The U.K. government seized the assets of Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire who owns the highly successful football club, because of Russia's unprovoked sanctions. His ties to technology are not being touched. Truphone has disclosed raising over $200 million from two funds that each countAbramovich as their main financial contributor and effectively counts those two funds as its majority owners.
Rachel Chapman, general counsel for Truphone, said in a statement that the UK Government imposed sanctions on Roman Abramovich, who has an indirect link to Truphone. The Truphone business can continue. Truphone is not subject to sanctions. We are taking legal advice and keeping an eye on the situation.
The difficulties of tracing funding in the world of tech are highlighted by the fact that the startup's two largest shareholders are not close to one another.
Truphone is a communications technology company that develops eSIM and other technology to enable global voice and data connections that circumvent traditional networks, and has been funded by investment vehicles that are funded by him for several years.
His firm led a 75 million round, accounting for 70 million of that sum. It received another 54 million dollars through two firms, and 18 million dollars up front and the rest through later. In 2020, it received another 30 million from Vollin and Minden.
Vollin owns 72.45% of Truphone, and the database does not list any other active investments for either firm. The company was worth $516 million in 2020.
I recall getting panicked calls from the PRs asking me not to name him in the articles, and then trying to downplay his involvement, because Truphone wanted to keep a lower profile of the details around the investment firms. Not suspicious at all.
Last week, he announced that he would make a donation to Ukrainian relief after he decided to put the club up for sale. The process was put on hold so that the government wouldn't profit from it in the meantime. Only season ticket holders who have already paid for their tickets can attend, no player transfers or sales will be allowed, and it will continue to operate under a restricted license.
It will be worth watching to see what happens with the technology interests of Abramovich if the government decides to pursue indirect investments.
There are investment holdings outside of the UK. Truphone is the only active investment that each of the two companies list on PitchBook as their only active investment. In total, Impulse has made 61 investments, of which 61 have been made in Moscow. StoreDot, OpenWeb, and BrainQ Technologies are some of the investments that Norma has made.
Several years ago, he was named as one of several Russian investors in Telegram. I contacted Durov at Telegram to ask if he was an investor, but he said he was not.
He told me in a Telegram message that none of them are our investors.
I have been told by a person that 45% of all venture money in Europe can be traced to Russian sources.
In recent days, several investors, such as Index Ventures and EQT, have released statements about their relationship with Russia and Russian money. The statements are careful to point out that money is not directly from Russia or from Russian origin. That raises the question of what role it might play. They are encouraging portfolio companies with Russian operations to wind those down as they pull away from investing in Russian startups.
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