What is Alisher Usmanov net worth and salary?
Alisher Usmanov is an Uzbek-born Russian businessman who has a net worth of $18 billion. Usmanov earned his net worth through mining, timber, and various other investments. He is the majority shareholder of the Russian industrial conglomerate Metalloinvest, which he founded to manage the metallurgical interests of Gazprom. Alisher has a wide variety of business interests, including precious metals, iron ore, steel, natural gas and media companies. From 2000 to 2014, he was Chairman of Gazprom Investholding, the investment holding subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian state energy company. His role at Gazprom Investholding was to handle what Gazprom calls its “most difficult and sensitive financial transactions”. Usmanov was also a major shareholder in London’s Arsenal Football Club until he sold his 30% stake for nearly $700 million in 2018.
Alisher is the sole owner of USM Holdings (formerly known as Gallagher Holdings), a global conglomerate with major investments in the mining and steel industries. The company also has investments in technology, oil and gas, media and pharmaceuticals. In 2014, he sold 12% of the business. It acquired Russian mobile operator MegaFon for $3 billion in 2012, then pledged 56.1% to Sberbank as collateral for a line of credit. As of this writing, “Forbes” lists Alisher’s net worth at $13.2 billion and ranks him 147th on its “Real Time Billionaires List.” In 2021, he was ranked No. 99 on the magazine’s “World’s Billionaires List”. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Usmanov was blacklisted by the European Union (EU), which froze his assets and imposed a travel ban on him. The “Official Journal of the European Union” called Alisher a “pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
Youth
Alisher Usmanov was born Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov on September 9, 1953 in Chust, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union. He grew up in Tashkent, where his father worked as a prosecutor. Alisher moved to Moscow, hoping to pursue a career as a diplomat, and he was later accepted into the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He graduated in international law in 1976, then he returned to Tashkent and took up a post as director of the Foreign Economic Association of the Soviet Peace Committee. Usmanov has a sister, Saodat Narzieva, who owns more than two dozen Swiss bank accounts, one of which held more than $2 billion in 2011.
Career
In the years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Alisher became a dollar millionaire and started Agroplast, a private, for-profit company that produced plastic bags. From 1990 to 1994, he was Deputy Managing Director of Intercross JSC, and he was the head of Interfin Interbank Investment and Finance Company from 1994 to 1998.
In the 90s, Usmanov also served as first vice-president of MAPO-Bank and adviser to the general director of Moscow Aviation Industrial Enterprise. At the end of the decade, he became managing director of Gazprom Investholding and remained in the role until 2014. Since 2006, Alisher has acquired stakes in several Australian mining companies through USM Holdings, and in 2015 the company invested $100 million in Virtus. Pro, an esports organization based in Russia.
In 2021, Metalloinvest and USM announced plans to build “one of the largest HBI plants in the world” in the Kursk region of Russia to help “secure the shift of global industry to greener technologies”. In 2009, Usmanov invested $200 million in Facebook, and when he sold his shares in 2012, he made around $1 billion. Alisher has also invested in companies such as Apple, Airbnb, Groupon and Alibaba. In 2006, he bought the “Kommersant” newspaper for $200 million and paid $25 million for a 50% stake in 7TV, a Russian sports channel. The following year, Usmanov paid $300 million for a 75% stake in Russian music channel Muz-TV. He is also a co-owner of UTH, a media holding company that owns 100% of Muz-TV and 51% of Disney Russia.
Alisher Usmanov/Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Private life
In 1980 Alisher was arrested and convicted of bribery, fraud, and theft of state property. He was sentenced to eight years in an Uzbek prison, but he was released after six years, and in 2000 his sentence was overturned by the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan because “the initial sentence was unfair, no crime was never committed and that the evidence was fabricated.”
Usmanov is a Muslim, and in 1992 he married Irina Viner, a Jewish rhythmic gymnastics trainer. Viner has a son, Anton, from his first marriage, and Alisher adopted him after marrying Irina. Anton, born in 1973, is a real estate investor.
Usmanov owned two luxury yachts which he named Dilbar in honor of his mother. He reportedly paid $250 million for the first Dilbar in 2008 and $800 million for the second Dilbar in 2015. After buying the second yacht, he renamed the first Ona and sold it in 2018. Dilbar was seized by the German authorities in March 2022 due to sanctions against him following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Philanthropy
In 2021, Usmanov was named “the most generous ‘rich list’ philanthropist” by ‘The Sunday Times’ for donating more than £4billion to charity over the past two decades. The Russian version of “Forbes” named him “Philanthropist of the Year” in 2012. In 2006, Alisher established the Art, Science and Sport Charity Fund, which is dedicated to “patronizing socially significant initiatives in the field culture, education and sport, including at the international level.” He was a director of the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University, the Russian Geographical Society, the European University of St. Petersburg and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Usmanov was honored with the Medal of Honor of Russia (2004), the Order of Friendship of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2011), the Order of Service to the Fatherland IV class (2013), the Order of Alexander Nevsky (2014), the Decoration “For Charity” (2016), the Al-Fahr Order (2016) and the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland” 3rd class (2018), and in 2013, the Russian Foreign Ministry awarded him a medal for “contribution to international cooperation.”
Immovable
Usmanov owns several properties on the island of Sardinia, and one of his villas was seized by Italian police in March 2022 because he was placed on an EU sanctions list after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Alisher also owned an £82million house in London and a mansion in Surrey, which were “transferred into irrevocable trusts” in 2006.
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