Banker Oleg Kantor is killed to read. Bankers of old toilet bowls. "Be more compliant and don't leave from under the roof"

Three mysterious murders

The Piccadilly restaurant at the very beginning of Leninsky Prospekt is not, frankly speaking, a favorite place for operatives of the central office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Located a hundred meters from the building on Zhitnaya (the office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation), it used to be a very popular place for high-ranking officers for dinners, festive feasts and business meetings. Earlier ... Until the Internal Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB Department of Internal Security installed a wiretap at several tables. Nikolai Petrovich categorically refused to go to Piccadilly. Therefore, we met with the general of the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, let's call him Nikolai Petrovich, in the youth "Shokoladnitsa" on Yakimanka, right opposite the service entrance to his home department. Sitting at one of the tables next to some students, we talked in a half-whisper. Many generals have retained this manner, apparently since Soviet times. It would be better if they were talking in whispers in Piccadilly. During our conversation, I had to ask Nikolai Petrovich again several times, and then I transcribed the dictaphone record for several hours. Well, what can you do: conspiracy!

“You see, it’s wrong to say that the Chernykh had a“ roof ”among the criminals. Rather, the opposite is true. It was Misha who made connections in the gangster world. Of course, they were essential for business at the time. First of all, Cherny had acquaintances in the Izmailovskaya and Golyanovskaya organized crime groups. The Izmailovskys had such a leader - Oleg Ivanov, an authority from Kazan. By the way, his fate is unknown to me. Has disappeared somewhere. But at the request of Lev and Mikhail, he dragged his lads to Siberia to conquer the aluminum market. At the same time, I would not exaggerate the personality of the second leader - Anton Malevsky. Yes, he was always in authority, but he was above all a good organizer, an athlete, he was friends with tennis player Zhenya Kafelnikov, with Shamil Tarpishchev. In 1997, the Prosecutor General's Office, together with the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, tried to establish connections between the Cherny brothers and large organized crime groups, the backbone of which were the Golyanovskaya and Izmailovskaya guys. A lot of interesting things came to light. For example, the fact that the Blacks used openly criminal schemes for their business - money from the common fund of groups, cheap loans from criminalized banks and, of course, false advice notes. They wrote about this in books and in the press. This, in fact, was their initial capital, with the help of which the seizure of metallurgical enterprises was subsequently carried out. But who used whom? It was not the bandits who profited from this in the first place. They got scraps and were mostly executors of their business leaders' plans. The then Minister of Internal Affairs Anatoly Kulikov at one time confirmed that the showdown in Krasnoyarsk and Bratsk took place with the active participation of the Moscow lads. But you better talk to him about this yourself. I can say for sure that Misha Cherny, for example, actively used thieves in law. There was such a thief Tyurik. A lot has been said about their relationship, if I am not mistaken, in the special police literature. Yes, you can find it in open sources. Tyurik, using his connections with the leaders of, for example, the Bratsk Aluminum Plant, was responsible for the supply of aluminum to the London Stock Exchange through the Israeli, Spanish and American firms controlled by him. And for the supply of raw materials to the same Bratsk and Krasnoyarsk factories, when they were under the control of the Chernykh, Uzbek thieves Gafur and Salim were responsible. The same Anton Malevsky is more connected with Mikhail Cherny because both lived together for a long time in Israel, and because they had a common friend - Alik Taiwanchik, Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov. He introduced them. By the way, Mikhail was once even arrested in Switzerland for this "friendship", but then released. (I will have to hear this mysterious story about the passport more than once. - Auth.). But the "roof", in fact, if you mean the aluminum business itself, were, of course, the brothers themselves. They did not allow anyone to get to the “tip of the iceberg”. Neither Anton, nor even Tyurik. They just worked for them. The brothers themselves shared their roles. For example, Mikhail maintained contacts with the political establishment, with politicians and was responsible for security and external relations. A lot has been said about this by Anatoly Kulikov. I can find for you a transcript of his speech at a meeting of the State Duma. There are names and names of companies. However, we could not go far. Many important witnesses who could tell the truth about how the aluminum business was done in those years died under strange circumstances.

We talked with Nikolai Petrovich for about forty minutes more. When we parted, I was sure that I still really need his help. It is only interesting why he categorically refused to speak in his office on Zhitnaya Street. Are there still ears there too? Or is the topic itself still so scary even for a general of the Ministry of Internal Affairs?

I stayed in the cafe to try to analyze what I had heard. So, the police were well aware that in 1992-1993, two major economic acts of sabotage were taking place in parallel. On the one hand, the washing of black cash in the aluminum industry, accompanied by the massive export abroad of the "winged metal" that has become gratuitous. On the other hand, hundreds of billions of rubles were stolen from the state treasury using the notorious advice notes. According to the investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there could be a single think tank for carrying out these business sabotages. But the law enforcement agencies could not go far in their investigations. And that's why. At first, the "counterfeit money" was driven directly to aluminum enterprises, later they preferred to carry out the cash withdrawal through a cascade of shell-based one-day firms. And the patterns of operations were so convoluted that when they discovered fraud, investigators simply could not determine who was the injured party! In this sea of ​​offshore companies, as Alexander Dobrovinsky once told me, only one company, registered somewhere in Monte Carlo or on the Isle of Man, could bring profit to a real business owner. Interestingly, in the business history of Mikhail Cherny it was also like this, and only one small firm somewhere in the Virgin Islands made him a real billionaire? But how to find traces of this company without knowing the whole scheme? Inside the group of "aluminum kings", the law enforcement agencies did not have their own person.

Another complication: as soon as the detectives found one of the key figures in this multi-stage business scam, soon this man was either overtaken by a killer's bullet, or he died in a car accident. Aluminum managers Igor Beletsky and Alexander Borisov, who made fake advice notes on behalf of Sobinvest, and Deputy Chairman of Roskommet Yury Koletnikov, who oversaw the aluminum industry, ended their lives under the wheels of a car. In addition, the "cooperation" of offshore businessmen with Siberian factories was accompanied by countless criminal showdowns. In Krasnoyarsk alone, five "aluminum generals" were killed. The famous businessman Vadim Yafyasov, who worked on behalf of the Cherny brothers with NkAZ (Novokuznetsk), was also killed. Yes, the same Yafyasov, the main witness in the advice note case. In the summer of 1993, I would say, he found himself in a very difficult situation when the law enforcement authorities found out that the transfer of 900 million rubles to the factory account was made using a fake advice note from Dagestan. Yafyasov immediately left NkAZ for the Yugorsky Bank and for a while disappeared from the field of vision of his former “partners”. Then, according to the operatives, Vadim nevertheless agreed to tell about several economic scams to the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the General Prosecutor's Office. Perhaps Yafyasov really could have clarified a lot to the investigators, but on April 10, 1995, as reported by news agencies, “in the courtyard of a house on Kutuzovsky Prospect, two unknown criminals shot a BMW-750 car in which Vadim Yafyasov, the vice-president of the Yugorsky bank, was driving, just appointed Deputy General Director for Foreign Economic Relations of the Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Smelter, where the bank recently bought a significant block of shares. Later, the only surviving victim of the crime - the driver Vadim Tishaev - was able to provide some important details. About two days before the incident, he was with Yafyasov in the banker's apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. At eight in the evening the phone rang. The driver did not know the content of the conversation and the name of the subscriber, but noted that after the call, Yafyasov was clearly nervous and behaved tensely. The operatives found out that a few days before the murder, they began to follow Yafyasov's car. He was constantly accompanied by a red BMW car. The detectives not without difficulty found out the name of the man who was pursuing Yafyasov. According to the Criminal Investigation Department, it turned out to be the representative of TWG in Russia, Alexander Borisov. True, during the interrogation, he completely disowned the company of the Cherny brothers, stating that he had organized his own business long ago, that he had a conversation with Yafyasov on the topic of joint business, and it was of a peaceful, friendly nature. However, the investigation, as noted by the FLB news agency, had somewhat different information. On the eve of his death, the mortally frightened Yafyasov met with the president of the Yugorsky bank Oleg Kantor. Yafyasov said that it was about a package of state shares in the Achinsk alumina refinery. A spokesman for the Cherny brothers' firm allegedly threatened Yafyasov, saying that he was “sentenced” for the fact that Yugorsky Bank began to claim assets in the aluminum industry that were controlled by the Cherny brothers. But the investigators were unable to find out anything else. The murderer of Yafyasov, as usual, was not found.

