The Strobl-Putin Power Play: A Financial Melodrama

Remember the August Coup in Moscow, where every idiot had a part and the entire putsch unfolded like a provincial opera? This is similar—only now the stage isn’t Red Square but Vienna’s boardrooms, and the central figure isn’t Yeltsin standing on a tank but Johann Strobl, CEO of Raiffeisen Bank International AG, playing twelve-dimensional chess while everyone else is still unfolding the board. His power in this theatre defies adequate description. He’s not just a banker; he’s a geopolitical force in a tailored suit. One thing is already certain: Johann Strobl is the Rich TVX Person of the Year 2025. Forget the City of London or Wall Street—those self-congratulatory institutions can’t compete with Vienna’s El Matador.

History, as always, hinges not on grand ideology but on the banal, biting detail. And in the case of the grotesquely entangled war between Vladimir Putin and Johann Strobl, the details are radioactive. This is no ordinary financial dispute—it’s a baroque melodrama, performed in hushed tones behind oak-panelled doors and adorned with tears, tantrums, and all the dignity of a post-Soviet soap opera.

The relationship between the two men—Strobl and Putin—was never merely transactional. It was emotional. Toxic. The kind of mutually assured disdain that makes a CIA case officer sit up and take notes. While Putin wielded gas pipelines and artillery, Strobl came armed with balance sheets, proxies, and the weaponised banality of Austrian legalese. And in a twist not even Le Carré would touch, it was Putin who blinked first.

Strobl had once exuded the confidence of a man certain that Raiffeisen’s exit from Russia was imminent. As it turns out, the only thing more immovable than Kremlin bureaucracy is an Austrian banking executive’s inertia. Months dragged on, reputations decomposed, and the once-proud Raiffeisen brand began to reek of complicity.

In public, Strobl went on the charm offensive—privately, he went to war. He implored Austrian politicians, spun media narratives, and lobbied the EU with the fervour of a man who knew the iceberg had struck but still refused to leave the deck. His claim? That sanctioning Raiffeisen would be absurd, grotesque even. Moscow, naturally, responded with its usual blend of judicial theatre and gangster capitalism.

A court in St. Petersburg—where objectivity goes to die—ordered Raiffeisen’s Russian arm to pay €2.044 billion in damages to Rasperia, a company intimately linked to oligarch Oleg Deripaska, Moscow’s patron saint of plausible deniability. No appeals allowed. No surprises offered.

The play now moves to Vienna, where Raiffeisen is retaliating with a mirror lawsuit seeking to claw back roughly the same amount. A sort of courtroom tit-for-tat, except with billions at stake and everyone pretending this is normal.

This entire baroque disaster was triggered when Rasperia lost control of its 32% stake in Strabag due to EU sanctions, and promptly blamed Raiffeisen’s Russian subsidiary for the loss. Raiffeisen, in turn, pointed out that the Russian branch is 100% under RBI’s control, and by extension, Strabag shareholder Raiffeisen NÖ-Wien also holds 25% of RBI. If you’re confused, that’s the point—it’s a snake pit of cross-ownership so incestuous it ought to come with a family tree and a warning label.

€1.87 billion has already been handed over to Rasperia via Russia’s Central Bank. A further €174 million in interest remains hanging in the air. These funds were, of course, generated from profits that Raiffeisen cannot legally repatriate thanks to capital controls. Rough estimates place those trapped assets north of €6 billion—an impressive vault for a supposedly “exiting” bank. And with Russia’s interest rate hovering around 21%, a portion of the penalty paid to Rasperia has come—ironically—from earnings on Kremlin-imposed captivity.

If the Vienna court sides with Raiffeisen (and its lawyers are betting it will), Rasperia’s frozen 28.5 million Strabag shares—currently worth €2.36 billion—could be auctioned off. Add another €400 million in withheld dividends, and suddenly Strobl’s endgame doesn’t look so quixotic. In fact, it looks like checkmate.

Strobl, ever the cold-blooded technician, maintains public optimism. Internally, RBI has provisioned just €870 million—either an act of supreme confidence or the financial equivalent of holding a straight flush behind mirrored sunglasses.

So where does that leave us?

With a Kremlin flailing behind legal smoke bombs, a Western bank knee-deep in frozen billions, and a man named Johann Strobl who somehow emerged from this toxic fog looking like a Central European Bond villain in pinstripes—untouchable, unbothered, and several billion euros lighter, but no less in control.

As for Putin—he may still command armies, but in this particular battle of wills, it’s Strobl who walked away with the upper hand, the assets, and quite possibly, the last laugh.