Full name:
Aven Petr
Aven Petr Date of Birth
16 March 1955
Aven Petr Citizenship
Russia
Aven Petr Professional field/official position
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alfa Banking Group (commonly known as Alfa-Bank), co-founder of the LetterOne investment firm.
Aven Petr biography
Aven Pyotr Olegovich was born on 16th March 1955 in Moscow. In 1997 he graduated from the School (Faculty) of Economics and received his graduate degree at the Department of Mathematical Methods in Economic Analysis.
- In 1980 he earned a postgraduate degree in Economics (Candidate of Sciences diploma, quasi-equal to Ph.D. in Economics). While studying at Moscow State University, he met Mr. Mikhail Fridman, who later became his business partner.
- From 1981 to 1988, he worked for the Institute of System Studies of the State Committee for Science and Technology and for the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Originally, he served as a junior research fellow, and later became a senior research fellow, where he encountered Mr. Yegor Gaidar. In 1989, he left the USSR with a contract with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, located in Laxenburg, Austria, and served as a research fellow until 1991.
- In late 1991, Mr. Yegor Gaidar offered him the position of chairman of the Committee on Foreign Economic Relations, concurrently with the position of First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1992, he was appointed as the head of the newly-established Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations of the Russian Federation, and was subsequently named as the official representative of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the Group of Seven (the most advanced economies and developed states in the world).
- In December 1992, following Gaidar’s resignation, Pyotr Aven also left his position. During the same period, he was appointed as an adviser to the Corporate President (quasi-CEO) of the JSC LogoVAZ Mr. Boris Berezovsky, and held this role until the end of February 1993.
- In 1993, Pyotr Aven established and managed the consultancy firm FinPA (Finances of Pyotr Aven). FinPA regularly provided counsel to Mikhail Fridman’s company Alfa Bank.
- In 1994, he exchanged 50% of FinPA's total shares for 10% of Alfa Bank’s total shares via bilateral stock swap. That same year, he was appointed as the Corporate President of Alfa Bank.
- In 1998, alongside banking operations, Pyotr Aven was elected to the Board of Directors of Samara-based OJSC Aviakor, and was appointed as the chairman of the Board of Directors of the television holding CJSC Alfa-TV and CJSC Set’ Televizionnykh Stantsiy (STS) / CTC Media.
- Since 2001, Mr. Aven has held top managerial positions at Alfa Banking Group. Additionally, since 2007, he has served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the insurance company Alfa Strakhovanie.
Aven Petr crimes
Criminal abuse and misconduct in public office, corruption, economic and financial crime, gross interference in internal affairs of the foreign sovereign state.
In the early 1990s, there were well-documented allegations in the media that Mr. Pyotr Aven, “using his official public position and classified inside information,” was involved in numerous transactions related to the USSR’s public debt. According to reports, he received kick-back commissions and expensive gifts for conducting deals and facilitating transactions in foreign trade for foreign companies.
He was also accused of performing lobbying activities for the Russian Government, with the goal of persuading the decision to significantly increase customs duties on imported cars. The main beneficiary was supposed to be Mr. Boris Berezovsky's JSC LogoVAZ.
In 1998, reporters from the Sovershenno Sekretno newspaper accused Pyotr Aven of unlawfully obtaining a state villa in Barvikha. In the Moscow-area settlement of Zhukovka, it was claimed that Vladimir Ryabenko, the Director General of the State Unitary Enterprise Zhukovka Health and Wellness Centre Facility, officially arranged for the undervalued sale of the villa to Pyotr Aven. The sale was linked to Aven's supposed investments in the construction of Zhukovka facilities. The transaction involved Alfa bank services and was structured as an investment contribution to avoid additional taxes and fees.
In 1997, the former Head of Nizhnevartovskneftegaz, Viktor Paliy, accused Alfa Bank of aggressive and illegal privatization of TNK/ Tyumen Oil Company. Pyotr Aven was accused of colluding with the Chairman of the State Committee for State Property Management Goskomimushchestvo, Alfred Kokh, to secure the acquisition of TNK’s shares at a significantly reduced cost, resulting in losses of about 1.4 billion USD for the State Treasury.
In 2006, IPOC Capital Partners, Ltd. filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.) against Alfa Banking Group, particularly targeting Pyotr Aven, Mikhail Fridman, Leonid Rozhetskin and Hans Bodmer. The lawsuit was brought under the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Act), alleging the creation of a wide-reaching network of misappropriated funds and illegal acquisition of shares. IPOC Capital Partners, Ltd. sought to recover stolen shares and 150 million USD in damages.
In 2017, BuzzFeed published a report, based on information from a former SIS-MI6 British agent who had worked for political opponents of Donald Trump in the Democratic and Republican Parties. The report claimed that Alfa Bank was involved in Russian network’s efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It also alleged that Alfa Bank and its representatives collaborated with the “Kremlin interference campaign in U.S. elections” and that “Mr. Fridman and Mr. Aven informally provide financial and political advice to Vladimir Putin, especially on U.S. topics”. Alfa-Bank denied this information in U.S. Court, stating that BuzzFeed's claims were an attempt at media harassment.
In April 2019 the U.S. Department of Justice published a redacted version of the Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 presidential election of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The report states that co-owner of Alfa Banking Group and co-founder of the investment firm LetterOne Pyotr Aven testified that in late 2016 he had given promises to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would establish channels of communication between Moscow and Donald Trump’s future administration. After Trump’s victory, Pyotr Aven gave Richard R. Burt, member of LetterOne’s Board of Directors, an assignment to find contacts in the transitional administration. This assignment was given shortly after Putin’s meeting with Russia’s richest businessmen and tycoons in Kremlin and a few weeks later after Aven’s personal meeting with the Russian leader face-to-face.
