Basic introduction of Abu.

After graduating from high school, Abu failed to enter the university and served in the army for two years. After retiring, he studied at Moscow State Law Institute and got a degree. In the late 1980s, Abu started his business and made his first fortune by smuggling cigarettes and perfume with the help of his girlfriend who was a flight attendant in an airline.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia began to privatize. In the process of privatization, Abu cooperated with another oligarch, berezovsky, and took the state-owned Siberian oil company into his pocket at a very low price (only 8% of its actual value). Through berezovsky, Abramovich got to know the Yeltsin family and became close to Yeltsin's youngest daughter, tatyana. It is rumored that he is the "cash machine" of the Yeltsin family. Since then, Abu has successively controlled the Russian aluminum company and the Russian civil aviation company, and established his own huge industrial empire.

However, Abu's source of funds and the legitimacy of the privatization process were widely questioned, and the Russian Supreme Procuratorate decided to investigate him. However, in April 1999, Skuratov, the top prosecutor in charge of the investigation, was dismissed because of the scandal of "calling prostitutes", and the investigation failed. 1At the end of 999, President Putin came to power and began a series of attacks on oligarchs. Abu publicly declared his support for Putin and cooperated with the government to terminate the merger of Siberian oil company and Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company. In addition, he also provided funds to the solidarity party that supported Putin. It is rumored that he gave Putin a luxury yacht "Olympia" worth $50 million. Despite this, Abu still felt threatened. He began to sell assets in Russia and dismembered his industrial empire, so he was called "seller Abu" by the outside world. Abu, who did not ask about politics, also successfully ran for Duma and obtained parliamentary immunity.

In 2000, Abu Bunty was elected as the chief executive of Chukchi Autonomous Region with a population of less than 80,000, and invested 200 million US dollars to improve the living conditions of local residents and develop the local economy. In 2003, he spent 65.438+300 million pounds to buy the English Chelsea football team with financial difficulties, and then invested more than 200 million pounds to pay off the debts and buy stars for the team. His customized private jet (Boeing 767-300) Abramovich Sky is said to be worth $654.38 billion. He also owns two luxury yachts, one of which was bought from paul allen, and is said to rank fourth among luxury yachts in the world.

He spent a lot of dollars to buy castles and manors in Moscow, Britain, Germany, France and other places. This manor in Sussex, England covers an area of 424 acres, including a 7-bedroom villa, a large number of annex buildings, two polo fields, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a UFO shooting range, a rifle shooting range, a small lake, a riding center and a stable for 65,438+000 horses.

Abu and his ex-wife * * * have five children and live in England for their education. In Yeltsin's era, Russia changed from socialism to capitalism. Those smart guys who are familiar with the old system seized the "opportunity" in the transitional period, took the wealth that originally belonged to the whole people as their own in the noisy era of change, and combined wealth with power, and once became the leader of Russia, the architect and advocate of the new order. They seized Russian industry, controlled the general election, and actually manipulated the country. The rise of Putin ended the golden age of oligarchs, but Russia is still far from recovering from the damage they caused.

A Boeing 767 private jet; A 355-foot luxury yacht bought from Microsoft founder paul allen; A 99-acre manor in Moscow has received President Putin; A Bavarian castle, just to satisfy the occasional skiing interest; Chelsea, a Premier League powerhouse with hundreds of millions of dollars; A villa with a value of100000 pounds in the south of France and a leisure house with a value of150000 pounds in Sussex, England; Russian autonomous region with hundreds of thousands of residents ...

All this belongs to a mysterious Russian rich man, roman abramovich, who has accumulated billions of dollars in just over ten years. On the Forbes list of the world's richest people in 2004, Abramovich ranked 1 1 with a net worth of $28 billion.

In today's Russia, great wealth seems to mean great trouble. Since taking office, Putin has started to compete with the rich, including Khodorkovsky, president of Yukos Oil Company, who are either imprisoned or exiled overseas. But Abramovich, who is called "Abu" by the world, is an exception. On February 25th, 2004, at 65438, while watching the special performance of Australian female singer kylie minogue as the Russian oil tycoon, Abramovich sitting in the front row was still so radiant. 1966101On October 24th, Abramovich was born in saratov on the Volga River. Although his parents have moved to Karl, Kotev, his mother Irina decided to go back to her hometown to have a baby. Because there is a popular Russian saying: As long as you can be born in saratov, it means that your life will be illuminated by the star of happiness.

