Who Are The Russian Oligarchs?

Roman Abramovich Born 1966-Saratov, Russia. He is referred to as one of the Russian oligarchs. In March 2006 he was listed by Forbes Magazine as the richest Russian, the second richest person in Britain and the eleventh richest person in the world, with an estimated fortune of $18.2 billion. Abramovich is most famous outside of Russia as the owner of Chealsea F.C., an English Premiership football club. An orphan by the age of four, he was raised by Jewish relatives in the harsh environs of the Arctic Circle. He began his business career selling plastic ducks from a grim Moscow apartment but, within a few years, Abramovich’s vast wealth spread from oil conglomerates to pig farms, and secured his place within then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s inner circle. However, even today, his task force of bodyguards and armoured Mercedes testify to the high-risk nature of capitalism in post-Soviet Russia. When Putin came to power, Abramovich entered politics himself, becoming the governor of a remote, but resource-rich, Siberian region. After winning the election by 92% of the vote, he pumped investment into the region, building houses and sending thousands of schoolchildren on holiday.

Vagit Alekperov Born 1951, Fifteen years ago Alekperov was a deputy minister of fuel and energy in the U.S.S.R. Now he is the president and one of the biggest shareholders in Lukoil, the largest privately-owned oil company in Russia. But Alekperov is basically a politician, showing loyalty to Vladimir Putin on most anything, whether it be to pay more taxes or to reduce gasoline prices. Lukoil has significant interests outside of Russia, including refineries in eastern Europe and the Getty gas station chain in the U.S. Lukoil closed the biggest deal in its history in the fall of 2005 when it bought Nelson Resources in Kazakhstan for $2 billion.

Boris Berezovsky Boris Berezovsky was one of the Russian oligarchs who acquired massive wealth by taking control of state assets after the fall of communism. When Mr Berezovsky, who controlled several banks and TV stations, was accused in Russia of defrauding a regional government of US$13m, he fled and moved to London, where he now lives under the name Platon Elenin.

Vladimir Bogdonov Bogdanov, the President of Surgutneftegaz, Russia's second largest oil company. Bogdanov was born in Suyerka in 1951, a small village in the Tiumen region of west Siberia. This also was the prime location of most of Russia's oil fields. He attended the Tiumen Industrial Institute and specialized in oil and well drilling. After graduating in 1973 he went to work as a technician in the nearby oil fields of Nizhnevartovsk, Nefteyugansk and Surgut. He eventually became deputy general director of drilling in Surgutneftgaz and then general director. He remained as general director when the oil company was privatized in 1993. Unlike Lukoil, Surgutneftegaz consisted primarily of producing fields and only in 1994 did it branch out to encompass oil refineries and gasoline service stations.

Viktor Chernomyrdin Born 1938, Soviet and Russian government official. Beginning in 1957, he held positions in the Soviet national oil and gas industry, serving (1985–89) as minister in control of the nation's huge energy complex. After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Chernomyrdin supervised the transformation of the gas ministry into an enormous corporation, Gazprom. In 1992 he was brought into the Russian cabinet and, in a compromise, was chosen prime minister by Boris Yeltsin. A centrist, he initially opposed many economic changes, and gained greater power following the failure of advocates of swift economic reform to attain a parliamentary majority in 1993. Until his dismissal during an economic slump in 1998, however, he moved toward support for privatization and other reforms, and was regarded as pro-Western. In Aug., 1998, Yeltsin again sought to appoint him prime minister, but the Duma refused to approve him. In 1999, Yeltsin sent him as a special envoy to the former nation of Yugoslavia, in the midst of the Kosovo crisis, and Chernomyrdin subsequently returned to Gazprom as its chairman. He was elected to the Duma in Dec., 1999, but his Our Home Is Russia party won only 1.2% of the vote nationally. In 2001 he was appointed ambassador to Ukraine.

Oleg Deripaska Former metals trader survived the gangster wars in the aluminum industry. In the past five years he has assumed control of Russian Aluminum, the country's dominant producer. His holding company, Basic Element, now owns Russian Aluminum, automobile manufacturer GAZ, aircraft manufacturer Aviacor and insurance company Ingosstrakh. Deripaska evidently feels secure about his Russian property; instead of liquidating assets as did fellow billionaire Roman Abramovich, he is investing heavily in his Russian businesses. Acquired a huge construction company, Razvitiye, from Suleiman Kerimov last year. Married into the family of former President Yeltsin.

