Andrey Kostin

On January 22-4, 2018, during interviews at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Kostin again stated that additional sanctions against individuals or entities would be an "economic war".

In April 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on him and 23 other Russian nationals.

In 2018, a number of media portals reported about a “special personal relationship,” which, at least since 2014, have connected Kostin with the journalist Nailya Asker-Zade. In November of 2018, the Arbitration Court of the city of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region deemed this information to be untrue and defamatory to business reputation . The same decision prohibited the dissemination of this information in the territory of the Russian Federation. In 2019, newspapers such as Vedomosti and Kommersant, Forbes magazine and Radio Liberty reported that about 1,000 digital publications about Kostin were blocked by Roskomnadzor .

On January 19, 2017, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Kostin, called for the sanctions on the Russian financial sector, especially the "four leading Russian banks" to be lifted.

In May 2017, Kostin suggested the Washington elite was purposefully disrupting the presidency of Donald Trump by spreading false accusations about his ties to Russia.

On July 2, 2011, at 7:30 a.m., while he was at a vacation retreat reserved for FSB personnel, he tragically died when his Can-Am Outlander-800 ATV crashed into a tree along a country road near Pereslavl-Zalessky and the village of Los (Russian: Лось ) in the Yaroslavl region of Russia. He was not wearing a helmet.

He is one of the most active representatives of the Russian banking sector and is a frequent guest on CNBC, Fox News, CNN, BBC and Bloomberg TV-channel. He has three times participated in the Charlie Rose show on Bloomberg television, as well as the Hard Talk programme on BBC. He has been attending the World Economic Forum (Davos, Switzerland) since 1996.

Kostin's son Andrey (1978-2011), a banker, graduated from the Russian Government Finance Academy in 2000 and began working with Deutsche Bank's London office. From 2002-2007, he work in Deutsche Bank's Office of Interbank and Corporate Sales in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In April 2007 following Deutsche Bank's Co-CEO Anshu Jain's strategy of developing partnerships with state partners, Kostin returned to Russia and worked for Deutsche Bank's Moscow office overseeing more than $40 billion in debt and equity transactions. Deutsche Bank's Moscow office then began posting profits of $500 million to $1 billion a year. Later, in 2008, to establish VTB Capital, numerous bankers from Deutsche Bank's Moscow office were hired by VTB Capital. He served on its management board beginning July 2008 and was the deputy chairman of the management board from February 2011.

Andrey Leonidovich Kostin (Russian: Андрей Леонидович Костин ; born September 21, 1956) is a Russian banker, currently President and Chairman of the Management Board of VTB Bank, Member of the Supervisory Council, Member of the Strategy and Corporate Governance Committee, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of several VTB subsidiaries, PhD in Economics. Shares owned in the charter capital of VTB Bank – 0.00036%.

Kostin's father Leonid Kostin (1922-2016) was an economist with expertise in labor economics. He was serving at several systems in the Soviet Union, including prolonged functioning in the system of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Government of USSR, at to a level of deputy (vice-) department head (vice-minister) in these both "inseparable" organizations. He traveled internationally extensively promoting ideas and decisions of the party. Kostin's wife is Natalya and they had one son Andrey.