Companies linked to Austrian giant Strabag received millions of euros from the Albanian state budget during a period when Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska was a major shareholder in the group and under U.S. sanctions. Experts say the case highlights the weaknesses of Albanian institutions in scrutinizing the ultimate ownership of companies that receive public money.
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On July 8, 2026, the General Court of the European Union rejected another attempt by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to have the sanctions imposed on him following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine lifted.
The court described Deripaska as an “influential businessman” operating in an economic sector that is important to the Russian government’s revenues and rejected his claims that he had severed ties with his former business interests.
The ruling marked another defeat for the founder of aluminum company Rusal and one of the best-known Russian oligarchs in the West.
But years before European sanctions froze his assets and shareholder rights, Deripaska’s economic interests had also reached Albania—not through a Russian company or a business bearing his name, but through one of Europe’s largest construction corporations.
Through Rasperia Trading Limited, Deripaska controlled a stake of around 28 percent in Austrian company Strabag SE.
Strabag already had a significant presence in Albania’s construction market, both directly and through its subsidiary Trema Engineering 2, winning contracts for roads, the reconstruction of buildings following the 2019 earthquake, and other infrastructure projects.
Treasury payment data analyzed by BIRN show that from January 2019 to April 2022 alone, companies linked to Strabag received around €23 million from the state budget.
During this period, Deripaska was on the U.S. sanctions list, but not yet on the European Union’s list.
The Russian oligarch’s case raises questions about the ability of Albanian institutions to identify the economic interests behind companies receiving public money, as well as about the gap that existed at the time between the U.S. and European sanctions regimes.
Experts told BIRN that checking a company only at the level of its direct owner is not enough to determine who may ultimately benefit economically at the end of a complex corporate chain.
“Procurement authorities often screen the bidder’s name and perhaps its immediate owner,” said Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Security at the British institute RUSI.
“They are far less likely to map the entire ownership chain, voting rights and ultimate economic beneficiaries,” he added.
According to Keatinge, a well-known European company can serve in such cases as a “shield of legitimacy.”
Strabag told BIRN that it has no business relationship with Deripaska and insisted that the Russian oligarch does not directly or indirectly own or control the company or the group’s businesses.
“Since the start of the war, we have maintained a clear position and implemented decisive measures to distance ourselves from the sanctioned shareholder,” said Birgit Kümmel, head of International Communications at Strabag SE.
The company also emphasized that Strabag is not subject to sanctions that would prevent it from conducting business.
The shield of legitimacy
Oleg Deripaska has for decades been one of the most powerful figures in Russian business, with a fortune built during the so-called “aluminum wars” and later consolidated through his ties to the Russian state and President Vladimir Putin.
In 2024, Deripaska publicly called the war in Ukraine “madness,” mainly criticizing its costs and economic damage. Nevertheless, Western governments continue to consider him closely linked to the Kremlin, and he has been under sanctions for years.
In Albania, his economic interests never appeared directly.
The connection ran through corporate structures abroad. Through Rasperia Trading Limited, registered in Cyprus, Deripaska owned around 28% of the shares in Austrian corporation Strabag SE—a stake that was reduced after sanctions were imposed.
Through this ownership chain, the connection also extended to Strabag’s operations in Albania, including Trema Engineering 2 and Strabag’s Tirana branch, which received tens of millions of euros from the state budget for road and infrastructure projects.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the position of Deripaska and interests linked to him in Europe weakened significantly. Sanctions froze his assets, including Rasperia’s shares in Strabag, depriving the company of access to the rights arising from its shareholder status.
Deripaska has challenged the measures in various courts, from Australia to the European Union, but his legal efforts have not resulted in the sanctions being lifted.
Strabag also confirmed to BIRN that Rasperia’s shares and all rights attached to them were frozen in 2022 in accordance with the European Union’s sanctions regime.
The corporation also said that in December 2024, the company linked to Deripaska changed shareholders.
“Strabag SE received a major shareholder notification concerning MKAO* Rasperia Trading Ltd., stating that MKAO Valtoura Holdings Limited controls Rasperia. This led to the assumption that Rasperia is no longer controlled by Oleg Deripaska,” the response said.
However, the changes to the ownership structure have been met with skepticism by authorities in the European Union and the United States, while Rasperia Trading Ltd.’s shares in Strabag SE remain frozen and under sanctions.
The case highlights the difficulty institutions face in identifying the economic interests of sanctioned individuals when they are concealed behind several layers of corporate ownership and companies registered in different jurisdictions.
According to Zef Preçi, executive director of the Albanian Center for Economic Research, in today’s economy, “formal ownership, meaning what is recorded in official documents, is often only a façade.”
He emphasizes that actual control, economic benefit and influence over decision-making “may pass through chains of companies, intermediary shareholders, secret agreements and offshore jurisdictions.”
According to Preçi, this is not an isolated problem for Albania. He argues that some of the concessions awarded over the past decade have been built on similar ownership structures, which he says pose a risk to the integrity of the state.
“If public funds are used by companies that, directly or indirectly, generate benefits for sanctioned individuals, as in the Deripaska case, then the problem is no longer technical; it is a matter of state integrity, economic security and trust in public procurement,” he said.
The four-year gap
The United States placed Oleg Deripaska under sanctions in 2018, adding him to the list of individuals sanctioned over a range of allegations connected to the activities of the Russian government.
The European Union took a different path.
