Matthias Warnig (born 26 July 1955) is a former East German

Stasi The Ministry for State Security (, ; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the (, an abbreviation of ), was the Intelligence agency, state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive pol ...

officer and a

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

-based businessman who has worked closely with

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

. He joined the Stasi, the secret police of communist

East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

, in 1974. During the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

he engaged in

financial crimes Finance refers to monetary resources and to the study and discipline of money, currency, assets and liabilities. As a subject of study, is a field of Business Administration wich study the planning, organizing, leading, and controlling of an ...

by attempting to infiltrate and spy against banks in the

Federal Republic of Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen constituent states have a total population of over 84 ...

(West Germany). After the Stasi was disbanded following the

unification of Germany The unification of Germany (, ) was a process of building the first nation-state for Germans with federalism, federal features based on the concept of Lesser Germany (one without Habsburgs' multi-ethnic Austria or its German-speaking part). I ...

, he was left unemployed and moved to Russia, where he took part in business ventures in cooperation with Putin, whom he had already known as a Stasi officer. He was managing director (CEO) of

Nord Stream AG Nord Stream AG is a consortium for construction and operation of the Nord Stream 1 submarine pipeline between Vyborg in Russia and Greifswald in Germany. The consortium was incorporated in Zug, Switzerland, on 30 November 2005. Since the first g ...

, a company that is majority-owned by the

Russian government The Russian Government () or fully titled the Government of the Russian Federation () is the highest federal executive governmental body of the Russian Federation. It is accountable to the president of the Russian Federation and controlled by ...

and that is responsible for the construction and operation of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. He was managing director of Nord Stream 2 AG. Warnig is under personal sanctions in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

over his ties to the Russian government and Putin, and what the US government considers to be a Russian geopolitical project. As of 2023 he is also under personal sanctions in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

as a collaborator with the Putin regime who is "involved in destabilising Ukraine or undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine, or obtaining a benefit from or supporting the Government of Russia."

Early life and education

Matthias Warnig was born on 26 July 1955 in Altdöbern (Senftenberg),

Lower Lusatia Lower Lusatia (; ; ; ; ) is a historical region in Central Europe, stretching from the southeast of the Germany, German state of Brandenburg to the southwest of Lubusz Voivodeship in Poland. Like adjacent Upper Lusatia in the south, Lower Lusa ...

(''Niederlausitz'' in German),

. At 18 years old, he was the secretary of the local Free German Youth (FDJ) which was the East German equivalent to

Komsomol The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as Komsomol, was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it w ...

. Before graduating from school, he joined the Communist Party of the GDR (SED), but, instead of serving in the East German Army (NVA), he underwent six months of training in the Stasi guard regiment and often is referred to as Stasi from

Brandenburg Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a States of Germany, state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the List of Ger ...

Career

In 1974 Warnig started his career at the

, the secret police of communist East Germany, and entered its

foreign intelligence Intelligence assessment, is a specific phase of the intelligence cycle which oversees the development of behavior forecasts or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on wide ranges of available overt and cover ...

(HVA) on April 1, 1975. In September 1977, he began his studies in economics at the Berlin University of Economics, which is also known as the '' Bruno Leuschner School of Economics'', and graduated with a degree in economics in 1981. He allegedly worked as the Deputy Chief of the Science and Technology Sector (STS) (), which is often referred to as

industrial espionage Industrial espionage, also known as economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage, is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrat ...

or economic espionage () under in of the HVA, headed the work group Department 5 (''Referat 5 / SWT'') and attempted to obtain information from the West about materials technology, chemistry, electronics, physics and nuclear power. See pages 338-339 for A/X active measures, disinformation / »Aktive Maßnahmen«, Desinformation and pages 340-344 for Science and Technology Sector (STS) / Sektor Wissenschaft und Technik (SWT). Warnig allegedly worked with

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

officer

. The two men collaborated on recruiting

West German West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republic after its capital c ...

citizens for the KGB.Alternate link
/ref> Warnig, however, has denied this by saying that they met for the first time in 1991, when Putin was the head of the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office. In the late 1970s, Warnig received five years of training on how to infiltrate banks in

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

. Warning was in

to gain "economic enlightenment" from such companies as BASF, Rheinbraun, Data Becker, Thyssen, Krupp, and Deutsche Bank. Warnig had apparently spied on

Dresdner Bank Dresdner Bank AG () was a German bank, founded in 1872 in Dresden, then headquartered in Berlin from 1884 to 1945 and in Frankfurt from 1963 onwards after a postwar hiatus. Long Germany's second-largest bank behind Deutsche Bank, it was eventually ...