All parents want their children to be happy all their lives, but apart from choosing a "blessed" place to give birth to Abu, Abu's parents failed to bring him personal happiness. When he was 1 4 years old, his parents died one after another. Under the care of his uncle, Abu survived tenaciously, and, like his peers, went through the necessary growth path for normal children such as joining the army and going to school. Although he didn't suffer too much, his childhood experience of eating "a hundred meals" and the bumpy life of the Soviet artillery battalion made him develop a bold, persistent but somewhat cold character.

Saratov's "Star of Happiness" not only cares for Abramovich, but also adds luster to himself: under his guidance, Abramovich added a "Russian richest man" to saratov's celebrity list more than 30 years later. 1992 is a year of great changes in Russia. In a society where "selling potatoes is better than selling missiles", 26-year-old Abramovich dropped out of Petroleum University and started to engage in business activities.

In those turbulent times, the rules were ignored by the Russians. Like all businessmen, Abramovich, with a distinctive personality, touched the edge of the law more than once in business activities and fell into the sight of Russian law enforcement agencies, but he played better than others who kept a low profile.

1On July 9, 1992, the Moscow Bureau of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs filed an investigation into a diesel oil missing case related to Abramovich. Abramovich, who was then the leader of a small company, bought a batch of diesel oil from the Ukhtar refinery with forged documents, but during the transportation, these diesel oils worth nearly 4 million rubles mysteriously disappeared. The reconnaissance results of the Ministry of Internal Affairs show that it was Abramovich who reached a secret agreement with some personnel of the Uhta refinery to divide up state property.

This incident caught the attention of the Deputy Prosecutor General of Moscow, who ordered the surveillance of Abramovich. But in the end, Abramovich succeeded in turning this matter into invisibility with his brilliant skills and upper-level relations. Although no one can be sure that Abramovich's "first bucket of gold" comes from that 5,000 tons of diesel, it is a fact that nearly 4 million rubles of funds have changed his business activities qualitatively. Since then, he has set up various companies for the purpose of partnership with foreign capital and fake bidding, and he has registered more than 40 companies. The "privatization of securities" reform implemented by the Russian government ushered in the opportunity for Abramovich to get rich quickly. Russia's early privatization took the form of issuing securities to all citizens. In the stage of securities privatization, some oligarchs who know the policy and have economic strength send people to the streets or subways to buy securities. Ordinary people generally have a distrust of privatized securities, and feel that the securities in their hands are not as real as consumer goods in real life. Therefore, when the state began to auction some enterprises publicly, some people already bought a sufficient number of privatized securities, and even took a truckload of securities to participate in the bidding.

Later, Russia privatized cash and issued short-term bonds. 1996 On the eve of the presidential election, Yeltsin's re-election campaign needed a lot of cash, but at that time, the government's finances were already very difficult, so the "debt-to-equity swap" scheme was put forward, that is, the government mortgaged the shares of state-owned enterprises to oligopolistic private commercial banks for cash in order to pay the salaries of civil servants. The key point of this scheme is that the mortgaged shares are priced at 30% of the market price, while the "ex post" government buys them back at the market price, and 70% of the difference is given to investors as a reward.

In the whole process of "privatization of securities" reform, Yeltsin, then president, devoted almost all his energy to the political struggle with parliament. In fact, the government has not made much efforts to participate in such a state-owned assets distribution process that should be fully deployed and carefully planned. In the end, "privatization" became "non-privatization", and a large number of high-quality state-owned assets did not enter the privatization transaction procedure, but flowed into the pockets of powerful oligarchs through some unclear mortgage loan systems and bank transfer systems.

At that time, many people knew that engaging in oil business could make a lot of money. Because Russia's domestic oil price is far lower than the international market, as long as it can get an oil export license and carry out oil export trade, it will soon get high returns. Abramovich, who studied in Petroleum University and just started a small business, was one of the first people to foresee this prospect. Seeing the business opportunities in the oil industry, Abramovich made a choice that really changed his life: to cooperate with Boris berezovsky, a man of the hour in Russian politics and an "academician tycoon".