Interestingly, in 1995, the same Yafyasov, while working at the Yugorsky Bank, began lobbying for the interests of one American industrial group (AIOC), the main competitor of the very Trans-Cis Commodities, whose activities were controlled by Mikhail Cherny. Yafyasov began to greatly interfere with someone. But his death was only the first in a series of defendants or witnesses in the aluminum cases. Shortly after Vadim's death, Oleg Kantor, president of the Yugorsky bank, was brutally murdered. In July 1995, he was stabbed to death by unknown criminals on the doorstep of his own house. Such a death should have horrified, intimidated those who found out the details about it - except for the throat cut from ear to ear, the killer ripped open the banker's chest, inflicted about two dozen deep wounds on him, and to top it off, stuck the weapon of the crime in the victim's chest. Oleg Kantor's dacha in the village of Snegiri was literally covered in his blood. Kantor's bodyguard, a professional bodyguard and a former Afghan, was also killed. It is interesting that the banker's widow Olesya, after a few years, will turn into ... the common-law wife of Leonid Nevzlin, a top manager of Yukos, whose Bank Menatep was Mikhail Cherny's largest financial partner. The Irony of Fate...

The investigators, who carefully studied all the circumstances of the case and the situation in the Yugorsky Bank, came to an unambiguous conclusion: the banker's murder was connected with his plans to obtain controlling stakes in the Krasnoyarsk and Bratsk aluminum plants. There was also a direct connection with the murder of Kantor's partner, Vadim Yafyasov. The press also repeatedly expressed an opinion that only confirms the story of my interlocutor from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The murders of Yafyasov and Kantor are linked, they are links in the same chain leading to offshore business. The revelations of the former president of the National Sports Fund Boris Fedorov shed new light on this story. A recording of his private conversations was published in a Moscow newspaper. (The history of the appearance of this entry should be told separately, but a little later.) The sports functionary spoke openly about some commercial relations between the Cherny brothers and Shamil Tarpishchev, Mikhail Barsukov, then director of the FSB of Russia, and the head of the Russian President's Security Service Alexander Korzhakov. Fedorov also hinted that the "presidential favorites" knew who killed Oleg Kantor and why ... Fedorov also mentioned the murder of a certain Felix. Probably, they were talking about Felix Lvov, who headed the Russian office of AIOC, a large industrial group, one of the largest Western aluminum traders. The story of his murder has surfaced several times during my interviews with various people in the course of this investigation. It is known, and Nikolai Petrovich confirmed it to me, that Lvov at some point began to cooperate with the Russian special services, helping them to collect dirt on the "aluminum generals". He managed to tell a lot about the Cherny brothers. Alexander Maksimov, author of the book “Russian Crime. Who is who? ", Which I have already mentioned:

“Lvov probably paid for the information about the Chernykh brothers. Killers who showed the crusts of some special services officers kidnapped him right at the airport, in the passport control area. Considering that a year and a half before his death, Felix sent a statement to the Prosecutor General's Office with accusations against the Cherny brothers, he most likely was no longer a tenant. In May 1995, he spoke at a hearing in the State Duma. In September, he was killed. Mikhail Cherny was involved in the criminal case for the murder of Lvov, but the case itself was slowed down. It is interesting that, being an employee of the AIOK company, Lvov was engaged in the supply of electrodes to the Krasnoyarsk plant and trade in aluminum, and it was his interests, to the detriment of the Cherny brothers, that Vadim Yafyasov lobbied at KrAZ. This murder is also connected with the murder of Kantor. "

In the reports of the Russian press, I was able to find another curious fact linking together all three murders. What did the news agencies report?

“On September 6, 1995, accompanied by security guards, Lvov arrived at Sheremetyevo airport. After paperwork for the flight, the security officers left. Lvov passed the pre-flight security turnstile and was in the box with other passengers. When 15 minutes remained before departure, two men approached him. They introduced themselves as FSB officers and, presenting their IDs, invited Lvov to follow them. The last time all three were seen leaving the airport. Two days later, Lvov's body was found on the side of the Volokolamskoe highway on a heap of garbage with five gunshot wounds.

Investigators immediately linked the death of Lvov with the Trans-Cis Commodities case, since the murdered man repeatedly, including at the hearings in the State Duma "On the state of privatization in the aluminum industry" on May 30, 1995, categorically opposed the participation of the company of the Cherny brothers in this business in Russia. And shortly before his death, Lvov, as the Russian press has repeatedly stated, handed over some materials to the investigation team on the murders of Oleg Kantor and Vadim Yafyasov, in which Oleg Soskovets and the Cherny brothers appeared. The materials clearly showed the conflict of these characters with the murdered financiers due to the redistribution of the aluminum industry, as well as the participation of Deputy Prime Minister Soskovets in the activities of the Cherny brothers. Moreover, the operatives managed to record the testimony of Lvov, where he argued that the murders were connected with aluminum cases and Trans-Cis Commodities. He also said that the Cherny brothers have extensive connections among crime bosses, maintain contacts with the special services of Uzbekistan, primarily through the leaders of local organized crime groups Gafur and Salim, as well as their childhood friend Taiwanchik. All of them helped the Cherny ones to establish a criminal "roof" over KrAZ. For these revelations, Lvov was openly threatened more than once by the same representatives of Trans-Cis.

And in July 1995, immediately after the terrible death of Kantor, an event took place that can be interpreted as the last warning. Unidentified persons kidnapped his driver Volin from the office of the Lviv Forward company and kept him in an unidentified place for several days, after which they released him with a demand to hand over the threat of reprisals to Lvov.

Another mysterious and unexplained history of the aluminum wars is connected with the Cherny brothers. After the murder of Yafyasov, a certain person came to the operative who was involved in this criminal case in the service of the criminal militia of the Western District. Having presented a certificate of a current FSB officer, he, without drawing up the documents required in such cases, seized photographs of the Cherny brothers. When the security officer asked how to find an FSB officer, if there was a need for photographs, he replied that he would find him himself, if necessary. During a subsequent check, it turned out that there had never been a counterintelligence officer with such a surname in the FSB. It is believed that it was this fake FSB officer who entered the territory of the strictly guarded Snegiri complex and killed Kantor. He also took part in the abduction and murder of Lvov. None of these murders have been solved in Russia. "

Boris Fedorov told about all these murders! He knew the whole story perfectly. The revelations of the former sports functionary were extremely dangerous and immediately after publication they suggested that Fedorov could be in danger ... Boris Fedorov was first wounded when an attempt was made on his life in the center of Moscow, and then ... died unexpectedly, allegedly from drug overdose. In this version, however, very few people believed.

