You're reading: Honorable Mention: Robert Shetler-Jones

Robert Shetler-Jones, 41 #2 Most Influential

As the public face for many years of companies controlled by a Ukrainian billionaire with close ties to Russia’s gas giant Gazprom, the United Kingdom’s Robert Shetler-Jones hasn’t done badly for himself.

And with such big partners, large sums of cash have trickled into his pockets.

Kyiv Post file photo

Shetler-Jones currently oversees the assets of Dmytro Firtash, a controversial Ukrainian gas trading billionaire, as chief executive of his holding company, GroupDF.

He is also listed as a member of the supervisory board of Centragas AG, which owns 50 percent of RosUkrEnergo, the gas intermediary that for many years was at the center of the multi-billion-dollar energy trade among Ukraine, Russia and Central Asian producers.

It’s a far cry from the early days.

Shetler-Jones came to Ukraine as a British university student in the late 1980s to study Russian at Kyiv Institute of Foreign Languages.

After graduating from Surrey University, he began his business career in Kyiv in 1991 as the founder of BPI, a consultancy, offering advisory services for those doing business in the United Kingdom and Ukraine.

In the early days, Shetler-Jones met Ivan Fursin, a Ukrainian businessman and Serhiy Lyovochkin, the presidential chief of staff, who are both close to Firtash.

Fursin today owns a 5 percent stake in RosUkrEnergo and Firtash owns 45 percent, while Russia’s Gazprom owns 50 percent.

A decade earlier, between 1993 and 1994, Shetler-Jones was working at the Kyiv office of Jones East 8, a real estate agency practice.

He rose fast. From 1998 until 2003, Mr. Shetler-Jones worked for Commonwealth Property Investors, an affiliate of AEW International, as project coordinator for a $50 million private equity fund that invested in property developments in the former Soviet Union.

Later, he became managing director of RSJ Erste GmbH, an investment company that owned chemical businesses in Ukraine and Europe, including soda ash and titanium dioxide.

In a prior Kyiv Post interview, Shetler-Jones claimed to own these assets. But, as it turned out years later, the assets are now part of Firtash’s Ostchem chemical holding.

Firtash evidently trusts Shetler-Jones. The British national sat on the board of Eural Trans Gas, an obscure company founded in 2002 that sold Turkmen gas to Ukraine, until RosUkrEnergo replaced it.

Again, it was Firtash’s company.

A fluent Russian speaker, Shetler-Jones owns Chateau d’Arricau-Bordes in France, which is on the market for $4.78 million.

Shetler-Jones’ connections in the United Kingdom are also extensive. He is a financial donor to top British politicians and has had friendly relations with Viscount Asquith, allegedly the former British MI6 special agent who sneaked ex-KGB double agent Oleg Gordievsky out of the Soviet Union.

In some ways, Shetler-Jones’ story could make for a good spy novel. At the very least, his acquaintances make him a supremely well-connected expat.