VEB pumped $4.5 billion into Rusal, the aluminum company majority owned by Oleg Deripaska, to allow it to unwind foreign financing, which it had used to buy a 25 percent stake in mining giant Norilsk Nickel. VEB also put $2 billion into Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group to help it to pay off Deutsche Bank and rescue Alfa’s large stake in Russia’s number two mobile phone firm, VimpelCom, which might otherwise have been forfeited as collateral.