Here is what information appeared after his death in news agencies, when journalists began to look for a motive for the murder of a former sports functionary:

“In June 1996, in the center of Moscow, President of the National Sports Fund Boris Fedorov was wounded by a bullet and four stabs, who had recently refused to cooperate with Trans World and had made public some information about the business of Cherny and his partners in Russia. On the night of April 24, 1999, Fyodorov, under unexplained circumstances, suddenly died in his home in Moscow ... "

Fedorov, in his monologue published in the press, also hinted at the connection of the sports functionary Shamil Tarpishchev with the leaders of the Izmailovo group and with the Cherny brothers. Subsequently, a videotape confirming this appeared on NTV. The recording made at Ben Gurion Airport has already been mentioned. Yes, this is the same tape on which Tarpishchev's cart is being pushed in front of them by Anton Malevsky and Mikhail Cherny. Later, Vladimir Gusinsky, owner of NTV and the Most media empire, admitted that the recording was made by his security personnel. The scandal was very serious. In part, it was this material of NTV that prompted Anatoly Kulikov, the Minister of Internal Affairs, to speak at a meeting of the State Duma with a report in which it was mainly about the Cherny brothers. It was about this report that Nikolai Petrovich told me that morning in the Shokoladnitsa cafe.

I dialed his phone number again and asked to quickly find the transcript of Kulikov's speech, and at the same time continue our conversation. Nikolai Petrovich, as I expected, promised to help. But first I needed to find out what made Boris Fedorov so openly oppose Mikhail Cherny in the press. I knew that the history of Fedorov himself, both as a businessman and as president of the National Sports Fund, is not perfect. The fund received just when it was headed by Shamil Tarpishchev (Fedorov's predecessor in this post), crazy benefits - it was exempted from customs duties, traded in cigarettes and alcohol imported from abroad. The money was made on this simply colossal. Until that very scandal broke out with the recorded conversation of Fedorov ...

RECENTLY the Lipetsk Regional Court sentenced members of an interregional gang of killers who specialized in contract killings. Initially, Vlad Listyev, Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Mikhail Manevich, "authority" Maxim Smirnyagin, patron of athletes Otari Kvantrishvili, aluminum "kings": Oleg Kantor, Vadim Yafyasov and Felix Lvov were listed on the long list of their victims. The operatives hoped to shed light on these and other killings.

The detectives learned about the EXISTENCE of this gang at the end of 97th. Alexander Vasilisin, nicknamed Malysh, was taken to the St. Petersburg jail for a drunken brawl. Sleeping asleep, he boasted to his cellmates: “I know people who have more“ mokrukhs ”than hair on their heads! This information immediately reached the operatives. Of the 80 members of the gang, only eight were able to be imprisoned. The leader of the organized criminal group, Andrei Chelyshev (Ferganets), received 20 years in prison.

At the customer's hook

OUR correspondent managed to meet with Chelyshev in Lipetsk SIZO 48/1. A short-term meeting, one hour long, took place over the phone. We were separated by two rows of thick glass with metal bars and a corridor through which the escort walked. Chelyshev said that if he didn’t like a question, he would immediately end the date. But, apparently, in the 5 and a half years spent behind bars, he wanted to talk. Not under the record. No protocol.

“I didn't expect how easy it would be to become a murderer. In 1991, Sergei's nephew came to the Leningrad Region to visit. We sat in a cafe and discussed our penniless life. "authorities" Sergei Yakovlev (Fandora) and Sergei Popov (Pop) One businessman should have been intimidated.

Then one of my Ferghana acquaintances asked me to get my nephew out of prison. There was no money, and the service required $ 200 thousand. I borrowed it from a Moscow general at interest for a year. An escape was organized for the nephew of the "sidekick". And two months later, a little man came to me from the general and demanded that the grandmother be returned. Appointed an "arrow" in Moscow. I could not give the money. And he agreed to "routinely" carry out their delicate assignments.

For 8 years our victims were mainly businessmen and "authorities". After each completed "order" the general deducted $ 5 thousand from me. But not all "work" came from the military "godfather". Moscow oil businessman Vladimir Rogovoy interfered with the "overseer" of the Tambov region, nicknamed Monya. We were paid $ 7,000 for his murder. We always took the money in advance. For one murder, you could earn from 7 to 25 thousand dollars.

"Mokruha"

FOR EXAMPLE, for the murder of the Michurin "authority" Vladimir Rogachev, Fandor paid off generously - 10 thousand dollars per brother. We, of course, tried our best. They came up with a whole plan. Rogachev always drove three cars with guards along the same route. We dug a small hole. They camouflaged it under the asphalt, and when Rogachev's motorcade drove up, the Kid climbed out of the pit and filled it up from the Kalash.

As for the murders of Listyev, Manevich and Otarik, I know who did it. But these people are no longer alive. "

“You have five minutes left,” said the escort. The Fergana resident quickly blurted out at parting: "I am scared. Every day I expect to be killed. I know too many and many. They will definitely get me."

P. S. At the very beginning of the trial, it turned out that 15 of the 38 volumes of the criminal case against the Fergana gang were damaged. Getting acquainted with the case, the criminals diligently crossed out with a pen their previous testimonies on the execution of "orders", schemes-scenarios of operations, tore out not only entire pages, but also partially their signatures on them. Therefore, eight members of the gang received "soft" sentences for over one hundred contract killings - from 3 to 20 years. The bandits did not surrender the main customer - the general -.

The story told to our correspondent by Chelyshev about his gang of killers seems to be nothing more than a fiction. Indeed, in fact, an ordinary executor of contract murders receives $ 1–2.5 thousand for his work. The interest of the younger generation in this "scarce" profession is specially fueled by criminal gangs, and such legends are formed to attract "new personnel." And there is no criminal romance with its fabulous income. And there is the dry prose of life: for the murder of the deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Viktor Novoselov in October 1999, the killer - former paratrooper Alexander Malysh - received a thousand dollars and 16 years in a strict regime colony. The murderer of the deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Sergei Yushenkov, Alexander Kulachinsky, will have to spend 20 years on the bunk. The price of his "work" is $ 2,000. The killer of the former president of the children's sports club "Sibiryak" in Omsk, Marat Sadykov, Gor Avokyan, and the "customer" Igor Klimenk were sentenced to 13 years in prison. A thousand dollars is the price of life and death. The famous Kurgan killer of the 20th century, Alexander Solonik, found his last refuge in a Greek cemetery. Alexei Gusev strangled him by order of the leader of the "Orekhovskaya group" Sergei Butorin in 1997 in a villa in Greece, where Solonik was hiding from Russian justice at that time. For his work, the "mokrushnik" was paid $ 2,500. Now he is in a strict regime colony, where the court sentenced him to 15 years. Dozens of "one-time" assassins were killed themselves after they made a control shot at their victim.

Vyacheslav Vladimirovich Kantor (Moshe Kantor) - entrepreneur, philanthropist, founder, main beneficiary and now head of the coordinating council of PJSC Acron, an agrochemical holding company, which includes the following assets: Akron itself in Veliky Novgorod, Dorogobuzh located near Smolensk, and there are also several mining companies developing deposits in the Perm Territory, the Murmansk Region and Canada. Until 2016, Vyacheslav Kantor's Acron group also included the Hongri-Akron Chinese agrochemistry plant, the shares of which it was later decided to sell to an investment company in Hong Kong.

In addition, Vyacheslav Kantor is a prominent public figure on the world stage. With his active life position and competent approach, Vyacheslav Kantor won the sympathy of the largest Jewish communities, with which most of his social activities are associated.

Today he is the permanent president of the European Jewish Congress, the head of the non-governmental International Luxembourg Forum on the Prevention of Nuclear Catastrophe, which he himself convened in 2007. He is the President of the European Council for Tolerance and Reconciliation (established in 2008) together with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Early years. Education

The future owner of Akron was born in Moscow on September 8, 1953. Vyacheslav Kantor's parents were engaged in trade and achieved significant success in this - Vyacheslav's father Vladimir Kantor rose to the post of director of the Moscow Sokolniki department store.