AG in West Germany for two years in the late 1980s before he began to work in the bank. From 1986 onward Warnig was a resident of

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

living in an apartment in the district of Bilk as a trade representative of the GDR.

After German reunification

After the

fall of Communism The revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, were a revolutionary wave of liberal democracy movements that resulted in the collapse of most Marxist–Leninist governments in the Eastern Bloc and other parts of the world. Th ...

he resigned as a major from the Stasi in 1989. Dresdner Bank attempted to get a banking operating license in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, where Putin was now in charge of foreign economic relations. Warnig took part in negotiations. The office was opened in 1991. Warnig became chairman of the Board of Directors of Dresdner Bank ZAO, Dresdner Bank Russian's subsidiary. In 2004–05, the bank advised on the controversial forced sale of

Yukos OJSC "Yukos Oil Company" (, ) was an oil and gas company based in Moscow, Russia. Yukos was acquired from the Russian government by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Bank Menatep during the controversial "loans for shares" auctions of ...

assets (see Yukos shareholders v. Russia). In 2006 he changed to Nord Stream AG, operator of the first Baltic Sea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany until May 2016.''Tagesregister-Nr. 6425 vom 18.05.2016 / CHE-112.660.698 / 02844579.''
In: SHAB.ch, abgerufen am 9. Mai 2025 (PDF). From 2015 until July 2023 he was CEO of Nord Stream 2 AG. As of 2014, Warnig was on the board of directors of Bank Rossiya which is often referred to as "Putin's Wallet". During violent gang wars involving the Tambov Gang while it was taking control of St. Petersburg's energy trade in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin were feared for the safety of his daughters

Maria Vorontsova Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova (, Putina, Путина; born 28 April 1985), also referred to as Maria Faassen, is a Russian pediatric endocrinologist. She is the eldest child of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Early life Vorontsova was born ...

and Katerina Tikhonova and sent them to Germany where Warnig was their legal guardian. From 2012, Warnig led the supervisory board of the Russian aluminum company Rusal but was forced to resign in 2018, when the

first Trump administration Donald Trump's first tenure as the president of the United States began on January 20, 2017, when Trump First inauguration of Donald Trump, was inaugurated as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president, and ended on January ...

imposed sanctions on Rusal.

Sanctions

Warnig was from 2006 until May 2016 managing director (CEO) of

, which is majority-owned by the

and responsible for the construction and operation of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Warnig and Nordstream AG were under personal sanctions in the

over his ties to the Russian government and Putin, and what the US government considered to be a Russian geopolitical project. The

Biden administration Joe Biden's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 46th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Joe Biden, his inauguration on January 20, 2021, and ended on January 20, 2025. Biden, a member of the Democr ...

lifted those in May 2021. Sanctions were reimposed on him on February 23, 2022, in response to the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis and the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

. Warnig was managing director of Nord Stream 2 AG until July 2023. On 24 February 2023, the UK government also sanctioned Warnig in relation to the

Russo-Ukrainian War The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia Russian occupation of Crimea, occupied and Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then ...

Personal life

According to Warning's STASI personnel file (), he speaks French and Russian in addition to German. Warnig married on his 24th birthday, soon afterwards his son Stefan and his daughter Claudia were born. Warnig is now married to the Russian Elena Semjonova, whom he met in Saint Petersburg at the end of the 1990s. They have two sons, the family lives in Staufen im Breisgau and as of 2023 the couple still had condominiums in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. His son Stefan Warnig was the owner and chef of a café in Berlin-Schöneberg, the "Café des Artistes", which was considered to be Putin´s favorite restaurant in Germany.

Notes

References

Citations

Works cited

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External links

Nord Stream, Matthias Warnig (codename "Arthur") and the Gazprom Lobby
Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 114
Matthias Warnig: "What is good for Russia is good for Germany”
by Irina Reznik, The Vedomosti 11 October 2006 (''translation at the website of Nord Stream AG, includes biography of Matthias Warnig'') {{DEFAULTSORT:Warnig, Matthias 1955 births Living people People from Altdöbern Stasi officers Yukos Gazprom people German chief executives Dresdner Bank FC Schalke 04 non-playing staff Individuals sanctioned by the United States Department of State Russian individuals subject to United Kingdom sanctions