It really is the East. Wanted by Stalin in 1929, the gigantic steelworks of Magnitogorsk, Russia, produce copious profits, almost in the service of one man, Viktor Rachnikov, one of the Russian steel barons. He straightened up the factory, which had emerged bloodless from the Soviet collapse, to transform it into an export champion.
But, if the metal bars come out physically from a rolling mill at the foot of the Urals, they are on the other hand negotiated on the world market on the fourth floor of a glass building at the edge of a Swiss lake. Lugano is already the South. A piece of the Mediterranean planted at the edge of the Alps, it has been able to attract a whole small community of expatriates over the past decade, to the point of becoming the “Capital of Russian Metal”.
At the MMK Trading intercom, no one answers. But, on the phone, a voice with a Russian accent hangs up abruptly after learning of our interest in the firm’s local activities. Yet it is indeed here that Viktor Rachnikov had set up his activities (and his family) before the war. The man weighed 10 billion euros, had three residences in Switzerland, and a 300 million yacht, with no less than six swimming pools on board. In the village of Porza, on the luxurious heights of Lugano, a civil servant claims that “the Rachnikov family has officially left the commune”. Similarly, the oligarchs Andrei Melnichenko and Alexei Mordachov, also at the head of metallurgical conglomerates, have not been seen in the Ticino city since the start of the war.
A man knows a lot about them. But if he agreed to answer the World, it is above all to see the damage that the sanctions policy inflicts on the local economic fabric. A renowned tax expert, Alberto Genovesi is the director of Fidinam, an internationally active consulting firm. He is at the origin of the installation of several great fortunes of Russian industry in the canton of Ticino; he sits on the board of directors of Rachnikov’s Swiss companies and that of the Russian school in Lugano. “Sanctions against the Russians are a bad idea, he said. They were supposed to stop the war, we can see that it has no effect. And it is above all a big blow for Lugano. We must not forget that these companies hire staff, pay salaries and taxes, which drives the local economy. The shortfall easily reaches tens of millions. »
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