Sanctioned Russian oligarch who stepped down from his $22 billion investment firm says the company is scared to meet up with him personally

• A sanctioned Russian oligarch told the FT his investment firm was afraid to meet with him.
• Petr Aven stepped down from LetterOne in early March after he was sanctioned by the UK and the EU.

A Russian oligarch sanctioned by the UK and the European Union said the investment firm he cofounded was scared to meet with him after he stepped down.

"They are afraid even to meet me personally. We are afraid of authorities very much," Petr Aven said in an interview with the Financial Times published Friday.

Aven, 67, resigned in early March from the $22 billion London investment firm LetterOne — which he cofounded with Mikhail Fridman, another sanctioned Russian oligarch — after Russia invaded Ukraine.

LetterOne's chair, Mervyn Davies, who has since taken over the company, previously told the Financial Times that colleagues weren't allowed to talk to Aven and Fridman. Their stakes in the company were frozen. The firm also locked them both out of its offices and blocked them from accessing any documents, Davies told the Financial Times.

"Legally, we cannot touch the business," Aven told the publication.

LetterOne didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

He also told the Financial Times that lawyers and other advisors were "afraid" and doing "much more" than legally required because of the fear of sanctions.

"British lawyers do not want to work with Russians," he said in the interview.

Aven, who has an estimated net worth of $5.6 billion, per Bloomberg, was sanctioned by the European Union on February 28 and by the UK on March 15. The EU described him as "one of Vladimir Putin's closest oligarchs."

The billionaire reportedly resigned from the board of the Russian banking company Alfa-Bank days after the EU sanctioned him.

"That's very strange, just to be sanctioned because you meet the president. We try to be absolutely out of politics. With Putin, I was presenting Alfa Group, not myself at all," Aven told the FT.

In the interview, Aven said he was struggling to pay bills and wasn't sure whether he'd be able to have a cleaner or driver.