went into politics and the energy sector and did not return to Norilsk Nickel. In May, he was replaced by Alexander Khloponin, who stayed at the company until 2001.

In July 1996, MDM-Bank, created from virtually nothing by Andrei Melnichenko, increased its charter capital four-fold. Its shareholders included Gaisky GOK and the Uralelektromed company, which owned 35 percent of the bank's charter capital. Previously, the biggest shareholders in Gaisky GOK were Sayanal and SaAZ. This again brought together the interests of Oleg Deripaska, Mikhail Chernoi and Iskander Makhmudov.

On July 19, the directors of the Sayan and Bratsk aluminum plants, Zalog-Bank, the Kazakhstan-based Pavlodar Aluminum plant and TWG signed a protocol in Moscow on setting up a transnational financial-industrial group – Siberian Aluminum (Sibal).

On Aug. 13, Deputy Director of Norilskgazprom Alexander Sherstnyev was murdered. Just before Sherstnyev's death, Norilskgazprom had announced, on the initiative of Krasnoyarsk Krai governor Valery Zubov, that it would bankrupt Norilsk Nickel. The people who ordered Sherstnyev's murder were never found.

At the beginning of December, Swiss police arrested Mikhail Chernoi, suspecting him of his being in contact with Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, better known in the criminal world as Taiwanchik. The Swiss turned to the Russian Interior Ministry for information – they knew that the Russian investigators wanted to question Chernoi about the false payment-order affairs. But the Russian investigators unexpectedly said they had nothing to ask Chernoi, who was released by the Swiss three days later.

In December, Yevgeny Kiselyov launched what became known as TV aluminum wars in his "Itogi" program on NTV. He revealed how the TWG Group, with Soskovets' help, got control of 70 percent of all aluminum production in Russia. According to the unofficial version of events, the initiator of these revelations (that meant little to the average viewer) was Boris Berezovsky, who at that time was friends with Kolpakov, the head of KrAZ. The moment was well-chosen – Lev and Mikhail Chernoi had begun to quarrel and TWG was starting to fall apart.

1997

On Feb. 19, the Duma passed a law that in effect renationalized Norilsk Nickel. Oneximbank was asked to return the state shares it had in its possession.

In February, a big sphere of influence carve-up got under way at KrAZ. Gennady Druzhinin, chairman of the KrAZ board of directors, sent out statements that KrAZ general director Kolpakov and Oleg Kim, one of the shareholders, had stolen $20 million from the company. Kolpakov was certain that Druzhinin had entered an agreement with TWG to "surrender" KrAZ, and appeared on Kiselyov's "Itogi," where he accused TWG of having connections with the criminal world. On April 21, Druzhinin was dismissed.

On June 3, a murder attempt was made on Deputy Governor of Kemerovo Oblast Dmitry Chirakadze, an ally of Zhivilo and former general director of NkAZ.

On July 10, Druzhinin and Kolpakov began an open showdown at KrAZ. KrAZ's security men blocked off the Yakhont hotel, where Druzhinin had his office. On July 11, Druzhinin, who had already been dismissed, tried to get a shareholders' meeting to remove Kolpakov. The balance of force ended up in Druzhinin's favor and Kolpakov handed in his resignation. But Druzhinin did not succeed in "surrendering" KrAZ. Instead, it was Igor Vishnevsky, the general director of Krazpa – the joint venture between KrAZ and Glencore – who became general director of KrAZ.

On July 18, Novy Holding, a subsidiary of Alfa-Eko and Vekselberg's Renova, won an investment bid for 40 percent of shares in Tyumen oil company (TNK). Renova became one of Russia's most powerful industrial groups, and SUAL got valuable political support from Mikhail Fridman, an oligarch and co-owner of Alfa Group.

On July 28, Rossiisky Kredit unexpectedly announced that it had acquired 47 percent of shares in KrAZ. It turned out that Kolpakov sold the shares to the bank. Kolpakov was still a trustee of the shares given to him by four private shareholders, including Bykov (10 percent) and Druzhinin (10 percent). Dmitry Bosov, TWG's representative at the plant, said that Kolpakov had gone mad.

On July 29, the KrAZ board of directors dismissed interim general director Vishnevsky and appointed Druzhinin. Kolpakov forced his way into the KrAZ management offices and occupied the general director's office. Meanwhile, the prosecutors began questioning representatives of Rossiisky Kredit.

On July 29, Norilskgazprom went to court to demand the bankruptcy of Norilsk Nickel, which owed the gas company almost 3 trillion rubles. Norilskgazprom also got changes made to conditions for organizing the sale of shares in Norilsk Nickel.

On Aug. 1, the Prosecutor General's Office asked Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to stop bidding for shares in Norilsk Nickel. But Chernomyrdin ordered that the auction go ahead on Aug. 5. It was won by Swift, a subsidiary of Potanin's Interros Group.

On Aug. 7, Rossiisky Kredit agreed to return the shares in KrAZ sold by Kolpakov to Druzhinin and Bykov.