Berezovsky is good at capital operation, and he also controls several media. With abundant funds, he successively served as a member of the Russian State Duma, the executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the deputy secretary of the Russian Federal Security Council, and eventually became the leader of Yeltsin's "family" group. Abramovich met berezovsky on another rich man's private yacht through his good friend Yumashev, the chief of President Yeltsin's office, and with the strong recommendation of the latter, he successfully entered the social circle around Yeltsin and won the appreciation of Yeltsin's youngest daughter tatyana.

After being almost equal to berezovsky, Abramovich began to attack the coveted oil market together. 1On August 24th, 995, according to Yeltsin's Presidential Decree No.872, Siberian Oil Company was established and soon became the best oil refining and production company in Russia. At the end of that year, the Kremlin was trapped by funds and decided to bid for the sale of part of the equity of Siberian oil company. Three months before the establishment of Siberian Oil Company, berezovsky cooperated with Abramovich to establish Trast Company. After that, Abramovich set up more than ten companies respectively, all with the purpose of buying shares in Siberian oil company.

In June of the following year, Abramovich entered the board of directors of Nabelli Oil and Gas Company, a subsidiary of Siberian Oil Company, and successfully became the representative of the representative office of Siberian Oil Company in Moscow.

Subsequently, in the process of privatization of Siberian oil company, Abramovich took advantage of the opportunity of bidding for the shares of the company three times and obtained the shares he longed for at a price only equivalent to about 8% of the market price. Of course, berezovsky and smolenski joined hands with him. They used their connections in the officialdom to put pressure on the committee in charge of the auction, and finally only allowed "their own" to appear in the auction.

Abramovich and berezovsky successfully infiltrated their subsidiaries after acquiring the shares of Siberian Oil Company. Moreover, the Russian aluminum company and the Russian civil aviation company have also become their bags. At this time, berezovsky, who has been at the forefront, found that after Siberian Oil Company became a private dynasty, the real emperor was Abramovich, because he owned 36% of the shares.

Because there is no necessary proof of the source of auction funds, the legitimacy of Abramovich's funds and the privatization process of Siberian oil company have been doubted by the public. Two years later, the Russian Senior Audit Office accused in a report that the privatization of Siberian oil company was illegal, and the government lost $2.7 billion in capital in the process of equity transfer, so the transfer contract should be regarded as invalid.

However, when the Supreme Prosecutor Skuratov tried to investigate this, he was blocked by some senior Kremlin officials. Although he still persevered, I didn't expect that at this time, a TV station played a video of a man who looked like him and two prostitutes having fun in the same bed. Skuratov was involved in the scandal of "soliciting prostitutes" and lost his reputation, so he was suspended as the Attorney General. The investigation of Abramovich was therefore terminated. Abramovich was able to escape criminal investigation many times, of course, thanks to his inextricably linked with high-level power. 1In March, 1999, Aleksandr Vasileff Korzhakov, the "big housekeeper" of the Kremlin who fell out with Yeltsin and the director of the Presidential Protection Bureau, directly accused Abramovich of being the "cash machine" of Yeltsin's family at a press conference, and the legend that Abramovich had an affair with Yeltsin's youngest daughter tatyana was widely circulated among the people.

Abramovich absolutely owes berezovsky, because he is connected with Yeltsin's family, but when dealing with politicians, he didn't take the old road of berezovsky's "melting in and exposing". When gaining the trust of those in power, Abramovich left an impression on the other side and the world that he was outside the power circle. The outside world can only guess how deep his Tao is.

"He is a very cautious man." An old friend of Abramovich once pointed out, "Abramovich's style is good at analyzing other people's psychology and relying on his own network ... he never wanted to be an oligarch." For him, survival is more important. "

In the Yeltsin era, although Abramovich had the ability to put the Minister of Communications who was closely related to him on the throne of the first deputy prime minister, he never refused to appear in the power field. It was not until Yeltsin was re-elected and won a lot of awards that his name began to appear in newspapers. He was also berezovsky's partner. Only people familiar with the Jelchin family know that Abu is the real "cash machine" in the Kremlin. Abramovich never wanted to go into politics. He is only interested in business. However, when Putin became prime minister and semi-formally played the role of Yeltsin's successor, he came forward to have a discussion with potential members of the new cabinet in order to get a chance of survival and development in the post-Yeltsin era.

Later, Abramovich organized the "Unity Party" to help Putin run for president. Thanks to his efforts, the young "Unity Party" won the State Duma election, and the personal relationship between Abramovich and Putin was further strengthened. Therefore, some people say that he is "an invisible hand of the Kremlin".

