IPG CEO Gapontsev, U.S. Treasury to finalize Russian oligarch settlement Aug. 14
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Valentin Gapontsev
IPG Photonics CEO Valentin Gapontsev and the U.S. Department of the Treasury will in two weeks unveil details of their settlement expected to resolve the Worcester billionaire's lawsuit challenging his designation as a Russian oligarch.
In a joint filing Wednesday, the first since both sides said they had reached an agreement, Gapontsev, the company and the department said both sides have worked actively with one another to draft the agreement. Those efforts have included numerous conferences and exchanges of drafts, the parties said.
The settlement is expected to resolve Gapontsev’s lawsuit, filed in December, challenging the Treasury’s so-called Kremlin List list created at the behest of Congress in early 2018 in response to malign activities of the Russian government.
In addition to Russian operatives and government officials named in the report, the list included 96 Russian oligarchs with a net worth of $1 billion or more.
The dual U.S.-Russia citizen Gapontsev alleged -- and the Treasury all but confirmed -- the oligarch list was simply drawn from Forbes’ list of Russian billionaires and wasn’t an analysis of connection to the Kremlin or Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Gapontsev, born and educated in Russian, has claimed his wealth was a product of his groundbreaking discoveries in the laser technology field and has nothing to do with the Russian government.
He founded IPG Photonics in Russia in 1990 and moved the company to Oxford in 1999. Since 2006, the company has been listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
No details of the settlement have been made public as both sides say in court filings they are down to the smallest of details and the agreement is set to be finalized by Aug. 14.
The Treasury did not argue or provide proof of Gapontsev’s connection to the Kremlin, but Russia is the company's second-largest country in terms of employee base after the U.S. After a Russian-government backed business entity invested $45 million in IPG’s Russian subsidiary in 2010, the company has expanded its footprint from 100,000 square feet to more than 600,000 square feet in and around Moscow.
IPG repurchased those shares two years later and regained full ownership of the subsidiary.
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