Brussels placed the Russian oligarch under sanctions four years later, in April 2022, following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
The four-year gap between U.S. and European sanctions also had consequences in Albania.
Although Deripaska had been under U.S. sanctions since 2018, Albanian companies connected to Strabag through the ownership chain continued to receive public contracts and payments from the state budget.
Data from the Albanian Institute of Science’s Spending Data platform, which compiles State Treasury expenditures, show that from January 2019 until April 2022, when the European Union imposed sanctions, companies in which Deripaska was listed as an indirect shareholder received around €23 million, based on the exchange rate at the time.
The payments were mainly related to infrastructure projects financed by the Albanian Development Fund, as well as reconstruction tenders following the November 2019 earthquake.
Agon Maliqi, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., sees this as the consequence of a legal and political gap that was not unique to Albania.
“At the time, both in Europe and Albania, despite the U.S. sanctions, there was no legal basis for prohibiting an Austrian company from operating,” Maliqi said.
He added that “in this case, as in many others, Albania found itself caught in a kind of sandwich between U.S. and European pressures—in this case, Austrian pressure.”
Tom Keatinge, a sanctions expert at the Royal United Services Institute, RUSI, warns that such gaps create opportunities for economic interests to be restructured before sanctions are aligned.
According to him, these gaps are critical “because they create a window in which assets can be moved, ownership can be restructured, and contracts or financing arrangements can be secured.”
However, Keatinge noted that Albania could not be blamed for the situation, nor could it act solely on the basis of U.S. sanctions.
The problem, he said, arises when different sanctions regimes create what he calls a “weakest-link problem,” in which “a transaction rejected in one country can migrate to another where oversight is less developed.”
Identifying ultimate beneficiaries as an illusion
Beyond Europe’s delay in imposing sanctions, experts also identify weaknesses in Albania’s mechanisms for scrutinizing company ownership.
Albania has a register of beneficial owners, but Zef Preçi describes it as an “archive of self-declarations” rather than a genuine oversight instrument.
According to him, when a discrepancy or problem with ownership is identified, it should not remain “merely an administrative note.” He argues that institutions should be able to block the tender, suspend the registry extract and “refer the matter for financial and criminal investigation.”
“Transparency cannot be optional; a contract should not be signed without the clear identification of the true beneficiary,” Preçi said.
He also raises concerns about changes in company ownership after public contracts have been signed.
“Ownership changes, shares are sold, control shifts, and sanctioned individuals may appear later in the chain of beneficiaries,” he emphasized.
According to Preçi, laws and registers also have limited effect if the administration lacks the capacity or willingness to scrutinize complex ownership structures.
He notes that in such cases there is often “a lack of ability to look beyond the first document,” while also denouncing political interference, which he says “exerts implicit pressure on institutions.”
“An unofficial reception at government offices, a visit to places where the prime minister neither negotiates nor signs anything in the public interest, or even just a photo with him is enough for the public administration to fall into line and blindly serve ‘businessmen’ of this kind,” Preçi said, claiming that institutional obstacles “disappear” in such cases.
Hybrid warfare through intermediaries
The benefits received by companies linked to Oleg Deripaska in Albania were not limited to infrastructure contracts.
In 2017, Trema Engineering 2 acquired a 33% stake in the concession company Shushica Hydropower Sh.p.k., a concession project that was later canceled amid challenges from environmental activists and the government’s decision to place the Vjosa and its tributaries under protection.
For Agon Maliqi, direct investment in the formal sector of the economy is only a “peripheral” element of how Russia may exert influence.
“Russia prefers relationships of a corrupt nature that would make these elites vulnerable to blackmail and influence, compelling them to serve Russian interests,” Maliqi said.
However, according to him, Albanian elites have had other significant sources of financing that have fueled corruption, without necessarily needing Russian capital.
Ironically, he said it is likely that “links to organized crime and international trafficking have weakened the temptation of Russian capital.”
But organized crime may simultaneously be a vulnerability that can be exploited for foreign influence.
“My personal suspicion is that, from a security perspective, Russia may have targeted Albania’s weakest link, one that wields considerable informal power: organized crime and its political connections,” Maliqi said.
One case linking Albania to Deripaska’s circle is that of former senior FBI official Charles McGonigal.
McGonigal pleaded guilty in the United States in a case related to his work for Deripaska after leaving the FBI. At the same time, his activities in Albania and contacts with individuals linked to the Albanian government became part of another criminal case in the U.S.
The McGonigal case illustrates the role of those whom Keatinge calls “enablers”—people who help build and operate sophisticated financial and corporate structures.
“Enablers… are often the operating system of sanctions evasion,” the RUSI expert said.
“Lawyers, accountants, corporate service providers and consultants… provide both technical expertise and a veneer of legitimacy,” he added.
The case of interests linked to Deripaska in Albania raises questions about the ability of bureaucratic filters and formal registers to protect public funds from the interests of sanctioned individuals.
When these interests pass through companies that are legally registered and active in the European Union, experts argue that institutions cannot rely solely on formal documentation but must verify ownership and economic beneficiaries.
Beyond procedures, Maliqi sees the issue as linked to the resilience of Albanian institutions against corruption, one of the system’s main weaknesses.
“Corruption is, at its core, also a national security vulnerability,” he concluded.
*MKAO is the transliteration of the Russian abbreviation for “International Joint-Stock Company,” roughly equivalent to “Sh.A.” in Albanian.
/BIRN
