Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding invested over $500 million in Russian energy companies around the time Russia invaded Ukraine

Huileng Tan

August 15, 2022 8:29 AM

Kingdom Holding invested in Russia's Gazprom, Rosneft, and Lukoil from February to March this year.

Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal attends the investment conference in Riyadh.

The investments into the Russian energy firms total over $500 million, a filing shows.Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund owns 17% of Kingdom Holding.

Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding Company invested over $500 million in Russian energy companies around the time the Ukraine war started, a stock exchange filing shows.

Kingdom Holding, one of Saudi Arabia's highest profile companies, is mostly owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund owns about 17% of the investment company.

Kingdom Holding posted details of the transactions into Russian energy companies Gazprom, Rosneft, and Lukoil on Twitter on Sunday.

The tweets show the company invested 1.37 billion Saudi riyals, or $365 million, in Gazprom and 196 million riyals in Rosneft in February 2022. It did not give specific dates.

Kingdom Holding also invested 410 million riyals in Lukoil from February to March 2022. This means it was still putting money into the energy firm as the US and the European Union were intensifying sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine war.

Other companies Kingdom Holding has invested in this year include Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Tencent, as well as Australian mining giant BHP, according to the document uploaded onto Twitter.

Its investments made from 2020 to 2022 amount to over 12.8 billion riyals so far.

Kingdom Holding did not respond to Insider's request for comment that was sent outside regular business hours.

Oil giant Saudi Arabia is the leader of OPEC and its allies, which includes Russia. In June, the kingdom's energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman said relations with Russia were "as good as the weather in Riyadh."

Huileng Tan