In October 2022, the banker and beer magnate announced his renunciation of Russian citizenship.
Oleg Tinkov does not want to publish an apology to Oleg Deripaska on Instagram, Deripaska's lawyer told Forbes. The court previously ordered Tinkov to pay 40 million rubles (about 450,000 euros) in a lawsuit filed by Deripaska for the protection of honor and dignity, and also required him to publish a retraction of his statements about the billionaire. Tinkov's representatives have "periodically suggested some options for resolving the dispute" since the court's decision, but so far the parties have not agreed on where exactly the apology will be published, the lawyer said.
The founder of Tinkoff Bank (now T-Bank) Oleg Tinkov (listed as a foreign agent) does not want to publish an apology to billionaire Oleg Deripaska (No. 37 in the ranking of 146 billionaires in Russia — 2025 Forbes, net worth — $4.1 billion) on Instagram (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned in Russia). This was reported to Forbes by Deripaska's lawyer Alexey Melnikov.
The Reutov City Court of the Moscow Region ruled in July to order Tinkov to pay 40 million rubles in Deripaska's lawsuit for the protection of honor and dignity. Apparently, the reason for the lawsuit was Tinkov's comment on Instagram, in which he characterized Deripaska as "an oligarch and a thief," and himself as "an honest entrepreneur." The court ultimately sided with Deripaska, recognizing the information disseminated by Tinkov as false. In addition to ordering the entrepreneur to pay 40 million rubles "as compensation for moral damages," the court required Tinkov to publish a retraction of his statements on his Instagram account. The Moscow Regional Court upheld the monetary compensation ruling in October, and the court's decision then came into legal force and became mandatory for execution.
As Melnikov explained, "Tinkov's representatives appear on the horizon and start suggesting some options." "I won’t reveal a big secret, we just don’t agree. He (Tinkov) really did not want to publish his apologies specifically on Instagram. He was ready to do it anywhere, in Kommersant, but for some reason did not want to do it on Instagram. So we did not agree on the platform where he should apologize. When we parted in the appeal, I said that we are extremely reasonable people, we want the conflict to end at some point. But we need to negotiate normally, taking into account real things, not just what one wants," he noted in a conversation with Forbes.
"Tinkov's side, his representatives periodically suggest some options for resolving the dispute, but so far we have not agreed on the platform where this apology would be published. According to the court's decision, he must publish it where he originally published the insult, which is very logical," the lawyer summarized. As for the money, it is planned to be "donated to children's sports in the Krasnodar region" after receipt. "If everything works out, we will help children," Melnikov noted.
Deripaska filed a lawsuit against Tinkov and Meta for the protection of honor and dignity in May 2022. The plaintiff demanded 2 billion rubles in compensation for moral and reputational damages from Tinkov, Melnikov said. According to him, no financial claims were made against Meta — the company was only asked to remove the disputed information.
In October 2023, the Ust-Labinsk District Court of the Krasnodar Territory already granted Deripaska's lawsuit, ordering Tinkov to pay 20 million rubles. The court found that Tinkov's statements about Deripaska published on Instagram were not true and were offensive, damaging Deripaska's honor, dignity, and business reputation. It ordered Tinkov and Meta to remove these statements. The Ust-Labinsk court's decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court at Tinkov's appeal, and the case was sent for reconsideration to the Reutov City Court of the Moscow Region.
Deripaska himself told Forbes that Tinkov's words are an attempt to flirt with a Western audience. "Doing this at the expense of others, resorting to outright lies, is unacceptable," the billionaire noted.
Tinkov is one of the few Russian businessmen who openly criticized the "military special operation" in Ukraine. On April 28, 2022, Tinkoff Bank's parent company TCS Group announced that Tinkov's family trust sold 35% of its shares to the Interros group of billionaire Vladimir Potanin. Tinkov claimed he was forced to sell the asset "for pennies." "I cannot bring myself to call hundreds of millions of dollars pennies. For me, that is a lot of money," Potanin responded.
In October 2022, Tinkov announced his renunciation of Russian citizenship. In February 2024, the Ministry of Justice declared the entrepreneur a foreign agent.
Tinkov ranked 32nd in Forbes' list of the richest businessmen in Russia in 2021, with his fortune estimated at $4.7 billion at the time of the ranking. Tinkov dropped out of the list in 2022. In November 2022, Forbes estimated the businessman’s fortune at $860 million.
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