Usmanov Alisher

Usmanov Alisher Full name:

Usmanov Alisher

Usmanov Alisher Date of Birth:

9 September 1953

Usmanov Alisher Citizenship:

Russia

Professional field Usmanov Alisher :

Russian-Uzbek oligarch, owner of USM Holdings

Usmanov Alisher biography:

USMANOV Alisher Burkhanovich (b. 1953) graduated from MGIMO with a degree in international law in 1976. His fellow student was Sergey Yastrzhembsky, the future press secretary and assistant to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. He worked as a research fellow at the USSR Academy of Sciences, senior assistant to the Central Committee of the Komsomol of Uzbekistan.

In 1980, Usmanov, along with his friends, the children of high-ranking Uzbekistan officials, was sentenced to 8 years in prison for extorting bribes and stealing state property through fraud. In 1986, he left the penal colony for parole, and for some time he worked as a patent specialist at the Institute of Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Andijan. Then, with the help of contacts acquired during his studies at MGIMO, he returned to Moscow, where he began working at the Foreign Economic Association of the Soviet Peace Committee, rising to the rank of the General Director.

In 1987, he established the Agroplast cooperative, which produced plastic bags and engaged in the wholesale supply of tobacco.
Between 1990 and 1994, he was the First Deputy General Director of Intercross, a member of the Board of the First Russian Independent Bank. In 1994–2001, he was Advisor to the General Director of the Moscow Aviation Production Association (MAPO), First Deputy Chairman of the Board of MAPO-Bank, General Director of CJSC MIFK Interfin, Member of the Board of Arkhangelskgeoldobycha, First Deputy General Director of Gazprominvestholding. From 2000 to 2014, he was General Director of Gazprominvestholding, a subsidiary of Gazprom.
Since 2006, he has been a Member of the Board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
Since 2006, he has been the owner of the Kommersant publishing house, and since 2008, a partner of Yuri Milner and shareholder of DST (Mail.ru Group).
In 2012, Usmanov, through AF Telecom, received a controlling stake in the communications giant Megafon. In the same year, with partners Vladimir Skoc and Farhad Moshiri, he founded the super-holding USM Holdings, combining Metalloinvest, MegaFon, Scartel, Mail.Ru Group, Disney Russia, and MUZ-TV.
Since 2008, he has been the President of the International Fencing Federation (FIE), re-elected in 2012 and 2016.

Usmanov Alisher crimes:

Cronyism, illegal enrichment, national and cross-border corruption, advancing political censorship and surveillance state in Russia.

The basis of Usmanov’s oligarchic capital was assets that he, together with business partners and with the support of high-ranking officials, established control over during the large-scale privatization of state enterprises carried out in Russia from the mid-1990s to the beginning of the 2000s. Among the billionaire’s influential friends is Dmitry Medvedev, as well as former first deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov and former Rosvooruzhenie general director Yevgeny Ananyev.

In March 2017, Alexei Navalny and the Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK) released a video called He Is Not Dimon For You, which provided proof of Usmanov's corrupt connections with the top leaders of Russia. In the following public discussion, Navalny shared a detailed report of how Usmanov made his billions from 1993 to 2002 through a fraudulent privatization scheme of several key Russian metallurgy companies.
Alexey Navalny commented, "When the shares of OEMK and Lebgok are repurchased from the state-owned Gazprom in your favor, it is called privatization. It used to be owned by the state, but now it belongs to Usmanov offshore. Also, the fact that the seller's company (Gazprominvestholding) was headed by Usmanov at the time creates a significant conflict of interest.
For three years in a row, from 2013 to 2015, Usmanov was the wealthiest man in Russia, as per Forbes. His personal wealth in 2015 was around $18.6 billion. Bloomberg ranked Usmanov as the richest Russian in 2012, estimating his fortune at $20 billion. That same year, he was listed among the top 100 most influential people in the world by Forbes and among the top 50 most influential people by Bloomberg Markets Magazine. By the end of 2018, Alisher Usmanov's fortune was valued at $12.6 billion. For several years, he was one of the richest residents of Great Britain and Switzerland.

Alisher Usmanov was implicated in scandals involving his attempts to influence the media and limit freedom of speech.

In 2007, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray published the results of an investigation claiming that Alisher Usmanov "was not a political prisoner, but was a bandit and racketeer who rightfully spent six years in prison." With the assistance of lawyers, the oligarch succeeded in removing damaging information from internet sites and blocking web resources that refused to remove it.
In 2011, Usmanov, as the owner of Kommersant Publishing House, personally tried to suppress the publication of a photo of the ballot paper with offensive messages addressed to Vladimir Putin in the Kommersant-Vlast magazine, and then managed to remove the editor-in-chief Maxim Kovalsky and CEO of the holding Andrey Galiev.
In 2012, The Times reported that Usmanov hired the London-based PR company RLM Finsbury, which edited an article about Usmanov on the English Wikipedia, deleting information about Usmanov's criminal charges and other negative reviews.
In 2016, Usmanov lost his tax resident status in Russia because he was abroad for too long. Forbes suggested that the real reason was the intention to minimize taxes due to changes in Russian legislation on the control of foreign companies.
In 2018, Usmanov was mentioned in the Kremlin Report of the US Treasury, a list of 210 officials, politicians, and businessmen close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In August 2019, it became known that the Citadel holding associated with Alisher Usmanov tripled its revenue for 2018, and also absorbed four competitors, becoming a super-monopolist in the market of “operational-search measures” (SORM), developed in the interests of Russia’s state security services for total control of mobile and Internet traffic. According to RBC, the Citadel occupied 60 to 80 percent of the wiretap market. The company is part of IKS Holdings of Anton Cherepennikov, a partner of Usmanov.
Indirect evidence of Usmanov’s complicity in the establishment and functioning of the criminal regime is his receipt of the highest state awards, including orders of Merit for the Fatherland, orders of Honor and Alexander Nevsky, as well as official gratitudes from the President and Government of the Russian Federation.