- BBC chair Richard Sharp reportedly invested in a blockchain firm linked to a now-sanctioned Russian oligarch
- Sharp just isn’t thought-about to have breached the UK’s present sanctions nor to have dedicated any wrongdoing
Richard Sharp, chair of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), reportedly made investments three years in the past right into a crypto agency linked to a now-sanctioned Russian oligarch.
In line with a report by The Guardian on Monday, Sharp funded Swiss crypto firm Atomyze all through 2019. Atomyze was based by billionaire Vladimir Potanin, often known as “Nickel King.”
The UK authorities sanctioned Potanin — one in every of Russia’s richest males — in June for persevering with to “amass wealth as he helps Putin’s regime” following the nation’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Sharp’s unreported investments into Atomyze got here through Cayman Islands firm ABCP GP Ltd, previous to his appointment on the BBC, the place he was made firm director for a two-month interval.
The BBC’s workplace was contacted for remark however didn’t return a response by press time.
Atomyze is a blockchain platform for digitizing and tokenizing commodities together with palladium, gold, silver and nickel with ties to Russia’s mining and smelting large Nornickel.
The corporate is greatest recognized for changing into Russia’s first crypto firm added to the nation’s central financial institution checklist of permitted digital asset operators, shortly earlier than its invasion of Ukraine.
Sharp, a former banker with eight years of expertise at JPMorgan and 23 years at Goldman Sachs, joined the BBC as its non-executive chairman in February 2021.
Whereas the chairman has since vacated his function on the Swiss agency, an worker of Sharp’s private funding workplace sits on the board of administrators, per the report.
Sharp just isn’t thought-about to have breached the UK’s present sanctions nor to have dedicated any wrongdoing. Russia has sanctioned the chair, together with the BBC’s director basic Tim Davie and different BBC employees, who’ve been refused entry into the nation ever since Russia’s invasion started.
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