Sauer Derk (Derk Sauer)

Sauer Derk (Derk Sauer)

Biography

As a schoolboy, he joined the Communist Party of the Netherlands and for some time called himself a "Maoist." He was engaged in the organization of student strikes and trade union activities.

Derk began to engage in journalism at the age of 14, creating a newspaper for the youth movement.

In 1968, he organized a demonstration against the USSR invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was inspired by the student protests that took place in Paris in the same year, which went down in history as "Red May."

After working in a chewing gum factory, he got a job in the party (communist) newspaper De Tribune.

1970-80: Correspondent and media editor in the Netherlands

In 1970, he went to Northern Ireland to cover the conflict between Catholics and the British government for the Dutch media. He rented a room from one of the commanders of the Irish Republican Army.

Derk Sauer in the 1970s and 80s, from the age of 19, worked as a correspondent for Belfast and Title Filme, including in hot spots - Northern Ireland, Chile, El Salvador, Lebanon. He was editor of the magazines Twingtig and Neiuwe Revu (Netherlands).

From 1982 to 1989 he was editor-in-chief of the Dutch magazine Nieuwe Revu.

1990: Founding of media for foreigners in the USSR

In 1989, with his wife and young son, he came to Moscow at the invitation of the American company VNU to create a glossy Moscow Magazine and the Moscow Guardian newspaper in Russia.

1992: Director-General of Independent Media Publishing House

In 1992, Derk Sauer, founded his home in the Netherlands, together with the Novamedia group and his business partner Annemarie van Gaal, founded the publishing group Independent Media (published The Moscow Times, Vedomosti, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Harvard Business Review, Home Hearth, Playboy and others)including from 1992 to 2008 as CEO and from 2008 as Chairman of the Supervisory Board.

2005: Sauer sells Finnish Sanoma to Independent Media for $142m

In January 2005, the Finnish company Sanoma bought 100% of the Russian publishing house Independent Media. For a company whose revenue in 2004 was about €70 million and operating profit - €10 million, the Finnish media group paid €142 million^[1].

Sauer lived in the village of Zhukovka on Rublevskoe highway.

2006: Sailing from the Atlantic to Martinique

In 2006, together with his son and two friends, he traveled on a yacht 2,600 kilometers along the Atlantic from Spain to Martinique in three weeks.

2012: President of RBC

In November 2012, RBC OJSC announced the creation of the position of president. According to the agreements reached, Derk Sauer took the position of President of RBC OJSC after resolving the necessary formalities and obtaining the appropriate permits from the Federal Migration Service of Russia. As president, Derk Sauer was responsible for the strategic development of the company, setting priorities for the acquisition of new assets and developing relations with the company's largest international partners. OJSC RBC also announced that it had received Derk Sauer's prior approval to be appointed to the Board of Directors of RBC at an extraordinary meeting of the company's shareholders on December 10, 2012.

As Sauer explained, he sees his task as head of the holding in "improving the life of the middle class through high-quality information."

"Whether it is employees of global companies or owners of small and medium-sized businesses, we must give them information from a business point of view, but not only from a business point of view, also from a personal one," the media manager said.

High-quality business content, as noted by RBC-TV, will become the company's priority under Sauer, and information dissemination methods will be improved.

In a press release, Sanoma Independent Media reported that Sauer will retain the position of chairman of the supervisory board of the publishing house, as well as chairman of the board of directors of the business newspaper Sheets"."

2013: RBC CEO

RBC Holding announced in August 2013 that Derk Sauer accepted an offer to head RBC as the new CEO. In this position, he replaced Sergei Lavrukhin, who decided to leave the post of general director on August 26, 2013, but at the same time continued to work as a member of the board of directors of RBC OJSC.

2015

An attempt to strengthen the opposition focus of RBC TV

"Sauer planned to dramatically reduce the news broadcasting of RBC," an informed source told Ленты.ру in January 2016. His idea was to do one news broadcast every three hours. Having reduced more than a hundred people on RBC, he was going to organize a large opposition political talk show with the saved funds, as on Channel One, only "vice versa." For the business of the news channel, it was a utopia, but Sauer insisted^[2].

According to the source, Sauer planned to copy the broadcasting, editorial and editorial policy model from Dozhd because he considered this channel the best in Russia.

"But for the RBC channel, which has just become profitable, this would turn into a financial and media collapse. The audience at Dozhd at that time was twenty times smaller than the RBC audience. To sharply reduce news broadcasting in favor of a talk show for RBC would mean the loss of the viewer and advertisers, "says the source of Ленты.ру.

However, the president and at the same time the chairman of the board of directors of RBC Sauer, allegedly having no economic justification in his hands, announced the reform of the channel. This provoked a scandal. RBC-TV left the main editor Andrei Reut, who advocated the preservation of news broadcasting. Soon the owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, intervened. The idea of ​ ​ creating "Rain-2" did not appeal to him, says the source.

