A U.S. businessman with ties to President Donald Trump’s administration has pledged to significantly boost output at one of Armenia’s largest mining enterprises purchased by him from a Russian bank this year.
The Teghut company has mined copper and molybdenum in a deposit of the same name located in Armenia’s northern Lori province for more than a decade. The Armenian subsidiary of Russia’s VTB bank took over it in 2019 after its first owner’s failure to repay a $400 million loan.
VTB finally managed to get rid of the asset in July this year when Armenia’s state anti-trust regulator allowed Teghut’s indirect sale to Dynamic Frontier Holdings, a U.S. company owned by Konstantin Sokolov. In an interview with the Bloomberg news agency published on Monday, Sokolov revealed that his firm paid $228.5 million for the mine and its ore-processing facility.
Teghut has an annual capacity of about 80,000 tons of copper ore concentrate. Sokolov said he plans to increase annual production to 120,000–130,000 tons of concentrate containing about 26,000–28,000 tons of copper. New capacity is expected to come online in 2030 with full production in 2031, he told Bloomberg.
The Russian-born businessman also announced plans to redirect most of the mine’s output from China to the United States.
“One of the main objectives of this transaction was to make Armenia’s critical mineral resources available to U.S. supply chains,” he said.
Teghut was Armenia’s 22nd largest corporate taxpayer last year, with almost 14.4 billion drams ($40 million) in various taxes contributed to the state budget. The company employed more than 1,100 people as of 2022.
Armenia’s largest metallurgical enterprise, the Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC) is mostly owned by entities linked to Russian billionaire Roman Trotsenko. The company employing some 4,600 people paid over 52 billion drams ($140 million) in taxes in 2025.
Sokolov also has other business interests in Armenia, including a major stake in one of the country’s three mobile phone operators. Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department appointed him as chairman of a $200 million fund primarily tasked with facilitating the creation of a U.S.-run transit corridor passing through Armenia.
Sokolov is one of 36 private donors who have reportedly contributed to Trump’s White House ballroom project. He has also donated more than $12 million to Republican Party campaigns and political groups during Trump’s second term.