Alisher Usmanov

Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov (Alisher Usmonov, Алишер Бурханович Усманов; born 9 September 1953) is an Uzbek–Russian businessman and oligarch.

By 2023, Usmanov had an estimated net worth of $14.5 billion and was among the world's 100 wealthiest people.

Usmanov made his wealth after the collapse of the Soviet Union, through metal and mining operations, and investments.

After first failing to be accepted, one year later he made the cut and was accepted to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, from which he graduated in 1976 with a degree in international law.

Usmanov then returned to Tashkent, where he was appointed director of the Foreign Economic Association of the Soviet Peace Committee.

He spent six years in a Soviet prison in the 1980s on charges of fraud and embezzlement, but his conviction was later overturned.

Usmanov was arrested and convicted on charges of fraud, corruption, and theft of state property, which charges included shaking down an Army officer, in Uzbek SSR in August 1980.

He was imprisoned in a remote Uzbek prison for six years of an eight-year sentence.

Usmanov worked as the Deputy General Director of Intercross JSC from 1990 to 1994, and from 1994 to 1998, he headed Interfin Interbank Investment and Finance Company.

Unlike Russia's tycoons who won control of empires through loans-for-share privatization schemes of the 1990s, Usmanov built up Metalloinvest through a series of acquisitions in the secondary market.

Usmanov, who is Muslim, married Jewish rhythmic gymnastics coach Irina Viner in 1992.

Viner is considered to be close to Putin, having introduced him to former rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva.

On May 4, 2022, Usmanov filed for divorce from Viner.

Usmanov became a dollar millionaire in the years before the Soviet Union collapsed.

He set up a privately owned for-profit company, cooperative Agroplast which produced plastic bags.

He enriched himself considerably after the collapse of the USSR, but always stressed that he never participated in the privatization of state property.

He also acted as an Adviser to the General Director of Moscow Aviation Industrial Enterprise from 1994 to 1995, and served as the First Deputy Chairman of MAPO-Bank from 1995 to 1997.

In 2000, he was eventually rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan, which ruled that the case against him was trumped up and no crime had been committed.

Usmanov was born in Uzbekistan in the provincial town of Chust.

He spent his childhood in the capital Tashkent, where his father was a state prosecutor.

Planning to pursue a career of a diplomat, he later moved to Moscow.

Three decades later, his conviction was vacated in July 2000, nine years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, by the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan, which ruled that "the original conviction was unjust, no crime was ever committed, and that the evidence was fabricated."

His version of events has been questioned by Craig Murray, the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004.

Years later, Usmanov's public relations firm tried to delete reference to his conviction and imprisonment from Wikipedia.

He is a shareholder of 49% of Metalloinvest, a Russian industrial conglomerate, which consolidated in 2006 JSC Metalloinvest's assets (Mikhailovsky GOK and Ural Steel) with those of Gazmetall JSC (Lebedinsky GOK and the Oskol Electrometallurgical Plant).

He owns the Kommersant publishing house.

He is also a co-owner of Russia's second-largest mobile telephone operator, MegaFon, and co-owner of Udokan copper which develops one of the largest copper deposits in the world.

Usmanov eventually teamed up with Yuri Milner and became the largest investor of Digital Sky Technologies ("DST").

He was the president of the Fédération Internationale d'Escrime, the international governing body of the sport of fencing, from 2008 until 2022.

On 28 February 2022, in reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union blacklisted Usmanov, imposing an EU-wide travel ban on him and freezing all his assets.

On 3 March, the United States imposed similar sanctions on him, with some exceptions for his companies.

Usmanov was named in the Official Journal of the European Union, the publication of record of the EU, as a "pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin [who is] one of Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs."

However Usmanov denied these allegations and filed a lawsuit against the Council in the European court in order to prove the invalidity of the accusations of the Council and lift the sanctions.

Proceedings in progress.

On 16 September 2010, Digital Sky Technologies (DST) changed its name to "Mail.ru Group".

He also holds shares of a number of international technology companies.

By the end of the 90s Usmanov was the General Director of Gazprom Invest Holdings, the investment-holding subsidiary of Russia's state-owned gas company Gazprom, and managed it for more than a decade; Usmanov left the company in 2014.

Usmanov has a 49% share in USM, a global conglomerate with its main investments in metals and mining industry, telecommunications and technology.

Through USM and as an individual investor, Usmanov owned diverse interests including stakes in iron ore and steel, media, and internet companies.

He is the co-owner of Metalloinvest, which he founded with business partner Vasiliy Anisimov, in order to manage his acquisitions in the metal industry.