After successfully putting Putin on the presidency, oligarchs began to argue with the president-berezovsky wanted to get a position in the government, but Putin said that "everything depends on himself". Although there was an agreement between Putin and Yeltsin not to move their political team, berezovsky was eventually forced to leave a foreign country like another media tycoon, Gusinski. In this struggle for money and power, Abramovich firmly sided with Putin, and he showed people that he was prepared to strictly abide by the new rules of the game.

In order to meet Putin's demand that "enterprises should make more returns to society", he bought berezovsky's controlling stake in Russian TV station as a government buyer and then sold it to the government. Later, after he took over the aluminum industry in berezovsky, he went to the desolate and poor Chukchi Autonomous Region as the chief executive according to the wishes of the Kremlin, far away from Moscow. When Putin put Khodorkovsky, who cooperated with Americans and had political dreams, in prison, Abramovich chose a cooperative attitude and gave up the grand plan of merging Siberian oil company with Yukos company.

Abramovich's wise move to stay in politics instead of politics has won more political room for his economic activities. Putin is convinced of Abramovich's loyalty-he once invited oligarchs to sit down and negotiate and advised them not to interfere in politics. Abramovich wasn't there. Although Abramovich has always avoided going to the political front, he has been dealing with politicians for many years and knows the way of officialdom. When Yeltsin's departure from the peak of Russian power became a foregone conclusion, Abramovich began to quietly find a possible way out for himself, and changed his style for many years and began to put on more "body armor" with political rules and Russian laws.

1999 12 When Yeltsin was preparing to leave the Kremlin for his New Year message, Abramovich participated in the State Duma election and was successfully elected. Although the Duma's power is no longer important to him, this small success has given him a very important parliamentary immunity.

On February 25th, 2000, 65438, who was already a deputy of the Duma, was elected as the governor of Chukchi Autonomous Prefecture in Russia's Far Northeast with 90.7% of the votes. This year, at the age of 34, he became the youngest governor in Russian history. The salary of a governor is equivalent to that of a deputy prime minister or minister, with a monthly salary of 36,000 rubles (about 1.200 USD). This salary is a disdainful figure for Abramovich, but the media relayed his words: "I serve my motherland and make money for myself." In order to get more support, he spent a lot of money in Chukchi. He provided financial support for 8,500 Chukchi teenagers to go on holiday, and spent/kloc-0.8 million dollars to improve the living conditions of local residents, and sent sugar, rice and cooking oil to poor families. In addition, Abramovich also built cinemas, supermarkets and hotels for Chukchi people from his own pocket. From June 5438 to February 2002, with strong financial resources and influence, Abramovich was re-elected as the governor of Chukchi ethnic autonomous region with a high vote of more than 90%. This once barren land has undergone earth-shaking changes. Forty-six brand-new buildings have sprung up, and the first local public bathroom with a barber shop and the first internet school have also been built. In the eyes of Chukchi residents, Abramovich is not only the highest local official, but also a philanthropist who benefits one side. However, the situation in the country under his leadership is still not much better. Russian media said that Abramovich went so far to engage in political activities, mainly because Chukchi was rich in gold.

After gaining the necessary security protection right and reputation at home, Abramovich turned his eyes to foreign countries: with the acquiescence of the Russian government, a capital transfer involving 50% of Siberian oil company, 25% of Russian aluminum company and part of Aeroflot was quietly completed. He controlled his assets in Russia through a company registered in Britain, and he completely retired from the background. Therefore, even if Russia's political situation changes, from a legal point of view, Russia can deduct only a few properties from him.

With Abramovich's business activities abroad becoming more and more frequent, there are more and more voices accusing him and demanding a "thorough investigation" of his old accounts in Russia. After feeling that his contacts in Russia were not so strong, Abramovich, who lived in London all the year round, began to run his own contacts in Britain. With the help of his Chelsea football team, many famous people, including the President of Iceland, dozens of British parliamentarians and former British Prime Minister Major, became his guests. Some people even said that even Prince Charles had borrowed his private jet.

Whether Abramovich has a broad road ahead and can satisfactorily let his children enter the upper class abroad depends largely on the future actions of the Putin government. Although he and Putin are old friends, he must understand that there are no eternal friends and enemies, only eternal interests.