Where does Peter Aven live? Aven Pyotr Olegovich: biography, achievements and interesting facts
Financial interests
Shareholdings of most companies "Alfa Group", including Alfa Bank and "Vimpelcom". As of 2010, he was a shareholder of the telecommunications holding Altimo (7.021%), ABH Holdings (13.8%), which combines the financial and oil assets of Alfa Group.
Biography
Petr Aven was born on March 16, 1955 in Moscow. In 1977 he graduated from the Faculty of Economics Moscow State University. 1989 – Researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Advisor to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs (until 1991). In 1991-1992 - Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, representative of the Russian President for relations with industrialized countries (G7).
1993 – founded and headed the company "Finance of Peter Aven". Since 1994 President of Alfa Bank. Since 1998 - member of the board of directors of Aviakor OJSC and chairman of the board of directors of the television holding company Alfa-TV CJSC; CJSC Network of Television Stations (STS). In 2007, elected co-chairman of the board of directors "STS Media" together with the director of MTG Hans-Holger Albrecht.
In 2000-2001 - member of the Entrepreneurship Council under the Government of the Russian Federation. Since 2001 – Chairman of the Board of Directors of the holding "Golden Telecom Inc.". Since 2002 - member of the board of directors of Latvijas Balzams.
Petr Aven has headed the Board of Directors of the Banking Group since January 2014 "Alfa Bank".
In mid-April 2015, Alfa Bank filed a "Uralvagonzavod" the first claim for an amount of more than 6 billion rubles and $39.7 million. On May 8, Alfa Bank warned the corporation's creditors that it was going to apply to the arbitration court for its bankruptcy.
On May 12, the arbitration court seized funds worth 523.5 million rubles as part of the second claim of Alfa Bank to collect debt from the company. A week later the arrest was lifted. Uralvagonzavod received government guarantees to repay the debt.
On May 25, 2015, Aven was awarded Order of Friendship. This award is awarded for a great contribution to the socio-economic development of the Russian Federation, achieved labor successes, active social activities and many years of conscientious work, according to the presidential decree.
Peter Aven's net worth, according to Forbes, in 2015 is estimated at $5 billion.
Touches to the portrait
One of the world's most famous collectors of Russian avant-garde. Member of the Board of Trustees of the State Museum of Fine Arts named after A. S. Pushkin; member of the board of trustees Bolshoi Theater.
In 2004, Institutional Investor magazine recognized Aven as the best manager in the financial services sector in Russia.
Board member Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs(RSPP); Member of the Presidium of the Russian International Affairs Council (since 2011); Professor of the State University - High School of Economics(SU - HSE/NRU-HSE), one of the trustees of the Russian School of Economics (NES) and the Center for Economic Policy (CERP) in the UK.
Loves alpine skiing, tennis, hunting.
He supports FC Spartak and is ready to buy the football club from Leonid Fedun.
Married, has two children.
Scandals, rumors
While still a student, I met my future business partner, who was the head of the informal youth club "Strawberry Glade".
According to media reports, in 1992, Aven, being the Minister of Foreign Economic Relations of Russia, by his order transferred the functions of the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations in St. Petersburg Vladimir Putin.
American intelligence agencies developed Peter Aven and Alexandra Shokhina on the subject of fraud with the Tanzanian debt to the USSR. The money ended up in Swiss banks.
As Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, Aven “did not hesitate to accept commissions and even expensive gifts for assisting foreign companies and Russian enterprises in concluding and implementing foreign trade transactions.” However, no official charges of corruption were brought against Aven.
As minister, Aven intensified arms trade– they began to supply it to Iran, the United Arab Emirates, China, and Korea. Aven was also responsible as minister for organizing the supply of meat, sugar and other food products to Russia. A Russian emigrant became a partner in this business Sergey Mazharov, lived in France. Aven transferred funds from sales to his accounts in the Cayman Islands.
In the early 1990s, Aven assisted Friedman when the latter purchased sugar, tea and carpets from India through Alfa-Eco. Purchases were made at the expense of government debts.
