Bloomberg<\/a>. “I have a great interest in expanding throughout the region, because I strongly believe in its potential as a whole.”<\/p>\nIt paved the way for greater US involvement in the South Caucasus, including through a proposed transit corridor called the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.<\/p>\n
The TRIPP corridor will be jointly managed by Armenia and an American company, as the US expands its influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia by boosting trade, securing critical minerals and building economic ties with regions long dominated by Russia and China.<\/p>\n
Sokolov’s acquisition of copper producer Teghut CJSC aligns with the US push, and he has emerged as a figure associated with the Trump administration’s efforts in the region.<\/p>\n
The 51-year-old this year became chairman of the Transcaspian Enterprise Fund, a US-backed nonprofit investment vehicle aimed at attracting private capital to infrastructure and business projects. With $201 million in US government financing, the fund will focus on developing TRIPP and the broader Trans-Caspian trade corridor, covering Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and all five Central Asian nations.<\/p>\n
Sokolov said he and other board members receive no compensation for their roles. The fund’s leadership was selected for its private equity experience as well as knowledge of the region and sectors in which it plans to invest, he said.<\/p>\n
Sokolov said he began spotting opportunities in the country of about 3.1 million people in late 2021, believing it was on the verge of an economic breakthrough.<\/p>\n
Sokolov faced competition from Russian and Chinese companies to acquire Teghut from the Moscow-based VTB Bank PJSC, but said his firm came out on top with a $228.5 million bid.<\/p>\n
He received clearance from the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to buy the mine from the sanctioned Russian lender.<\/p>\n
Teghut has an annual capacity of about 80,000 tonnes of concentrate and began production in 2014.<\/p>\n
Most of the output has been sold to China so far. Sokolov plans to redirect it to the US through new trading contracts when the existing take-off agreement expires in December.<\/p>\n
“One of the main objectives of this transaction was to make Armenia’s critical mineral resources available to US supply chains,” he said.<\/p>\n
Sokolov plans to increase annual production to 120,000–130,000 tonnes of copper concentrate, containing about 26,000–28,000 tonnes of copper. New capacity is expected to come online in 2030 with full production in 2031, he said.<\/p>\n
The tycoon said he’s looking at projects linked to critical infrastructure in the broader region, particularly electricity transmission lines, pipelines, power generation and critical minerals.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Soviet-born US investor with ties to President Donald Trump’s administration plans to expand his copper investments in Armenia and is betting on a broader opening of the region as Washington moves to strengthen its economic presence. “The peace memorandum signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan represents a once-in-a-lifetime transformational event for the region,” Konstantin Sokolov, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":306041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,43,101,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-world","category-economy","category-top-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306051,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306050\/revisions\/306051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}