Private shareholders in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport may sell a 30% stake to raise money for a potential purchase of Russia’s 30.5% holding at a later date, Reuters reported Tuesday citing Alexander Ponomarenko, co-owner and chairman of the airport’s board of directors. This reported by PRIME.

Sheremetyevo is Russia’s biggest airport and one of Europe’s busiest with traffic of 46 million people last year. Sheremetyevo Holding company, which controls the business, has around a 66% stake in the airport.

Ponomarenko’s family trust holds 65% of that stake along with the family of his business partner, Alexander Skorobogatko.

Almost a 35% stake of Sheremetyevo Holding belongs to Arkady Rotenberg, a former judo training partner of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

These partners had planned at one stage to sell a 10% stake in the airport to fund construction of a new passenger terminal, a tunnel under the airfield, a cargo terminal and a new fueling station.

A U.S. $2.5 billion expansion of the airport, including two more new passenger terminals, a railway and a new cargo terminal would allow passenger traffic to increase to up to 100 million per year by 2026, according to Ponomarenko.

London’s Heathrow airport is Europe’s busiest with 80 million passengers last year, according to the publicly available data.

“It is possible that we will not consider selling a 10% stake and will think of a 30% sale,” Ponomarenko told Reuters. He said selling a bigger stake could get a higher price and attract more interest from buyers.

He did not say how much the stake might be worth. Earlier, the partners had wanted to sell the 10% stake for $400–$500 million, he said.

Ponomarenko said a final decision on the sale could be made this year, with the aim to sell to a strategic or a financial investor, most likely a foreign one.

Foreign investors already hold stakes in other Russian airports. Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg is owned by an investor syndicate, which includes Germany’s Fraport and the Qatar Investment Authority.

Singapore’s Changi Airport owns a 30% stake of a regional airport holding Basel Aero which operates three airports in Russia’s south and 33% of Vladivostok airport in the east.

Qatar Airways is in talks to buy a 25% stake in another Moscow airport, Vnukovo.

Ponomarenko said that the money raised if a sale goes ahead might be needed to buy out a Russia’s 30.5% stake, for which he and his partners will have a call-option this autumn.

The airport’s total debt now stands at $693 million and is expected to be stable in the coming years, Ponomarenko said.