The intelligence services checked Minister Aven for embezzlement, connections with Israeli intelligence services and even organizations drug transit from Southeast Asia to Europe. The results of these checks were reported Boris Yeltsin, after which Aven resigned as minister, media claim. Aven challenged this publication by journalists in court and won. In Aven’s own words, he resigned as minister because he did not see for himself “an opportunity to work in the government Viktor Chernomyrdin".
At the same time, Aven became an adviser to the president JSC "LogoVAZ" Boris Berezovsky. It was rumored that it was Aven who lobbied for an important decision for Berezovsky on a sharp increase in customs duties on imported cars.
After the opening of the company "Finance of Peter Aven", support was provided to the businessman Anatoly Chubais, Sergey Glazyev, Alexander Shokhin And Oleg Davydov.
In 1998, the media accused Aven of illegally acquiring a dacha Alexei Tolstoy in Barvikha, near Moscow, at a reduced cost and without paying taxes. The lobbyists for the deal were the general director of Zhukovka, Vladimir Ryabenko, and the head of the State Property Agency.
Peter Aven’s business partners were accused of hostile takeovers of a number of enterprises. Alfa Group used acquisitions through bankruptcy. Alpha's most notorious raider attacks - West Siberian Metallurgical Plant, Achinsk Alumina Refinery, Trading house "Smirnov", pulp and paper mills "Volga" and "Kama", beer company SUN Interbrew, mobile operator "Megaphone". The government structures lobbied for these takeovers, Valentin Zavadnikov And Hovhannes Ohanyan.
In addition, Aven, Friedman and Vekselberg accused of kidnapping "Tyumen Oil Company", and here too it could not have happened without the participation of Chubais, Koch, as well. Former people from the Alfa Group have established themselves in power structures, for example, Alexander Abramov, Andrey Popov, Andrey Rappoport.
At one time, Alfa Bank was the only creditor that refused to provide "Rusalu" deferment of payments. Aven accused Deripaska of violating corporate ethics and, if the demands were not met, he planned to begin bankruptcy proceedings for the industrialist’s company.
In 2008, Aven wrote a devastating review of the writer’s novel “Sankya” for the Russian Pioneer magazine, which caused a heated public debate.
Being “half Latvian” (Aven’s grandfather, a native of Latvia, was repressed), the businessman joined the company’s board of directors Latvijas Balzams. In February 2009, advisor to the chairman of the board of Alfa Bank Alexander Gafin declared Aven’s readiness to head the Latvian government if such a proposal was received by the banker. Aven called Gafin’s statement “a bad joke.”
Aven owns a house on Wentworth Estate in Surrey, England.
Illustration: Alfa-Bank
Aven Petr Olegovich, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Alfa-Bank banking group. Born on March 16, 1955 in Moscow. His father was a specialist in the field of computer technology, headed the Laboratory of Automated Control Systems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and taught at M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. This partially predetermined the future of Peter Aven, since from the sixth grade he studied at physics and mathematics school No. 2, which he graduated in 1972. Aven says that studying at this school influenced his life priorities, in particular his future choice of profession. Five years later, he graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in economic cybernetics, and in 1980 he defended his dissertation, becoming a candidate of economic sciences.
In the 1980s, Aven worked as a researcher at the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute for System Research of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1989 he went to work at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, while holding the position of adviser to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In the fall of 1991, Yegor Gaidar, who not only studied at Moscow State University at the same faculty with Pyotr Aven, but also worked with him in the same research group at VNIISI, invited him to the post of First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR, and at the beginning of 1992, Aven stepped up the career ladder to head of the newly created Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations of the Russian Federation. At the same time, Aven became the representative of the President of the Russian Federation for relations with industrialized countries (G7) and it was he who began negotiations on our country’s accession to the WTO, which, as we know, have not yet been completed. However, already in December 1992, following Gaidar, he resigned. To this day, Aven calls the period of work in the government of Yegor Gaidar one of the most interesting and difficult in his life, while stating that he has no desire to return to civil service.
After his resignation, Aven worked for several months as an adviser to LogOVAZ President Boris Berezovsky, and then organized and headed the consulting company Peter Aven Finance (abbreviated as FinPA). At the end of 1993, Aven was elected to the State Duma of the Russian Federation, but preferred to work in his own company rather than continue his career as a civil servant. Also in 1993, FinPA repeatedly advised Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa-Bank. This cooperation brought Aven into the governing bodies and shareholders of the credit institution. For a 50% stake in FinPA, he received 10% in the capital of Alfa-Bank; currently Petr Aven owns 13.76% of the shares.
