Son of RZD VP Salman Babayev joins SG-Trans board of directors
MOSCOW. Jan 11 (Interfax) - Timur Babayev, the son of Russian Railways (RZD) Vice President Salman Babayev, joined the board of directors of OJSC SG-Trans after the railway operator was purchased by AFK Sistema .
According to SG-Trans' materials, the seven-member board was newly elected in the middle of December.
Sistema confirmed to Interfax that Babayev's son - a "self-sufficient specialist" - had indeed joined SG-Trans' board of directors.
"Timur Babayev has a specialized education and sufficient experience working in the railway industry. In particular, he worked at LLC Financial Alliance [a joint venture between Sistema and its partners, established on equal footing with the JV's management] and was part of that company's board of directors. This is precisely why, after AFK acquired part of Financial Alliance, the decision was made to also nominate him to the board of directors of SG-Trans," Sistema said.
During a 2009 interview with the newspaper Vedomosti, Timur's father, then the head of OJSC Freight One Company (100% owned by RZD at the time), said that two of his sons had graduated from railroad institutes, "one working at a station on the Moscow Railway, and the second working at a structure in RZD's central apparatus."
Besides Timur Babayev, SG-Trans' board of directors also includes Freight One's former Financial Director Alexei Taicher, who had left the company's board of directors after Vladimir Lisin's UCL Group bought a controlling stake in it from RZD. Taicher is also one of the directors of Financial Alliance. As reported, it is on this company's balance sheet that Sistema plans to consolidate SG-Trans and other railway assets that it acquired to develop its railway business. A second party will also invest in it. The working name of the group is UniRail.
In addition, SG-Trans' new board of directors includes Sistema's First Vice President Anton Abugov, Executive Vice President for Asset Operations in the Finance and Investments Complex Igor Busarov, Executive Vice President for Investments Yevgeny Madorsky, Executive Vice President for Corporate Projects Sergei Shishkin and Vice President Ali Uzdenov.
Sistema acquired 100% of the shares in Russia's largest operator of railcars for handling liquefied hydrocarbon gas from the government in the middle of 2012.