A business partner and ally of Aleksandr Frolov and Roman Abramovich, Abramov was in June 2021 listed by Forbes as having an estimated net worth of $8.0 billion.

[3] EVRAZ is a product of Russia's growth since the 1998 financial crisis and Abramov is representative of the second wave of Russian magnates who went into business after the best assets had been taken.

[8] He used his contacts with Russia's steel mills, which used high-temperature technologies, and offered his services not as a scientist but as a metal trader.

He decided to build a monopoly for rail and steel construction products and looked for factories that would give him synergies.

The only other big factories making these products were in the industrial region of Kemerovo, also home to Russia's largest coalmines.

Using his old trading contacts with coalmine bosses, Abramov was introduced to Aman Tuleev, populist governor of the region.

As a state creditor, Tuleev would help appoint external managers loyal to EvrazHolding to run the steel mills.