Despite the inherited entrepreneurial vein, Vyacheslav initially gave his interest to science and after graduating from school he applied to study at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI).

In 1967, Vyacheslav Kantor received the long-awaited diploma of a systems engineer, but decided to pursue a career in the scientific field and, following a specialist diploma, took up an academic degree. Kantor successfully defended his dissertation on spacecraft control and received a Ph.D. in technical sciences.

Vyacheslav Kantor and the Kurchatov Institute intend to develop science

The next few years were spent in research work in scientific laboratories, including the research center of his native MAI. Among other projects, Vyacheslav Kantor actively worked on the development of a reflector satellite, which was supposed to be used to reflect sunlight for illumination at night. As part of this project, Kantor, together with academician Zhores Alferov, wrote a scientific article: their joint work "The Sun Shines at Night" in 1981 appeared on the pages of the newspaper "Pravda".

In 1986, Vyacheslav Kantor left his scientific path and stepped into business, however, it is worth noting that his project was still partially implemented - in 1993 the Znamya-2 reflector was tested, which Kantor, by his own admission, observed from the position investor, but with no less interest.

Vyacheslav Kantor: starting a business

The first steps of Vyacheslav Kantor in business fell on the years of Perestroika. Having chosen a sphere close to his technical turn of mind, in the late 80s he headed Intelmas (Intelligent Systems and Materials), a Soviet-American project for the implementation and maintenance of computer networks, as well as monitoring and auditing of industrial enterprises.

It was the environmental audit that led Vyacheslav Kantor to the main business project of his life - the creation of the Akron holding. In 1992-93, Intelmas specialists had to assess the environmental safety of the state-owned enterprise for the production of fertilizers "Azot" in Novgorod. The check was passed successfully, and Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor himself, having met the industrial giant, thought about the prospects for its development and possible modernization. The ideas were put into practice - in 1993, Kantor acquired a third of the shares of the enterprise he liked at the first check auction in the history of the Novgorod region as part of the national privatization program.

A year later, the Smolensk JSC Dorogobuzh, a former state-owned enterprise for the production of mineral fertilizers, joined the first and main asset of Kantor's joint-stock company. In 2005, the Chinese plant for the production of complex fertilizers "Hongzhi-Akron" joined the holding.

It is worth noting that the focus on international expansion and export has become an innovation for the former state-owned enterprises of the mineral industry. Before the arrival of Vyacheslav Kantor and his team, Azot was not engaged in export, but with the development of the holding and competent management, Akron gradually took one of the leading positions in the international market, which it retains to this day. China's market, the largest in the world, is not least in Akron's trade policy; even with the sale of Hongri-Akron in 2016, Vyacheslav Kantor does not stop contacts with his Chinese colleagues and interested buyers.

The secret of Akron's success is its raw material independence, which is still at the forefront of its business strategy today. It was in pursuit of this goal that Acron's subsidiary, CJSC North-West Phosphoric Company (NWPC), was created in 2005, under whose auspices the development of a phosphate raw material base began in the Murmansk region, where NWPC won an auction giving the right to develop deposit of apatite-nepheline ore.

The Oleniy Ruchey mining and processing plant was erected on the site. The launch ceremony for the first stage took place in 2012. By 2013, Acron had achieved self-sufficiency in phosphate raw materials. By 2016, the plant reached its design capacity.

The next project of Kantor and Akron to provide their own raw materials was the development of the Talitsky area, which is part of the Verkhnekamsky deposit of potassium and magnesium salts. The holding received a license to carry out the above-mentioned works in 2008. The construction of its own mining and processing plant is similarly planned on the site.

Acron's investment programs and projects have repeatedly become part of government programs for the development of industry in the Russian Federation, which confirms the high level of development and competent implementation of innovations in the holding. Vyacheslav Kantor in 2016 was awarded the Order of Honor of the Russian Federation, which he was awarded for the achieved labor results and many years of successful work.

Social activities of Vyacheslav Kantor

Without hesitation, one can add to the list of Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor's merits his social activities, which are based on the principles of equality, tolerance, and the fight against xenophobia in any of its manifestations.

For many years Vyacheslav Kantor actively interacted with world Jewish communities, including FEOR. In 2002, he took part in organizing a landmark event for Veliky Novgorod - the opening of a synagogue. Delegates to the European Jewish Congress attending the ceremony noticed an active member of the community and discussed with Kantor the possibility of working together. So Vyacheslav Kantor joined the EJC Board of Trustees, taking up cultural programs there.

Having headed the Russian Jewish Congress in 2005, Vyacheslav Kantor expanded his sphere of activity to Europe and in 2007 became the first ever Russian president of the European Jewish Congress. In 2008, 2012 and 2016 he was re-elected, which proves the support of his activities by the Jewish communities of Europe.

Vyacheslav Kantor's many-sided large-scale activities also touch upon the problems of the nuclear threat, charity, preserving the historical memory of the events of World War II and the tragedy of the Holocaust, as well as establishing mutual understanding between representatives of different peoples. According to Vyacheslav Kantor himself, today social activities occupy him more than direct business, but all this is interconnected in his life, and in any of his work he follows the same values: respect, tolerance and safety.

Personal life of Vyacheslav Kantor

The personal life of Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor has long and happily been arranged: he is married to Anna Kantor. The couple are raising four sons and a daughter. Vyacheslav Kantor does not particularly talk about his personal life, as well as about the life of his wife and children.

It is known that Vyacheslav Kantor's son Vladimir holds the position of vice-president of Akrone. According to Vyacheslav Kantor, his son began his work in the holding from lower positions and achieved his position himself, showing interest in his father's business, which he taught him almost from childhood, and showing excellent managerial skills.

One of the main and most famous hobbies of Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor is collecting works of art. The businessman gives particular preference to avant-garde artists of the former USSR, especially of Jewish origin. According to experts, Kantor owns the most impressive collection of paintings from the avant-garde era. In 2001, this collection became the basis for the creation, at the initiative of Kantor, of the Museum of Avant-garde Art (MAGMA).

Vyacheslav Kantor now

In 2017, Forbes magazine analysts estimated the fortune of Vyacheslav Kantor at 3.1 billion rubles, which put the owner of Akron in 35th place in the ranking of the richest Russian businessmen.

On a summer night, an executive car stopped at the building of school # 2 in Ust-Labinsk. A young man with a short hair jumped out of it and quickly ran through the floors past stacks of boards and rolls of linoleum, assessing how the work was going. The school director Valentina Krasyukova found out about the night patrol only in the morning. It was too late to thank the visitor - namely, he paid for the repairs. But before the opening of the school, a plaque with the name of the benefactor - "Oleg Deripaska" appeared next to the honor board.

The owner of Basic Element and Rusal spent his childhood and youth in Ust-Labinsk (Krasnodar Territory). Pupils of school # 2 are now discussing the biography of the 1985 graduate on the classroom clock, along with the biographies of Peter I, Adolf Hitler and Rupert Murdoch. When asked what the student of Deripaska remembered for, the teachers answer: "an extraordinary personality", "a leader in the class", "very responsive." Former physics teacher Lyudmila Matrosova assures that Oleg first helped solve problems to his comrades on the test and only then took up his own version.

Responsive and kind? There is a different opinion. "He was always undiplomatic and made enemies - I often intervened at the last moment to save the situation," says Mikhail Chernoy, Deripaska's long-term partner. “I believed Oleg. I had no reason to say: let's see what my condition is. Where, what and how is registered ... "- says Sergei Popov, who is considered (according to him, completely unfounded) one of the leaders of the Podolsk organized criminal group. Popov claims that he was one of Deripaska's partners, and is unhappy that he is disowning his old friends.