Mikhail Fridman Mikhail Fridman started out in business while still a student at the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys. He graduated in 1986 and two years later founded Alfa Eco, a trading company out of which Alfa Group Consortium developed. Fridman was born in Lvov, Ukraine on 21 April 1964. Mikhail Fridman is Chairman and principal founder of Alfa Group Consortium, one of the leading business enterprises in Russia. He has built the Alfa Group into a market leader in Banking, Energy, Telecommunications and Retail sales. Fridman chairs the Board of Directors of two of the group’s leading companies, Alfa-Bank, which is one of Russia’s largest privately owned banks, and TNK-BP, formed by the historic joint venture between British Petroleum and Tyumen Oil Company, completed in 2003. Mr. Fridman also serves as member of the Board of Directors of VimpelCom, the second of three major market leaders in the Russia’s rapidly growing mobile communications market.

Vladimir Gusinsky Born 1952, a Russian media baron, is known as the founder of Media-Most holding that included Most Bank, the NTV channel, the newspaper Segodnya and magazines. After moving abroad in the summer of 2001 he created a satellite TV broadcasting company RTVi which portrays the events in Russia as presented by the TV network Echo's journalists. The related web site newsru.com carries textual, photo and video news from Russia. He holds Israeli citizenship and often resides in Israel, where he has been under investigation for money laundering. Vladimir Gusinsky is responsible for creating the first independent TV channel in Russia as well as setting the course for professional and objective TV news coverage in Russia. The emergence of 'NTV+', an offshoot from NTV channel, was a groundbreaking event for Russian media. NTV+ was the first satellite channel ever to broadcast in the former USSR.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky Born 1964, Arrested on fraud and theft charges in October 2004, Russia's richest man languishes in a Moscow prison. The accusation: his Menatep group failed to invest $280 million, which it had promised in return for a 20% stake in the 1994 privatization of fertilizer manufacturer Apatit. Khodorkovsky denies the charges, claiming that the Kremlin is persecuting him for his mounting criticism of the Putin administration. The state froze most of his Yukos shares pending the case' outcome; until they are taken away, Forbes counts them as part of his net worth. Menatep shareholders moved to shield their stakes by transferring them to third parties. A onetime Communist Youth League activist, Khodorkovsky made a fortune in the early 1990s in banking and commodities; in 1995 bought oil giant Yukos from the state at a fraction of its market value. In 1999-2000, started bringing in Western directors, managers and auditors; made Yukos Russia's largest company by market cap.

Platon Lebedev Born 1957, Second richest Russian behind bars. Arrested four months before his partner Khodorkovsky, was charged with theft in connection with the 1994 privatization of fertilizer company Apatit. Back in 1989 was convinced by some former colleagues at the Ministry of Geology to join Bank Menatep, the centerpiece of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's burgeoning financial and commodities trading empire. Became president of the bank in the early 1990s, helped set up operations in Switzerland and other offshore tax havens. Later, as director of Group Menatep, Lebedev acted as custodian of Khodorkovsky team's assets, which include banks, fertilizers, telecoms and a majority stake in oil giant Yukos. Recently, Menatep shareholders moved to shield their stakes by transferring them to third parties.

Leonid Nevzlin Born 1960, With a warrant out for his arrest, has settled in Israel to escape the fate of his fellow Yukos shareholders, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, both of whom are in a Moscow prison awaiting trial on theft and fraud charges. Sixteen years ago, as a 28-year-old computer programmer in Moscow, Nevzlin answered a newspaper advertisement for a job and met Mikhail Khodorkovsky; became a founding shareholder of what later become Group Menatep, the banking, trading and oil empire. Long considered Khodorkovsky's number two man, Nevzlin took care of security issues and the group's political relations. Elected senator in the Federation Council of Russia in 2001. Now leading the campaign to get his partners released and funding the political opposition to President Vladimir Putin. Along with other Menatep shareholders, recently transfered shares to third parties.

Vladimir Potanin Born 1961, With Mikhail Prokhorov, built large holding company Interros by winning over the corporate customers of two huge Soviet-era banks in 1992. Potanin and Prokhorov later took control of metals giant Norilsk Nickel and oil company Sidanco in controversial "loans-for-shares" auctions. Has variously served as a deputy prime minister of the economy and as partner to George Soros in telecom monopoly Svyazinvest. Recently stepped down from the day-to-day management of his business. Now spends much of his time and money on charities: Potanin supports students and athletes, donates to the Russian Orthodox University of St. John the Theologian, Saint-Petersburg State University, and the state TV channel Kultura. He is a trustee on two boards: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the State Hermitage Museum.

