One of the most successful bets was by Russian steelmaker Magnitogorsk, controlled by oligarch Viktor Rashnikov, which acquired a 5 per cent stake in Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue in 2006 when the share price was still below $1.

His company sold its entire stake a decade later when shares first rose above $6 but missed a lot of easy money with the stock topping out above the $26 mark last year.

It could have been very different. In 2007, Rashnikov had been seeking Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) approval to lift his Fortescue stake to 20 per cent in what would have been an incredibly lucrative move for the oligarch.

Not that he needs any money. Rashnikov’s net worth was estimated at $US6.8 billion ($9 billion) before the war in Ukraine, which triggered the threat of confiscation that has sent his $US300 million yacht Ocean Victory to join the oligarch armada in the Maldives.

Not so lucky was fellow Russian steel billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who bought up major stakes in Australian miners such as Mt Gibson Iron and gold producer Medusa Mining and splashed $103 million on Strike Resources in 2008.

He sold out of many the following year at a loss. His rash investments were a familiar theme at that time when oligarchs had billions in cash and the world was their oyster.

Australia was a sideshow, says University of NSW Associate Professor Stephen Fortescue, a political scientist whose research is focused on the oligarchs and the Russian mining and metals industry.

“The oligarchs in Australia have not been that important in the grand scheme of things,” he says.

“There was a period where the resource oligarchs had money burning holes in their pockets, and they were looking for investments all around the world. And the investments didn’t tend to be good ones.”

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Usmanov was more successful with his early investment in Facebook and a stake in English football club Arsenal, which he sold in 2018.

The poster child for Russian oligarchy, the Chelsea football club’s troubled owner, Roman Abramovich, never made any impact on Australia beyond a mystery flight to our shores in 2012.

Abramovich flew half-way around the world to dine with Linc Energy chief executive Peter Bond at a restaurant in Brisbane to get to the bottom of its unique gasification technology that apparently could turn gas released from underground coal into diesel and jet fuel.

Abramovich obviously was not convinced and walked away from any deal. Sure enough, Linc collapsed some years later amid legal action and acrimony.

Prosecutors dropped charges against Bond and other board members last year relating to environmental offences relating to contamination at the company’s underground coal gasification (UCG) site.

Oligarch interest in Australia has now dwindled to Rio Tinto’s alumina venture with Deripaska’s Rusal, and Origin Energy’s entanglement with the Faberge egg collection oligarch Viktor Vekselberg who was also put on Australia’s sanctions list last week.

Vekselberg is the beneficial owner of a major stake in Falcon Oil and Gas, Origin’s partner in its controversial Beetaloo fracking project in the Northern Territory.

Origin says it is seeking clarification on the implications of the sanctions but will comply with all Australian rules and laws.

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Rio Tinto has said it is in the process of “terminating all commercial relationships it has with any Russian business” and has placed its partnership agreement with Rusal under immediate review.

Dan Gocher, a director at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), is not convinced.

“The question for Origin and Rio is what have they done about the sanctions? And I suspect the answer is nothing. And they’re just going to try and weather the storm.”

The government clearly expects more, too.

“We welcome the principled stand taken by Australian companies in announcing moves to cut ties with Russia in protest of Moscow’s illegal, indefensible war against Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said in a statement last week, which announced sanctions against Vekselberg and Deripaska.

As for the sanctions being put on the oligarchs to pressure Putin, Associate Professor Fortescue is just as sceptical describing it as a “very, very transactional relationship”.

“I don’t think they were close to Putin at all, they had a business deal,” he says.

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