In addition to working at the bank, Petr Olegovich also heads the board of directors of AlfaStrakhovanie OJSC and co-chairs the board of directors of CTC Media. Since 2007 - head of the Russian-Latvian Business Council.
In February 2009, reports appeared in the press about Peter Aven’s readiness to take the post of Prime Minister of Latvia and help the country overcome the economic crisis. As it turned out later, this statement turned out to be the personal opinion of the adviser to the chairman of the board of Alfa-Bank, Alexander Gafin, who also worked at the credit institution since 1994.
The personal life of Peter Aven is not as public as his career. Petr Olegovich is married and has two twin children born in 1993 – Denis and Daria, who live and study in the UK. Aven is an agnostic and a staunch anti-communist, enjoys hunting and hockey, actively supports art and theater in Russia (quote from the bank’s website), collects paintings and porcelain from the Silver Age and the Soviet period, is an honorary citizen of the American state of Oklahoma, speaks fluent English, can speak in Spanish. In addition, together with Alfred Koch, he is collecting material and preparing a book about activities in the “era of Gaidar” under the working title “Egor”.
Chairman of the Board of Directors of ABH Holdings S.A., Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alfa-Bank (Russia)
From 1994 to June 2011, he served as President of Alfa-Bank (Russia). His area of responsibility included strategic issues of development of Alfa-Bank (Russia), as well as contacts with business and government circles in Russia and foreign countries. Before starting work at Alfa-Bank (Russia) in 1994, Petr Aven headed the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations of the Russian Federation in 1991–1992, while simultaneously serving as the representative of the President of the Russian Federation for relations with the industrialized countries of the Big Seven. Previously (1989–1991) he worked at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria.
Petr Aven is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of ABH Holdings S.A., a member of the Supervisory Board of Alfa-Bank (Ukraine), Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alfa-Bank (Russia) and Chairman of the Board of Directors of AlfaStrakhovanie JSC.
Mr. Aven is a member of the Board of Directors of the Russian Economic School (NES), a member of the President's Council on International Relations of Yale University (USA), and is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Moscow State University. Lomonosov, the Russian Geographical Society, and is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin and Trustee of the Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain).
Since April 2006, Mr. Aven has been a member of the board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. In addition, Mr. Aven is a member of the Presidium of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), holds the position of professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (National Research University Higher School of Economics) and is an Honorary Doctor of the University of Latvia.
Petr Aven graduated from Moscow State University in 1977 and has a PhD in Economics (specialty in Econometrics). Born in Moscow (Russia) in 1955.
There is great grief in the family of the 60-year-old chairman of the board of directors of Alfa-Bank, Pyotr Aven. His wife Elena Aven died on Tuesday, August 25.
According to media reports, the cause of death of Elena Aven is a detached blood clot.
The death of the oligarch's wife became known yesterday from a message in facebook friend of the deceased - lawyer Alexander Dobrovinsky.
“A bright, wonderful, intelligent and kind woman, Lena Aven, has died. My friend, neighbor, wife of a close friend. My sincere condolences to Peter Aven and their children Dasha and Denis,” Dobrovinsky wrote.
A representative of Alfa-Bank confirmed this information to the media.
“The Board of Directors of the Alfa-Bank banking group, the board and the team of Alfa-Bank Russia express their deepest and sincere condolences in connection with the untimely death of Elena Vladimirovna Aven,” said a representative of the bank.
Farewell fast Family friend Alfred Koch also wrote - without mentioning her name: “I knew her well. She was happy. The children loved her. And she loved them deeply, passionately.
She loved her husband. And he loved her. Treasured her terribly. Shore, took care of her. Proud... A rare family. Rare happiness. May the kingdom of heaven rest with her. May she rest in peace."
In addition, Koch reports the cause of death of Elena Aven - a blood clot broke off in the woman.
Elena Aven was a co-founder of the “Generation” charitable foundation, founded by the couple in 2008 in Latvia, where Peter Aven’s ancestors are from. The foundation supported pediatric medicine, as well as scholarships and grants in the field of science.
