Alexei M Romanov

 

 

Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov made his first fortunes in banking. Born in 1965, he was raised in a communal apartment in what as then known as Leningrad by factory worker parents. As a child, he became an active member in Komosol, the Communist Youth League.

After a two year spell of compulsory service as a rifleman in the Soviet Army, six months of which he spent in Afghanistan, he studied economics at the Mendeleeva Chemical Technical Institute, and in 1988, with several of his fellow classmates, opened a cooperative, selling computers and designing software. By 1990, Romanov had founded MostBank, a bank with profits rumored to be supplemented by funds controlled by various Komosol, Central Committee and KGB groups attempting to divert state funds.

Romanov prospered after the fall of Communism. He purchased former State assets such as gold, diamonds, gas, and oil for roubles at the official exchange rate from corrupt bureaucrats; he then sold those assets on the World markets, for dollars or deutschmarks. It was money laundering on a grand scale. The profits were huge, running into millions of US dollars.

Further success came his way when he was brought into the inner circle of businessmen who surrounded the then Russian President Boris Yeltsin, teaming up with other powerful Russian bankers to form the Big Seven, a group of oligarchs that underwrote Yeltsin's 1996 reelection campaign. In 2000, he was instrumental in financing Vladimir Putin's succesful election campaign.

Alexei M Romanov's estimated worth is currently thought to be somewhere in the region of 3.1 billion US dollars. Besides a controlling share in MostBank, he owns a TV Station, several newspapers, and a quarter share of one of Russia's leading oil companies, as well as several other undisclosed interests. In July 2001 he bought one of England's leading soccer clubs, in a deal worth around 300 million dollars. Married with two children, he lives in a Fortress like estate just outside St Petersburg, although he also has property in London, New York, and the south of France, as well as a custom built 285 feet long Ocean going yacht which is home ported in the Bahamas.