Viktor Vekselberg Born 1958, Ukrainian-born oil baron and deal junkie studied at Moscow State University of Railroad Engineering in 1970s. Through his management company, Renova, orchestrated Russia's first successful hostile takeover, of the Vladimir Tractor Factory, in 1994. Later bought medium-size aluminum smelters and bauxite mines and in 1996 united them into Sual Holding, Russia's second-largest aluminum company. Vekselberg made the bulk of his fortune when he and Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group took over TNK, which merged with BP in 2003; it is now Russia's second-largest private oil company. Last year bought the Forbes Fabergé collection for an undisclosed sum, promising to return it to Russia, where it is now touring. Now laying low to avoid Kremlin scrutiny.

Rem Vyakhirev The son of a blacksmith from the village of Bolshaya Chernigovka in the Samara region, Vyakhirev got his start as a graduate of the Kuibyshev Polytechnical Institute.
By the age of 31, he was head of an oil stabilizing plant. He spent the next 15 years managing oil extraction companies in the Orenburg region, where he first met future boss Viktor Chernomyrdin, the long-time prime minister who helped form Gazprom from the Soviet gas industry. In 1983, Vyakhirev was called to Moscow and appointed a deputy minister for oil and gas. Six years later, he became Chernomyrdin's deputy at Gazprom, then still state-owned. Gazprom was privatised in March 1993, the same month then-President Boris Yeltsin made Chernomyrdin his prime minister, and Vyakhirev ascended to the post of Gazprom director.Rem Vyakhirev became the head of Gazprom in 1993. Board members unanimously ousted Rem Vyakhirev from his nine-year position as head of natural gas monopoly Gazprom, the world's largest gas company. Vyakhirev's fate was seen as a crucial test of President Vladimir Putin's political will to reform the Russian economy. Vyakhirev was absolute ruler at Gazprom, answerable to no one but the president. Prime Minister Chernomyrdin helped his former colleague push forward an arsenal of government decrees and resolutions aimed at limiting the sale and purchase of Gazprom shares, and concentrating control in the hands of management. The result was a joint-stock company with unrivalled restrictions imposed upon the circulation of its shares.
**************
The Boris Yeltsin government hoped to use privatization to spread ownership of shares in former state enterprises as widely as possible to create political support for his government and his reforms. The government used a system of free vouchers as a way to give mass privatization a jump-start. But it also allowed people to purchase shares of stock in privatized enterprises with cash. Even though initially each citizen received a voucher of equal face value, within months most of them converged in the hands of intermediaries who were ready to buy them for cash right away.
As the government ended the voucher privatization phase and launched cash privatization, it devised a program that it thought would simultaneously speed up privatization and yield the government a much-needed infusion of cash for its operating needs. Under the scheme, which quickly became known in the West as "loans for shares", the Yeltsin regime auctioned off substantial packages of stock shares in some of its most desirable enterprises, such as energy, telecommunications, and metallurgical firms, as collateral for bank loans.
In exchange for the loans, Yeltsin handed over assets worth many times as much. Under the terms of the deals, if the Yeltsin government did not repay the loans by September 1996, the lender acquired title to the stock and could then resell it or take an equity position in the enterprise. The first auctions were held in the fall of 1995. The auctions themselves were usually held in such a way so to limit the number of banks bidding for shares and thus to keep the auction prices extremely low. By summer 1996, major packages of shares in some of Russia's largest firms had been transferred to a small number of major banks, thus allowing a handful of powerful banks to acquire substantial ownership shares over major firms at shockingly low prices. These deals were effectively giveaways of valuable state assets to a few powerful, well-connected, and wealthy financial groups. Russian Ministry of Finance and Central Bank provided special deposits (with low interest rate) to these major banks, so that they didn't face any problem with rising money for scheme.
The concentration of immense financial and industrial power, which loans for shares had assisted, extended to the mass media. One of the most prominent of the financial barons, Boris Berezovsky, who controlled major stakes in several banks and companies, exerted an extensive influence over state television programming for a while. Berezovsky and other ultra-wealthy, well-connected tycoons who controlled these great empires of finance, industry, energy, telecommunications, and media became known as the "Russian oligarchs". Along with Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Roman Abramovich, Vladimir Potanin, Vladimir Bogdanov, Rem Viakhirev, Vagit Alekperov, Viktor Chernomyrdin, Victor Vekselberg, and Mikhail Fridman emerged as Russia's most powerful and prominent oligarchs.
A tiny clique who used their connections built up during the last days of the Soviet years to appropriate Russia's vast resources during the rampant privatizations of the Yeltsin years, the oligarchs emerged as the most hated men in the nation. The Western world generally advocated a quick dismantling of the Soviet planned economy to make way for "free-market reforms," but later expressed disappointment over the newfound power and corruption of the "oligarchs."