Alisher Usmanov

Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov (, ; born 9 September 1953) is a Russian-Uzbek oligarch. He is sanctioned by the US, EU, UK, and Ukrainian governments. By March 2025, Usmanov had an estimated net worth of $16.7 billion and was ranked number 124 among the world's wealthiest people.

Usmanov made his wealth after the collapse of the Soviet Union, through metal and mining operations, and investments. He is a shareholder of 49% of Metalloinvest, a Russian industrial conglomerate, which consolidated in 2006 JSC Metalloinvest's assets (Mikhailovsky GOK and Ural Steel) with those of Gazmetall JSC (Lebedinsky GOK and the Oskol Electrometallurgical Plant).

He owns the Kommersant publishing house. He is also a co-owner of Russia's second-largest mobile telephone operator, MegaFon, and co-owner of Udokan copper which develops one of the largest copper deposits in the world. Usmanov eventually teamed up with Yuri Milner and became the largest investor of Digital Sky Technologies ("DST"). On 16 September 2010, DST changed its name to "Mail.ru Group". He also holds shares of a number of international technology companies. He has been the president of the ''Fédération Internationale d'Escrime'', the international governing body of the sport of fencing, from 2008 until 2022, and again from 2024.

On 28 February 2022, in reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union blacklisted Usmanov, imposing an EU-wide travel ban on him and freezing all his assets. On 3 March, the United States imposed similar sanctions on him, with some exceptions for his companies. Usmanov was named in the ''Official Journal of the European Union'', the publication of record of the EU, as a "pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin [who is] one of Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs." In March 2024 Swedish economist and former government adviser Anders Åslund removed his post on X where he called the billionaire one of “Putin’s favourite oligarchs.”after being approached by Usmanov’s lawyers. This post was used by the Council as justification for the sanctions. Usmanov denied these allegations and filed an appeal in the European Court of Justice in an attempt to lift the sanctions. On 7 February 2024, the appeal was dismissed. However, the EU Council dropped the term “oligarch” from Usmanov’s sanctions reasoning. It now reads “a leading businessperson”.

He spent six years in a Soviet prison in the 1980s on charges of fraud and embezzlement, but his conviction was later overturned. In 2000, he was eventually rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan, which ruled that the case against him was trumped up and no crime had been committed. Provided by Wikipedia