Prominent Russian oligarch Oleg Tinkov, the former owner of Russia’s only purely online bank, is involved with the launch of an international financial startup in Mexico, banking sources have told bne IntelliNews.

Video seen by bne IntelliNews shows Tinkov in a Mexican alcohol store using the fintech’s card to buy an expensive bottle of tequila in the new bank’s first ever transaction.

The launch of the new business with “Russian roots” is taking place right next door to the United States. Tinkov left Russia after strongly criticising Russia’s war in Ukraine, incurring the ire of the Kremlin. The management of the bank quickly distanced itself from its “shareholder” and Tinkov was forced into selling his circa 30% stake in the bank to oligarch Vladimir Potanin, who has extensive investments in the banking sector, reportedly for “pennies on the dollar.” Tinkov fled into self-imposed exile and has given up his Russian citizenship.

Tinkov also fell foul of the US authorities after he was charged with failing to pay US taxes, as he also holds a US passport, which he gave up in 2013. The US indited him in 2019-2020 and accused him of knowingly declaring personal assets materially below the actual value, as those that relinquish their US passports have to pay an "exit tax." Tinkov gave up his US citizenship in 2013, three  three days after TCS held an IPO on the London Stock Exchange and raised $1.1bn. Tinkov later pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return, and settled the claim with the US government, paying the correct tax plus a huge penalty -- $449mn settlement,  the largest single tax settlement in US history.

The EU recently included Tinkoff Bank on the tenth package of sanctions, the eight largest bank in Russia, and Tinkov was personally included in the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List in March last year by the UK in one of the first rounds of sanctions, despite his public opposition to the war.

As part of Tinkov’s exit from the bank that bears his name, he also got into an ugly public fight with Oliver Hughes, a British national and former well respected CEO of Tinkoff Bank, who publicly rebuffed “libellous” comments made by Tinkov, accusing him of continuing to manage the bank in secret despite the sanctions. Hughes left Russia and the bank in April and now lives in Dubai.

Now Tinkov is financing the creation of a new fintech project in Mexico, several sources told bne IntelliNews. Other sources connected to the project told bne IntelliNews that TInkov is only an advisor to the project, but not a shareholder. 

The businessman has been spending a lot of time in Mexico, where he has a luxury guest house from the La Datcha Tinkoff Collection chain in Cabo San Lucas. Tinkov was spotted there at several meetings discussing the launch of a new fintech project that is being developed by his former colleagues at Tinkoff Bank, who recently quit both the company and Russia.

Russian media previously reported that Tinkoff’s former vice presidents – the Italian Neri Tollardo, the American Alexander Bro and the Russian Danil Anisimov – were launching a new project in Mexico, but gave no further details.

The fintech company is called Different Technologies and aims to become the key financial service for Mexican consumers, according to the company website. Tollardo will serve as the new company’s CEO, with Bro as its chief business development officer and Anisimov as chief banking officer, according to bne IntelliNews sources with knowledge of the deal. The project team also includes Tinkoff alumnus David Isakhanyan (who will serve as chief product officer), as well as Alonso Leon de la Barra, who previously worked at Banco Azteca, and Ricardo Torres Ortiz. The latter two will join as chief financial officer and chief operating officer respectively, according to bne IntelliNews sources.

Different Technologies has already carried out its first financial transaction, according to a video reviewed by bne IntelliNews. The video shows Tinkov in an off-licence, buying a bottle of tequila using an unmarked and unbranded credit card that was apparently released by Different Technologies. In the video, the Russian businessman calls it the first transaction of “our” new bank and notes that it took place earlier than that of Tinkoff Bank, which had also announced plans to pursue an international expansion. Tinkov goes on to thank what he calls “our heroes,” naming Bro among them.

To finance the Mexican project, Tinkov used the money he made from selling his stake in Russia’s Tinkoff Bank to Potanin, who is now also under US, Canadian and UK sanctions, according to bne IntelliNews sources. In April 2022, three months after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Tinkov sold his 35% stake in TCS Group Holding, which owns the popular digital bank, to Potanin’s Interros holding company. Potanin controls Norilsk Nickel, one of the world’s biggest metallurgical companies in Russia’s Far North, and is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier, Tinkov sold other business to companies associated with the oligarch Roman Abramovich.

The terms of the deal with Potanin have not been formally disclosed, but Tinkov said in a New York Times interview that he had sold his stake in Tinkoff Bank “for kopecks.” In response, Potanin told Russian Forbes that the volume of the deal was in the “hundreds of millions of dollars” and could in no way be considered “chump change.”

Whatever the transaction amounted to, it is impossible to estimate the true capitalisation of TCS because the company’s shares have been frozen on the London Stock Exchange. However, Tinkov is the only TCS shareholder who received at least something for his share. The holding’s international investors, including Katie Wood, Tiger Capital and other fintech aficionados, have been forced to simply freeze their stakes for the past year. Prior to the war TCS was an investors’ darling and its stock soared in the rapid recovery in the Russian stock market between 2018 and 2021.

Tinkov is a controversial figure in Russia. He is known for his oftentimes harsh statements and frequent scandals – from suing bloggers who criticised him to having a nuanced view of the annexation of Crimea, and publicly insulting an employee of his bank, whom he called a “dummy” and a “free drive-thru.”

Tinkov’s support for the annexation of Crimea didn’t stop him from becoming one of the few Russian oligarchs to speak out against the war in Ukraine. He even renounced his Russian citizenship, a move which he announced on social media in the fall. Tinkov’s critics have noted that in 2017, several years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the businessman suggested in his Instagram that Putin should be made an emperor, saying he “wouldn’t vote in the elections for a President Putin, but would gladly vote for a Tsar Putin.” In a 2022 interview, after already coming under UK sanctions, Tinkov said the Emperor Putin comment had been “sarcasm” and a “mistake.” In March 2022, he asked the British Foreign Office to remove him from the sanctions list.

TCS IPO'd in London with a share price of $17.50.  A year later the shares fell to a low of $1 following the annexation of Crimea by Russia, but regained their value during the market's recovery four years later to pass $20 in the months before war tensions rocketed in November 2021. In 2020, the US initiated a case against Tinkov, accusing him of submitting false tax returns to relinquish his US citizenship.