“A lot has been built for the Olympics that is commercially useless before the games and after,” Potanin said last month during a tour of his project with Putin and Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee. “The money has been spent and interest is accumulating.”
The $200 million port Deripaska’s Basic Element constructed to dispatch Olympic building materials is handling as little as one-fifth of the planned volumes because freight traffic has been redirected to railways and roads, making the venture unprofitable, according to the company.
Basic Element
“If investors don’t get any return or government support and in effect lose a large part of the funds they’ve invested in the Olympics, it won’t have a positive impact on our investment climate,” Basic Element Deputy General Director Andrey Elinson said during a March 12 interview in Moscow.
Olympstroy, the state company overseeing Sochi’s transformation, declined to detail the costs of its individual projects. Olympstroy has had four general directors in six years.
The bulk of Rotenberg’s Olympic contracts are held by OAO Mostotrest, a Moscow-based company set up under Josef Stalin in 1930 to build bridges across the Soviet Union, according to its website. Rotenberg and partners, including his son Igor, gained control of Mostotrest in 2010, just before the company raised $388 million in an initial public offering.
Rotenberg’s aide said he was unable to comment on his work on the Olympics. Officials at Mostotrest didn’t respond to requests for comment by e-mail and phone, nor did Stroygazmontazh, another Rotenberg company with state contracts.
Rotenberg told the Financial Times in an interview published in November that while he values Putin’s friendship, he’d never abuse it for personal gain.
“I have great respect for this person and I consider that this is a person sent to our country from God,” the newspaper cited Rotenberg as saying about Putin.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said Rotenberg’s success is unrelated to his ties with Putin.