Sechin has been called Putin’s “Darth Vader” and the “scariest man on earth” because he is Putin’s right hand man and the “grey cardinal of the Kremlin.”
Sechin has been a confidante of Russian leader Vladimir Putin since the early 1990s. Sechin was chief of staff to Putin when he was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in 1994.
Sechin has been the CEO of Russia’s state-owned oil company for 10 years, a job he took over after serving as Vladimir Putin’s Deputy Prime Minister.
For the past decade, Sechin has served as the CEO of Russia’s state-oil company Rosneff; before that, he spent four years, 2008 to 2012, as the country’s Deputy Prime Minister.
In announcing its sanctions on Russian oligarchs, the EU called Sechin “one of Vladimir Putin’s most trusted and closest advisors, as well as his personal friend.”
The pair worked together in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office in the early Nineties, and before his stint as Deputy Prime Minister, Sechin served as the deputy head of Putin’s administration in the early 2000s.