On Aug. 30, Druzhinin did not get the KrAZ general director's job he had expected at the shareholders' meeting. The post went instead to Gibert, the head of Tanako. TWG did not get any seats on the board of directors.

On Sept. 8, Interros called an urgent shareholders' meeting and proposed a 100 percent additional share issue for Norilsk Nickel in order to consolidate itself at the plant, once and for all. The share issue gave Interros a controlling stake at Norilsk Nickel.

On Oct. 2, Bykov was appointed deputy president of Rossiisky Kredit. At the same time, it turned out that one of the main shareholders in Rossiisky Kredit was Vasily Anisimov's Trustconsult group – how the group managed to buy 27 percent shares in KrAZ, and from whom, is still not clear. Anisimov was loyal to Bykov and Rossiisky Kredit, and between the three, they held a controlling stake in KrAZ. Gibert, who supported an alliance with TWG, was replaced as general director by Yury Ushenin, the deputy director of Krasnoyaskenergo.

In November, production at BrAZ came to a halt because TWG stopped supplying alumina ore. Deripaska told Kommersant that SaAZ did not need loans from TWG. NkAZ ended its sales contracts with TWG, which began to see its empire crumble.

Dec. 18 marked the end of TWG in Russia. Oleg Deripaska and Vladimir Lisin announced the creation of the Soyuz-Metal-Resource company. The new company brought together Siberian Aluminum, SaAZ (Deripaska), KrAZ (Bykov, Druzhinin and Rossiisky Kredit), Magnitigorsk Steelworks (Viktor Rashnikov), Novolipetsk Steelworks (Vladimir Lisin), Rostar, Aluminprodukt and Promresursy (Deripaska), Gaisky GOK, Kirovograd copper smelting plant and Uralelektromed (Iskander Makhmudov).

1998

At the end of February, Inkombank transferred a controlling stake in Sameko to Siberian Aluminum. Deripaska was appointed as the head of Sameko.

In March, within the framwork of the Gore-Chernomyr-din Commission, Boeing signed a five-year contract with the Verkhny-Saldinsk metals company.

In April, TWG was chased out of NovEZ and was replaced by SUAL. The battle for the electrode plant is still raging today.

On June 22, the first quarrel began between the members of Soyuz-Metal-Resource. Representatives of BrAZ, KrAZ, NkAZ and Volgograd Aluminum plant met in London to discuss setting up a consortium for the privatization of Nikolayevsky alumina-ore plant (NGZ). Siberian Aluminum, which had signed a strategic partnership agreement with NGZ, said that the consortium might "never be created." That is exactly what happened.

On June 26, Uralelectromed announced that by the end of the year, it would unite all the region's copper companies into a holding. The Urals Mining and Metal company was set up then, though it got its name only a year later.

In July, a court decision handed control of the Achinsk alumina-ore plant to Nail Nasyrov, a KrAZ ally. Alfa Group fought a battle for control of Achinsk until 2000.

On Sept. 11, TWG made another attempt to get hold of KrAZ. The board of directors removed Dmitry Ushenin and appointed former BrAZ manager Alexei Barantsev in his place. According to unofficial information, Rossiisky Kredit transferred its 27 percent of shares in KrAZ to TWG.

In September, Interros had to decide how to pay Oneximbank's creditors' committee following the financial crisis. It sacrificed the Sidanko oil company and kept Norilsk Nickel, which is still in Interros' hands today.

1999

On March 24, the Krasnoyarsk Krai Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal case against the directors of Krasnoyarskenergo and KrAZ. An Interior Ministry investigating commission headed by deputy minister Vladimir Kolesnikov did not hide that it was digging for evidence against Bykov, who had become chairman of the board of directors of KrAZ. Bykov left the country after criminal charges were brought against him in April.

In June, Deripaska found himself a new partner – Anatoly Chubais, the head of UES. This friendship resulted in the creation of a new energy and metals group – Sayany – bringing together the Sayano-Shushensky power station and SaAZ.

In autumn, Moscow streets were invaded by billboards, some saying, "Stop tolling! Enough of robbing Russia!" while the others said, "To ban tolling is to bankrupt Russia." This was Deripaska's attempt to abolish internal tolling (he did not need it because he had a reliable alumina-ore supplier in NGZ) in order to make SaAZ more competitive with BrAZ and KrAZ. As a result, the average Russian learned what tolling was all about.

In October, Bykov was arrested in Hungary on suspicion of being involved in murders connected with KrAZ. He was deported and is still in a pre-trial detention center. But he still owns all of his shares in KrAZ.

On Nov. 16, Anatoly Shevtsov, the director of the Economy Ministry's metallurgy department, made public a plan for gradual abolition of tolling in Russia.

The Urals Mining and Metals company was registered at the end of 1999.

2000

In January, a court, acting on a suit from Kuzbassenergo, replaced the external manager at NkAZ. The new manager was Sergei Chernyshev, a representative of Sibal. It was said that UES, the parent company of Kuzbassenergo, helped Sibal grab NkAZ from Mikom, which had quarreled with Kemerovo Gov. Aman Tuleyev.