It turns out that for some Deripaska is an indiscriminate, ruthless businessman. For others, he is a visionary entrepreneur with the manners of Haroun al-Rashid. This year, the 40-year-old billionaire with a fortune of $ 28.6 billion took first place in the Forbes Golden Hundred for the first time. In terms of his wealth, he rose to ninth place in the world. Why was Deripaska more successful than other oligarchs?

“I suddenly wanted to read terribly and found that I could swallow a thick book, 300 or 400 pages in a day, in two. … I could solve a mathematics textbook in a week, ”says Deripaska in a presentation, according to which the teachers of school №2 conduct class hours. Oleg graduated from school with a single grade in his certificate, for an essay. In physics and mathematics, he was out of competition. “Sometimes I won all the regional Olympiads at once in physics, chemistry, mathematics,” says the same materials for the class hours. In 1984, Deripaska with two classmates and a teacher Matrosova went to Maykop for the regional Olympiad. We lived in the dormitory of the pedagogical institute. They cooked semolina porridge, boiled potatoes and sausages in a ladle, which was left by the students who had left for the holidays. Deripaska did not succeed in winning the regional Olympiad. But the stock of knowledge was enough to enter the Physics Department of Moscow State University the first time.

“We had several talented guys on the course. They stood out for their speed and structured thinking. Deripaska was one of them, ”recalls Deripaska's classmate, businessman Igor Averyanov. A typical example. In one of the senior courses, Deripaska's group took quantum electrodynamics, half of the group was "taken out" from the exams. Deripaska, who had not attended a single lecture, did not show up for the exam, but then spent several days in the library and, as Averyanov says, "went, passed, got my five points."

Deripaska was distinguished by his perseverance since childhood. He grew up without a father who died when the boy was only a year old. The ability to absorb gigantic amounts of information, honed at the Faculty of Physics, came in handy in the future. In 1994, Deripaska, at the age of 26, became the general director of the Sayanogorsk aluminum plant (a little further on the circumstances of his appointment). The first months he sat in his office day and night. He walked with eyes red from lack of sleep, but he learned the technology of aluminum production, unlike many other new owners, by heart. Even earlier, in the early nineties, Deripaska was able to amaze the founder of the Russian Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange (RTSB) Konstantin Borovoy with his business knowledge. “We discussed the issue of franchising, and he expressed very modern ideas,” Borovoy recalls.

Deripaska graduated from the Physics Department in 1993, but did not stop studying: he received a second, economic, education at the Academy. G.V. Plekhanov, attended several courses at the London School of Economics. In the reception of the owner of "Basic Element" the visitor is greeted by a whole library. Self-education is his strong point.

The main subject on which Deripaska is focused today is business development strategy. “He knows how to count, understands different schemes. He is very receptive to everything new, ”Yuri Shleifshtein says about him. In the late nineties, Schleifstein owned about a quarter of the shares of the Bratsk Aluminum Plant (BrAZ). This businessman has no particular reason to love Deripaska: when the current aluminum tycoon was creating Rusal, the shareholders, sitting comfortably at BrAZ, had to sell their shares. “A very analytical mindset,” echoes Schleifstein, Gennady Sirazutdinov, the former director of the Sayanogorsk plant (SaAZ), who has no need to praise Deripaska at all: Sirazutdinov was forced to surrender his director’s chair to him, after which he went abroad out of harm's way. Times were difficult then.

In the era of primitive capital accumulation, it was important to choose the right patrons. Mikhail Chernoy became Deripaska's first guide to big business.

“I met Oleg in London in 1993 at the annual conference on metals,” Chernoy recalls. “He tried to buy vouchers, play on the stock exchange within a million dollars, and trade in non-ferrous scrap.” Today Chernoy lives in a luxury villa in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. His business is running smoothly - a couple of telecommunications companies, minority stakes in IT firms. Meanwhile, 15 years ago, this man was one of those who ran almost all the ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy of the former USSR.

After the collapse of the centralized economy, the former giants of the Soviet industry were at the mercy of a structure called the Trans World Group (TWG). TWG supplied raw materials to the factories and collected finished products, paying only for processing services. If it were not for tolling (the so-called scheme used by TWG), then in 1994 the export revenue of aluminum smelters would have exceeded $ 3.3 billion. Russia was run by the brothers Lev and Mikhail Cherny, "tsekhoviks" from Tashkent, who moved to Moscow in the late 1980s. The foreign part of the business was supervised by London traders Simon and David Ruben. The organization was headed by Lev Chernoy, who was responsible for relations with officials and for work with factories, Mikhail had, according to him, a 25% share in all the group's income.

Deripaska in 1993 owned several trading companies and a place on the Borovoy RTSB. "Alex Krasner, vice president of AIOC (a structure similar to TWG, but much inferior to it in terms of business scale. - Forbes), somehow refused Deripaska a million dollar loan, because he did not know this guy and did not trust him," recalls Chernoy. Chernoy was then looking for a dynamic manager for his aluminum business: the company wanted to control not only exports, but also the production of metal. And the young trader Deripaska was full of ambitions - Chernoy saw himself in him in his youth. “I struck up a friendship with Oleg,” Chernoy recalls. - I invited him to my place in Paris, took him to restaurants. He showed a beautiful life. " Together with Deripaska Chernoy, he flew to the United States (today both of them are prohibited from entering the States), introduced him to his circle. The young metal trader, already as a partner of Cherny and TWG, began buying shares from workers and other shareholders of SaAZ.

According to another version, presented to Forbes by two serious players in the aluminum market of the 1990s, Deripaska came to Chernoy with an offer of cooperation, having already bought about 10% of SaAZ's shares. (Deripaska himself did not comment on the Forbes article.)

Be that as it may, by November 1994, TWG's structures and Deripaska's companies had amassed a sufficient stake in SaAZ to make decisions at a shareholders' meeting. Deripaska was not the only candidate, but he proved to be the most persistent. “Oleg practically begged me to make him the director of [SaAZ]. TWG wanted to nominate their candidate. But I arranged for Oleg's appointment, ”says Chernoy. And he admits: the protégé has sensibly disposed of a ticket to big business. “I left him the connections, and he successfully developed them. And people from our business group also introduced him to the family he became a member of, ”Chernoy says meaningfully.

The word "family" in this case could be written with a capital letter. In 2001, in the midst of the creation of his giant aluminum holding, Deripaska married Polina Yumasheva, daughter of Valentin Yumashev. This former journalist was one of the most influential figures in Russian politics in the late 1990s. Having started his career with writing Yeltsin's memoirs, he became friends with the youngest daughter of President Yeltsin Tatyana Dyachenko (later became her husband), and after the 1996 elections he headed the presidential administration of the Russian Federation for some time.

Ill-wishers call the marriage of Deripaska and Yumasheva a dynastic one. Like, with his help, Yeltsin's entourage legalized their condition. Forbes asked one of Yumashev's close acquaintances to comment on this version. “This is some kind of nonsense,” he says. - I remember the relationship [Oleg and Polina] at the very beginning of [dating]. They were quite sincere. They got married when Oleg was an accomplished businessman. They have two children. And I know that Oleg pays tremendous attention to this ”.

The status of a member of the Yeltsin family in the current conditions is not such an obvious plus. “The people from [Yeltsin's] entourage still have connections, contacts. They can call somewhere, organize something, - continues the interlocutor of Forbes. “But these possibilities are not limitless, as the story with Russneft has shown. As a reminder, Deripaska's Basic Element cannot complete the deal to buy out this company from businessman Mikhail Gutseriev. One of the explanations is that the state-owned Rosneft claims the same assets.