Leaving the post of president of RBC

In 2015, activists of the National Liberation Movement (NOD) picketed RBC headquarters with slogans against the Dutch media manager: "For cleaning up the fifth column" and "Derk Sauer, go out!" The removal of Mr. Sauer from the leadership of RBC in the same period was also demanded by the leader of the LDPR Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

In August 2015, it was reported that Derk Sauer was moving to the post of vice president of the Onexim group. In his new position, Sauer was to be responsible for the strategic development of the Onexim media direction, as well as for the formation and implementation of the strategy of the Onexim group of companies in new digital businesses. At the same time, Saeur remains on the RBC Board of Directors and will participate in determining the company's development strategy.

"I am very glad that the shareholders of RBC appreciated the success of our team in the field of reforming RBC's business and proposed to scale my experience already within the entire Onexim group. The RBC team is already demonstrating excellent results over the past two years. I am confident in the expertise and the potential of the RBC team, as well as in the fact that by joint efforts they will more than once confirm that RBC is the best business media holding in Russia, "said Derk Sauer

As of December 2015, the official website of Onexima does not list Sower among the key members of the foundation's team, and does not report the actual appointment of him as vice president.

In December 2015, it became known that Dmitry Razumov became the chairman of the board of directors of RBC. Derk Sauer was chosen as Razumov's deputy. Both were members of the council until September 2017.

2016: Criminal case on the deprivation of Panov and Karetsky shares in one of the RBC companies

On April 29, 2016, the Main Investigation Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow opened a criminal case under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud committed by an organized group or on an especially large scale, sanction - imprisonment of up to 10 years) at the request of the former shareholder of Bayt-Telecom (managed the data processing center, controlled by RBC) Alexander Panov about the deprivation of his and Yaroslav Karetsky 25% of the company's shares. This is stated in the notice in the criminal case. The decision to initiate a criminal case states that the value of 25% of BT shares was $13.4 million.

According to Panov, who is familiar with the documents of the investigation, in the circle of persons, which law enforcement agencies will check for involvement in the crime, the general director of RBC Nikolai Molibog is included, his first deputy Ekaterina Kruglova, financial director of RBC Igor Selivanov, RBC Deputy Director General for Technology Alexander Kononenko, former BT CEO Farida Karimova, Head of the RBC Security Service Alexander Zhgut, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of RBC Derk Sauer and General Director of Reconne LLC Andrei Gordeev. According to Panov, BT's assets at the time of the start of the investigation belong to the telecom operator Reconne, and the circle of persons whose possible involvement will be checked was indicated in his statement.

The Prosecutor General's Office handed over the materials on the case to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, follows from the response of the supervisory authority to Alexander Panov. The Prosecutor General's Office found that from 2009 to September 2014, Panov and Karetsky each owned 12.5% of the shares of BT CJSC, the remaining 75% belonged to the offshore Karuta Investments. RNS has at its disposal a document signed by Molibog, according to which 75% of Bayt Telecom as of September 23, 2014 belonged to RBC through offshore companies Karuta Investments, Gattico Holding, Halvertson Holdings and Pintolexa Holdings. The director of Karuta was Derk Sauer, Panov specified.

On August 29, 2014, Farida Karimova, allegedly acting as the sole shareholder of BT, signed and transferred for registration to the bodies of the Federal Tax Service of Russia in Moscow the decision to reorganize BT CJSC into InvestProekt LLC, dismiss Igor Selivanov, General Director of BT and appoint himself to this position, as well as the transfer of property from Byte-Telecom CJSC to InvestProekt LLC, the document says. Then InvestProekt was annexed to Drok LLC, registered in the Republic of Tatarstan, "at the place of mass registration of legal entities and not carrying out actual activities," the Prosecutor General's Office of the Ministry^[3] established^[3].

"In this regard, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, in accordance with Article 37 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, materials of verification on the facts of fraudulent actions in relation to property belonging to you (Panov. - RNS) and Y. V. Karetsky, as well as the illegal formation (reorganization) of a legal entity, were sent to the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, "the document says

Panov claims that Karimova liquidated several legal entities that were previously members of RBC.

2020: Launch of opposition online project VTimes

In 2020, together with former members of the Vedomosti editorial office, he launched the VTimes online project, which the Russian authorities recognized as a foreign agent in 2021.

2022: Return to the Netherlands

After the start of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine in 2022, Mr. Sauer left Russia, moving to Amsterdam. In December 2024, together with music critic Artemy Troitsky (emigrated to Estonia in 2014, recognized as a foreign agent in 2023), he founded the TMT Music label to support artists who left Russia and Belarus. In 1995, Sauer attracted Troitsky as editor-in-chief at the launch of Playboy magazine in Russia.

2025: Death after injury in Greek yacht crash

According to the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, in early July 2025, the yacht on which Derk Sauer was resting with his wife Ellen Verbake in Greece collided with a rock during a thunderstorm and a sharp increase in wind.

Sauer fell unsuccessfully and suffered a severe spinal injury. He was then treated in hospitals in Athens and Amsterdam. He died on July 31 at the age of 72 in his country house in the Netherlands, surrounded by family, the Dutch newspaper Het Parool reported.

Membership in organizations

In 2012, Sauer was a member of the board of WWF Russia (World Wildlife Fund).

Yoga practice

Derk Sauer practiced Iyengar yoga, published the Yoga Journal in Russia, and organized one of B.C.S. Ayengar's visits to Russia.

Family

He was married to journalist Ellen Ferbeek, raised three children.

Notes