In early February, Deripaska, president of Sibal, and Zhivilo, the head of MIKOM, met in one of Sibal's Moscow offices to talk about a possible sale of shares in NkAZ to Sibal. Zhivilo refused, giving rise to suspicions that he had another buyer in mind for the plant. Later, it became known that he was holding negotiations with LogoVAZ.

Also in early February, TWG and the managers of KrAZ and BrAZ held tough negotiations with unknown buyers. Only a minimum of information was available, namely that large stakes in BrAZ and KrAZ had been sold, but no one knew to whom.

On Feb. 11, the news came out: BrAZ and KrAZ were bought by Sibneft's shareholders, who also planned to buy NkAZ. Duma deputy Roman Abramovich became the country's biggest aluminum magnate. The sale was made by TWG in the names of Lev Chernoi and Gennady Druzhinin, and by Transconsult's Yury Shlyafshtein. No one knew what Sibneft planned to do with the shares. Siberian Aluminum was so taken aback it said there had not been any deal at all.

On Feb. 16, the Ukrainian State Property Foundation announced official conditions for the sale of state shares in NGZ. The conditions were very favorable for Sibal.

It is Kommersant's guess that, on Feb. 17-20, a meeting took place between Oleg Deripaska and Lev Chernoi on one side and Roman Abramovich and Iskander Makhmudov on the other. The only issue they could have discussed was whether the amorphous association of BrAZ and KrAZ and Sibal would be partners or rivals. Kommersant does not know whether this meeting actually happened, but it does know the results.

It was officially announced in March that NkAZ, SaAZ, BrAZ and KrAZ would unite to form the world's third-largest, and Russia's largest, aluminum holding – Russian Aluminum (Rusal), with Oleg Deripaska at its head. This picked up from where TWG had left off in 1995 when it united the country's largest aluminum plants into an "informal" holding. But the details of this mega-deal were never made public.

On March 22, Ukrainian Aluminum, which had close ties to Sibal, bought 30 percent of shares in NGZ. NGZ became part of Rusal at the end of the summer.

On April 11, in an interview with Kommersant, Vekselberg announced SUAL's plans to merge with Vasily Anisimov's Trustconsult. The merger created Russia's second-biggest and the world's eighth-biggest aluminum holding.

On April 14, Vasily Anisimov's daughter and her husband were murdered in St. Petersburg.

In May, Iskander Makhmudov introduced restrictions on raw-materials supplies to Kyshtym Medelektrolitny plant (KMEZ). This way, the Urals Mining and Metals company prevented a second copper holding from being set up at the plant. This led to a battle between Urals Mining and Metals and KMEZ for Karabashmed.

On June 1, Chubais broke off relations with Deripaska. The Sayano-Shushensk power station filed suit against SaAZ to get back debts of 200 million rubles. This put an effective end to the idea of creating Sayany, which would have united SaAZ and the power station. Two weeks later, Chubais admitted as much, calling the project "not a wise move."

On June 16, Norilsk Nickel began creating its own sales network abroad, and began buying sales companies, including British company Norimet and Almaz U.S.A. in the United States. Nobody guessed that Interros was in the process of changing Norilsk Nickel's legal status. It stopped being an RAO company – a status that carried the theoretical risk of renationalization – and became Mining and Metals Company (GMK) Norilsk Nickel in 2001.

On June 28, power changed hands at KrAZ. Viktor Belyayev, the new chairman of the board of directors, said that Russian Aluminum already controlled KrAZ, KraMZ and AGK, and indirectly controlled a major stake in the Krasnoyarsk power station.

On July 10, Potanin received a letter from First Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Biryukov, who asked Potanin to pay the state $140 million as compensation for having allegedly paid too little for the controlling stake in Norilsk Nickel.

On July 19, Norilsk Nickel unveiled a restructuring plan. Everything was already decided. The Federal Securities Commission tried to oppose the plan in November, but without success.

At the beginning of September, the Prosecutor General's Office issued an arrest warrant for Zhivilo in connection with an attempt to poison Tuleyev. Zhivilo fled abroad.

In November, Anisimov left the SUAL project and emigrated to the United States. Renova remained SUAL's owner.

At the beginning of November, Norilsk Nickel's Khloponin announced his intention to run for governor of the Taimyr Autonomous District. He won the election and was replaced as general director by Dzhonson Khagadzheyev and then by Mikhail Prokhorov.

At the end of December, Mikhail Zhivilo filed suit in a New York district court to get $2.7 billion from the founders of Rusal, who, he said, "ruined him with criminal methods." Zhivilo, who himself had been at the origins of the aluminum business in Russia, said the history of the Russian metals sector was a history of crimes. Zhivilo was later arrested in France and the Russian Prosecutor General's Office demanded his extradition but, in 2001, a local French court refused on the grounds of political persecution.