However, by the time of his marriage, Deripaska had managed to build bridges with the new Kremlin administration. According to a former Rusal employee, in 2001, Vladimir Putin visited Deripaska's place in a picturesque corner of Khakassia, on waterfalls, several kilometers from Sayanogorsk (Dyachenko and Yumashev had been there repeatedly before Putin). Since then, Deripaska has repeatedly visited Putin in the Kremlin. One can only guess about the content of their conversations, but the fact remains that Deripaska quickly adopted the new rules of the game.

Deripaska has no conscience, his enemies say. “He does not keep his word,” says Chernoy about his former protégé. The co-owners of the Ilim Pulp timber company, over which Deripaska fought in the early 2000s, will confirm that gentlemen's agreements are not the most reliable way to settle relations with an aggressive billionaire.

But we can put it differently: Chernoy himself is to blame for letting go of the metallurgical empire. Since 1994, this businessman has ceased to appear in Russia, where the aluminum wars flared up. His brother Lev visited Moscow on short visits, permanently living in London. Local affairs of TWG were run by Deripaska, Iskander Makhmudov (now the owner of UMMC and Kuzbassrazrezugol), Vladimir Lisin (owner of Novolipetsk Steel) and Vladimir Rashnikov (the main owner of Magnitka). In the metallurgical get-together they were called barons. All of them were ambitious people, and there was only one way to realize their ambitions - by gaining control over the enterprises that they patronized in the interests of the Chernykh and Rubens.

Fermentation started in TWG. “Oleg [Deripaska] and Mikhail [Chernoy] began to actively develop the idea that there is no more positive from the Rubens,” recalls Dmitry Bosov, the former manager of TWG's Russian office. Leo did not refuse to partner with the Rubens. There was a split between the Blacks and TWG's assets were divided.

By 1999, war broke out between the two parts of the once united empire. The share of Lev and the Ruben brothers at SaAZ was diluted in favor of Deripaska and Mikhail. The latter-controlled structures of Siberian Aluminum (Sibal in 1998 named the industrial holding formed around SaAZ) bought out 6.15% of the plant's shares from the state and increased their stake to 75%. Still "banned from entry", Mikhail Chernoy did not interfere in management. “I did not keep routine information about the details of the business,” “the transactions were based on a simple handshake,” “I transferred all the cases to Makhmudov and Deripaska,” so in December 2007 he described his style of doing business in Russia in his testimony to a London court.

It is not surprising that Mikhail Cherny was gradually forgotten in Russia. But Deripaska becomes a public figure. In the spring of 1999, Kommersant published his lengthy discourse on industrial policy. Around the same time, Deripaska first came to an appointment with the head of the presidential administration, Alexander Voloshin, criticizing tolling schemes in the aluminum industry, which were then strongly associated with Lev Cherny's company. Deripaska reported to Voloshin about the losses incurred by the country's budget. In the autumn of the same year, the streets of Moscow were full of billboards “Forbid tolling. Stop robbing Russia. "

The attack was successful. “The lion was very worried. He decided that he had to sell, otherwise he would be left without everything, ”Bosov recalls. It wasn't just the billboards. Deripaska and Mikhail Chernoy established control over the Nikolaev Alumina Refinery (Ukraine). Sibal's ally, Alfa Group, was approaching the Achinsk Alumina Refinery. TWG's factories lacked raw materials to operate at full capacity. If production starts to fall, Lev Chernoy reasoned, Deripaska, using his connections in the Kremlin, will be able to seize control over them. Negotiations began on the sale of 30% of the shares of the Bratsk aluminum plant and about 40% of the Krasnoyarsk, which belonged to Lev and Rubens. But, to the disappointment of Deripaska and Mikhail Cherny, these packages were not sold to them, but to Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich - businessmen who also enjoyed the patronage of Dyachenko and Yumashev. Deripaska's first reaction was to continue the war.

“Oleg has concentrated great forces. Set up "traps". Launched an anti-tolling campaign. And the game, instead of falling into a trap, threw a stone into the trap and ran away, ”Shleifstein, who was at that time the chairman of the board of directors of BrAZ and later sold his share to Sibneft shareholders, describes the situation.

However, there was no war between Deripaska and Abramovich. Former Rusal employees say that the two young businessmen met in the winter of 2000. Contacts were established between their subordinates, and soon it was announced the creation of "Rusal" - a company that would unite all aluminum smelters. Four years later, Abramovich, having gotten rid of Berezovsky, who had fallen into disgrace, sold Deripaska a stake in Rusal for $ 1.6 billion. But Deripaska did not stop there: in 2007, his company absorbed the last competitor in the Russian aluminum market, SUAL-holding »Viktor Vekselberg, and alumina refineries of the Swiss trader Glencore. The deal resulted in the formation of the world's largest aluminum producer UC Rusal.

Like Abramovich, who instantly forgot about Berezovsky, Deripaska also needed to "clean up" the past. The “divorce” with Mikhail Cherny turned out to be dramatic. This is what Chernoy has to say. The key meeting of the former mentor with Deripaska took place in March 2001 at the London hotel The Lanesborough. Deripaska spoke about the creation of Rusal. Chernoy asked a question about dividends, and, according to him, Deripaska replied to this: before talking about dividends, it is necessary to agree that no one sells his stake "to the side". Like, according to Deripaska's information, Chernoy was negotiating with Viktor Vekselberg on the cession of his stake in Sibal and Rusal. The partner hastened to assure him that this was not true, but immediately asked Deripaska if he was ready to buy out his share himself. Deripaska allegedly said that he was considering such a possibility and suggested drawing up an appropriate agreement. Chernoy agreed, and they scribbled a draft of the agreement on a laptop. Its essence is that Chernoy receives $ 250 million in advance, and then, within three to five years, the cost of the remaining 20% ​​of Rusal (based on the price of recent transactions) minus the advance.

An advance was received, but when Rusal launched a merger with SUAL and Glencore, Chernoy demanded that the former partner pay off - according to his calculations, the compensation should have amounted to $ 3 billion. However, Deripaska did not meet with the former patron and satisfy his demands. Chernoy filed a lawsuit. The next court session in London on Cherny's claim is scheduled for the end of April.

“Thousands of people knew about our partnership with him,” the Israeli businessman is now indignant. However, in the materials that Chernoy submitted to the London court and which his lawyers allowed Forbes to read, Deripaska's signature is on only one document concerning the distribution of shares in Rusal - the very draft, drawn up at the hotel, which contains numerous typos.

Deripaska does not comment on Cherny's statements.

Nerves made of steel and rigidity - without these qualities it was impossible to survive in the Russian aluminum business. At least in the 1990s. “They scared me. I sold everything. Instead of lying in a coffin with money, I preferred to live with my wife and children, ”recalls Sam Kislin, founder of Trans Commodities (which later grew into TWG), lighting a cigar in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton on Tverskaya. Kislin, who emigrated to the United States from Odessa, became a guide to the world for the Chernykh in the late 1980s - through him the first export deals of Soviet steelworks were carried out.

One can understand the emigrant Kislin who dropped out of the case - it is enough to list the names of those who died in the aluminum wars. In the fall of 1995, at the 107th km of Volokolamskoe highway, the body of Felix Lvov, the head and main owner of the AIOC company, which competed with TWG, was found in a pile of garbage. In the summer of the same year, in the village of Snegiri near Moscow, the president of the Yugorsky bank Oleg Kantor, a partner of Lvov, was stabbed to death. In Krasnoyarsk, dozens of bandits and businessmen were killed in the struggle of groups for control over local enterprises of the aluminum industry. Anatoly Bykov won. The fight for SaAZ was also accompanied by human casualties. The former participant of school physics olympiads had to gain prestige in a very aggressive environment.

For Deripaska, everything could have turned out differently, if not for military service. After the first semester at the university, it became clear that Deripaska's course was going to serve. In May 1986, he was drafted. "Slender boys left, mature men returned, a little wild, though," says a graduate of the Physics Department Averyanov. Many students of Moscow State University were not sent to the elite units. Deripaska, after the sergeant school, ended up in the auxiliary unit of the strategic missile forces on the border with China. Under the leadership - 102 people, 95 of them - from Central Asia. The future billionaire drilled them on the parade ground. According to eyewitnesses, progress has been made. "The army is a test of survival," Deripaska later summed up.

But even with such a school, he did not immediately learn to impress counterparties. At first, the general director of SaAZ, Sirazutdinov, did not take Deripaska seriously. “The secretary said that some shareholder was waiting for me. A boy came in and began to offer something, ”says the former head of SaAZ. The director, whose head was spinning even without shareholders, dismissed Deripaska. Less than six months later, the "boy" took over his office, and Sirazutdinov left for Argentina for four years. Krasnoyarsk journalist Aleksey Tarasov, who was then a special correspondent for Izvestia, says that after a meeting of SaAZ shareholders, which confirmed Deripaska in office, Sirazutdinov was frightened by something and even asked Tarasov to destroy the recordings of his previous interviews.

The situation in Sayanogorsk was indeed militant. Deripaska spent the night at the enterprise not only because he studied documents. It was dangerous to go out into the city - Vladimir Tatarenkov (better known under the nickname Tatarin) laid eyes on the plant, who saw a completely different person in the director's chair. In 1995, Tatarin nearly killed Deripaska. The car, in which the director of SaAZ, together with Bosov and Lisin, was driving from Sayanogorsk to Achinsk to the meeting of the shareholders of the alumina refinery, was awaited on the road by grenade launchers. The future participants of the "Golden Hundred" were saved by a miracle: at the last moment Bykov learned about the ambush (as Bossov says from his words) and allegedly ordered to cancel everything. The Tatar was forced to obey.

Luck was not enough. They said that behind the Blacks and Deripaska looms the shadow of people no less formidable than the Tartar. In 2000, Jalol Khaidarov, who worked for Chernykh and Iskander Makhmudov, wrote in a statement of claim to one of the New York district courts that Anton Malevsky, the leader of the Izmaylovo organized criminal group, was responsible for the security of Cherny's business. Cherny's testimony to British justice states that in the late 1990s Malevsky was the beneficiary of 10% of Sibal. In 2001, Malevsky crashed while jumping with a parachute in South Africa. Deripaska has always denied that he had any common business with this man.

Sergei Popov calls himself another beneficiary of Sibal with a 10% share. He showed the Forbes correspondent the papers in which he appears as a partner of Deripaska in the aluminum business. In 1990, Popov was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of extortion, which gave him a reason to classify him as an organized crime. In 1998, the racketeering case was sent for reconsideration, and the court acquitted Popov in full “for failure to establish the event of the crime” (a copy of the court decision was provided by Popov to Forbes). He insists that today he owns 10% rights in all of Basic Element's businesses. Why, then, is Deripaska the only official owner of Basic Element? “Oleg asked us: when I'm alone, it's easier for me to negotiate with everyone. And behind you and Anton [Malevsky] there is a train of terrible rumors, says Popov. - It was logical. We said, okay, we will hide as you say. "

The owner of "Rusal" stands by the fact that he ended the theft at SaAZ, supporting the local police, which zealously took up the fight against crime, and went on the offensive against Tatarenkov. During a search of the latter's apartment, a whole arsenal was found. The authority fled and was put on the wanted list. And in 1999 he was arrested in Greece and sentenced to 14 years in prison for possession of weapons.

In addition to Tatarin, Deripaska was annoyed by the local authorities, but for the time being. His main opponent, the mayor of Sayanogorsk, Sergei Bondarenko, received a three-year suspended sentence in 2000 for bribery. Bondarenko's wife told Forbes that her husband does not want to stir up the past: "We have already suffered enough." Veniamin Striga, Bondarenko's closest associate, head of the local TV channel and at one time the representative of the President of the Russian Federation in Khakassia, was forced to go abroad. “They tried to kidnap and kill my client,” Striga’s lawyer Yury Orekhov told Forbes. "Deripaska's group will not give a chance for a civilized trial," Striga wrote in response to a request from Forbes. It was Striga who launched the story of how Deripaska, in the early days of his directorship, walked around the shops of SaAZ in training pants with extended knees and identified the points of sale of alcohol. The attacks from the Striga greatly annoyed Deripaska, recalls one of the Rusal employees. In 2003, Striga, who had moved to Moscow, published on his website yet another accusatory article about the aluminum tycoon, after which the Khakass police opened a criminal case against the author. A unit of the Khakass riot police, who came to the capital to arrest Striga, left with nothing: Deripaska's personal enemy had left the country by that time. “Deripaska has the mentality of a fighter - it’s pointless to fight with them, you can only negotiate with them,” Averyanov sums up.

Merciless to enemies, Deripaska is not almond-shaped with his subordinates. Former employees of "Basic Element" say that until recently, top managers went to meetings with O. V. D. (it is customary to call the chief by his initials) with a dictaphone. Slightly tilting his head and looking sullenly, Deripaska speaks quickly and quietly, it is not customary to interrupt and ask clarifying questions. He delves into all the details and at any time can check how his instructions were followed. In "Rusal" they talk about the shortest career in the company: one of the secretaries, having gone to work on the first day at nine o'clock, was unable to complete some assignment and was fired at eleven in the morning.

The owner of "Basic Element" does not spare himself either. “He has another one in his office next to his study, where he, roughly speaking, lives. There is a bed there, ”says Averyanov. Deripaska's lifestyle is a constant expansion. Of the Russian corporations in terms of business growth, only the state-owned Rosneft, patronized by Putin's friend Igor Sechin, can compete with Basic Element.

Few people know that Deripaska has a house in Japan. He spends a lot of time there, is fond of Eastern philosophy, ”says one of Deripaska's former partners in the aluminum business. In the Seraphim-Diveevsky Monastery in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, they can tell you about how Oleg Deripaska, who often visits the monastery, restored one of the buildings at his own expense, organized a private hotel and a restaurant there, and then donated everything to the monastery.

Deripaska also has a weakness - he is sentimental. “He invited his best friends to join him,” says chemistry teacher Anna Zozulya, looking at a group photo of the 1985 graduates. - Yura Rogov works in his representative office in Germany. He also offered Lesha Savchenko, but he refused to move to Moscow for family reasons. " Once every five years, Deripaska arranges meetings of classmates. Those who live abroad are paid for the flight to Moscow and back. The last time the graduates of the Physics Department in 1993 gathered in January at the Forum Hall near the Paveletsky railway station. Deripaska was two hours late, but then spent several hours with his fellow students, moving the banquettes, in the room for smoking hookahs. Deripaska paid for the treatment and rehabilitation after a head injury from his own funds for the son of a professor who taught at the physics department.

In addition to the regular tranche, he donated 400,000 rubles to the Ust-Labinsk school this year: the city has bad water, the money will be used to pay for the dentist's services for teachers. But Deripaska does not like to listen to thanks. The last time Lyudmila Matrosova, who taught physics to Deripaska, spoke heart to heart with her student in 1988, when he returned from the army. They sat for two hours. Deripaska talked about his plans. He was going to do science.

Featuring Yulia Govorun, Valery Igumenov, Anna Sokolova

Russia is becoming a "crime superpower," complained President Boris Yeltsin in 1994. At that time, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 40% of private enterprises, 60% of state-owned companies and 85% were associated with organized crime. The Great Bandit War of the first half of the 1990s is the most unsightly episode in the era of the formation of the new Russian capitalism. "Secret" restores her chronicle from the notes of the crime department of the newspaper "Kommersant".

The murder of businessman Prokhorov

“The assassination of Mikhail Prokhorov is one of the first in a series of contract killings that began in 1991. This crime differs from the recent unprofessional actions of the organizers and performers. Now between the customers and the killers there is a long chain of intermediaries, criminals usually wait for victims near the entrances, where they are usually completely defenseless, and kill them with firearms. The perpetrators themselves are also removed after committing a crime. "

It is impossible to establish the name of the businessman who became the first victim of the contract killings epidemic that accompanied the construction of the new Russian capitalism. But it is known which of these crimes was solved first. In January 1994, the Supreme Court received materials from the investigation into the murder of Mikhail Prokhorov, commercial director of Strela.

In February 1991, in the north-west of Moscow, the corpse of a man with a ten-kilogram dumbbell tied to it was found in the river. The drowned man was 35-year-old Prokhorov. The investigation spent three years to find out that this death was supposed to help the head of Strela and his two counterparties to hide from law enforcement agencies a trivial fraud in the amount of 4 million rubles (then about $ 220,000). Having received the signature of the commercial director on blank forms of payment orders, the criminals wanted to steal the money and write off the theft on him.

“The organizers involved a former student of the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), two deserted soldiers and one demobilized serviceman in the case,” said the Kommersant newspaper. - Under the pretext of a deal, the executors suggested that Prokhorov meet in the MAI hostel. There the victim was euthanized with an injection into a vein and taken to the embankment of the Moskva River, where they tied a load to his body and drowned under the ice. According to the investigation, the execution of the murder was generously paid for. "

The amount that the direct executor of the contract murder, Andrei Loginovsky, received as a fee, became known only in 1997, when the court sentenced the organizers (they received from six to nine years). Only 20,000 rubles (then less than $ 1,000). The deposit is 1,500 rubles. At the same time, Loginovsky said that he offered the victim to pay off for the same money, but Prokhorov "did not react."

"The growing criminal chaos"

“The chairman of Garant LLP, Igor Vasiliev, together with his concubine (he and his wife have been living separately for a long time) left their apartment, which is located on the third floor of a Stalinist building on Prospekt Mira. They were on their way to visit, but a man watched them on an unlit staircase and shot Vasilyev twice in the chest. Together with his companion, the wounded man managed to jump back into the apartment, but fell and died. Having studied the personality of the murdered, the investigation came to the conclusion that it was necessary to work out many versions, since Vasiliev belonged to the restaurant elite, drank almost daily in taverns and often recovered his health after drinking in drug treatment dispensaries. It has been established that, despite his cheerful character, in the last days of his life Vasiliev was afraid of something. "

When telling stories like this, reporters at first took the phrase "contract murder" in quotation marks, but quickly got used to it and stopped: in 1992, according to official data, 102 such crimes were committed, in 1993 - 289, in 1994 - 562. Those however, the problem was not immediately recognized officially. The Ministry of Internal Affairs expressed itself in the sense that "many businessmen unwittingly provoke offenders to serious crimes, without reporting racketeering and fraud to the police."

Photo: © Georges DeKeerle / Getty Images

"A series of contract killings should receive an adequate response from law enforcement agencies - the position they are now taking can be explained either by the impossibility or unwillingness to stop the growing criminal chaos," said an address to Boris Yeltsin, which was circulated in December 1993 by the Association of Russian banks. “Serious personnel and structural changes in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (the Ministry of Security. - Approx." Secret "), the bankers wrote. “Today, individual heads of these departments tend to view bank employees as deliberate opponents.”

A few days after the publication of this letter, representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at a specially convened press conference admitted that "cases of contract killings of entrepreneurs have become more frequent" in the country, and offered businessmen "paid services for protecting enterprises, transporting valuables and ensuring personal safety."

Explosions in Moscow

“Boris Berezovsky received several minor shrapnel wounds to the face, neck and eyes, as well as first and second degree burns to both hands. In one of the Moscow hospitals, he underwent primary treatment of his wounds (one of them was sewn up "for cosmetic purposes"), after which he was allowed to go home. Two hours later, Berezovsky called an ambulance due to severe pain in his burnt hands, and the doctors who arrived treated the burns again.

The assassination attempt on Boris Berezovsky - the explosion thundered when his Mercedes drove out of the territory of the Logovaz reception house - did not make it onto the front pages of newspapers. Kommersant appointed Anatoly Chubais's press conference as the topic of the day, at which he said that "voucher privatization was a complete success."

In 1994, the murders of businessmen are commonplace. Messages about them began to get lost in the general stream of violence that swept the country. Increasingly, not only cold weapons and firearms were used, but also mortar mines, grenades, and homemade bombs.

On June 7, when Berezovsky narrowly escaped death, another explosion thundered in Moscow. The VAZ-2106 of the general director of the Elita firm, Svyatoslav Gretsky, took off a couple of kilometers from the Kommersant office on Vrubel Street, and the newspaper's reporters were quick to question the operatives who “found fragments of an explosive device between the bloody rugs on the floor of the car”.

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Gretsky was torn off his right leg that day and severely injured his left; nothing is known about his further fate. The businessman's wife, whom he gave a lift, received minor injuries from glass splinters. According to the main version of the investigation, "the merchant was subjected to blackmail, but did not agree to the conditions of the racketeers and the explosion became revenge."

In the first six months of 1994 alone, the Federal Counterintelligence Service counted in Moscow more than 200 "crimes involving the use of explosive devices." Berezovsky's associates called the attempt on the businessman's life a "terrorist attack" and blamed the "forces seeking to hinder the development of civilized entrepreneurship by barbaric, criminal methods." It was not possible to solve the crime.

Orekhovskaya leader Sergei Timofeev (Sylvester) was suspected of organizing the assassination attempt, but a few months later he himself was blown up in the center of Moscow. Customers and contractors were not found.

"Be more compliant and don't leave from under the roof"

“Most likely, the bodyguard Oleg Nepravda became the first victim of the unknown killers. The criminals shot him twice from the TT, and after the cartridge jammed in the chamber of the pistol, they finished off with a knife. The shots woke the banker. He turned on the light and opened the front door. At that moment, the bandits attacked him. Having dragged him into the house, they cut his throat with the same knife that they used to finish off the guard. As they left, the killers put the used TT into the hand of Falsehood. "

By the mid-1990s, the banking profession had become one of the most dangerous. In 1995, more than ten owners and top managers of large financial institutions were killed. The loudest murder took place on July 20 in the Snegiri boarding house near Moscow. Oleg Kantor, president of the Ugra Commercial Bank and vice-president of the Union of Oil Industrialists, was his victim.

At the end of 1993, Oleg Kantor's Yugorsky served the largest oil companies and discussed the merger with Imperial and the Russian Credit Bank into a "single superbank of the fuel and energy complex." But something went wrong. “The big oil companies did not agree with the policy of Kantor, who was a supporter of the concept of a bank, the share capital of which would be dispersed among many small shareholders,” wrote in Kommersant.

In 1994, Yugorsky lost its main clients and shareholders - in particular, LUKOIL. It was not possible to overcome the crisis quickly. They said that in the last year of his life, Oleg Kantor was forced to "actively spin the money of the remaining clients." Three months before his death, Vadim Yafyasov, the vice-president of Yugorsky, was shot dead in Moscow. After that, five of six of his guards left Kantor. There was only a loyal bodyguard, a former special forces soldier Oleg Not true, but he could not protect the chief.

“In informal conversations with journalists, representatives of the banking community began to talk that Kantor should have been more accommodating and not leave from under the roof of LUKOIL,” Kommersant later reported.