Elena Aven is a historian by profession.
Peter and Elena Aven have been married for more than 25 years. During this time, we managed to raise twins Denis and Dasha (born in 1993), who are now studying at Yale University.
In 2011, in an exclusive interview with the MixNews portal, Ms. Aven said how easy it was for her to be the wife of such a famous person.
“I started living not with some famous person, but with a junior researcher. And we lived a normal, ordinary life. We need to love each other, respect each other. And we also need to learn not to offend each other,” Elena Aven said then .
Farewell to Elena Aven will take place in the Ritual Hall of the Troekurovsky cemetery in the capital on Friday, August 28, at 10 a.m., the funeral will begin at 12 noon Moscow time.
Banker Peter Aven spoke about his friendship with Boris Berezovsky (photo)
I started the conversation exactly as Pyotr Aven’s friend and neighbor in the old Arbat lanes, lawyer Dobrovinsky, told me. I walked into an apartment in Bolshoy Afanasyevsky, from the threshold with a trained look I snatched the “Mother of God” hanging on the wall and politely admired it. Adding that Petrov-Vodkin such beauty is not even in the Tretyakov Gallery with its “Red Horse”. And in general there is nowhere except this quiet, intelligent apartment. One of the country's main collectors, the owner of a fortune of five billion dollars, looked at me carefully through the lenses of his Monty Python glasses, understood everything and laughed.
This is what you had to learn, these are the real masterpieces: “Victory Battle” by Aristarkh Lentulov and “Troika” by Konstantin Korovin. Once belonged to Chaliapin.
“Troika” was good, but, fortunately or unfortunately, what we had to discuss was not art, but Aven’s book about Boris Berezovsky. They were once friends. Then they quarreled. In the last years of his life, the rebellious Boris Abramovich did not shake hands with the author, accusing him of collaborating with the bloody regime. And this, without a doubt, adds intrigue and drama to the story. So far the book is half finished, but twelve excerpts - interviews about BAB with people who know him well - were published on the Snob website, and two hundred thousand people have already read them.
Actually, this is not the first book by a financier who has been drawn to journalism since his youth. The collection of interviews about Yegor Gaidar, which he took together with Alfred Koch, was republished three times in Russia, published in England, and now also in Poland - to the considerable surprise of the co-authors, who coquettishly call the “Gaidar Revolution” in places unsystematic and poorly structured. However, all historical Western literature about the nineties is full of references to the tome, but is there a more indicative criterion in science? I ask if Aven was excited by the prospect of being scattered into quotes?
“Undoubtedly, like any person, I have a craving for immortality,” he answers. - I wanted to continue. I began to think about what to write about next. And at that moment Boris died. Among my already departed friends there were two whom I always wanted to think about - because of their unusualness: Yegor Gaidar and Boris Berezovsky. So I decided to make a book about Boris. And then Friedman advised me: we need to do not a book, but a multimedia project, no one reads books anymore.
Journalist Andrey Loshak is responsible for the video component of the new format. He once made a touching film for the birthday of the chairman of the board of directors of the Alfa-Bank banking group, then a documentary about the famous “second” Mekhmatov school on Fotieva Street, which he successfully graduated from in 1972. And this movie, shown last August at midnight on Kultura, also unexpectedly blew up all the ratings. A close creative union emerged: Aven interviews, Loshak films. But it will most likely not be “Interlinear” by Lilianna Lungina, but rather two parallel products.
Valentin Yumashev, Yuri Shefler, Anatoly Chubais, Alexander Voloshin have already been interviewed with passion. Berezovsky's second wife Galina willingly spoke up - they officially divorced in 2011, but in recent years in London the disgraced businessman lived in a house registered in her name. Invaluable evidence was provided by Leonid Boguslavsky, a childhood friend and one of Berezovsky’s partners at LogoVAZ. Mikhail Fridman recalled how the first attempt was made on Berezovsky: he was lying in bandages, and his two women at the hospital bed were noisily trying to find out who this bloodless patient belonged to. Model Daria K., Berezovsky’s last love, told a wonderful story about how Borya, out of anger, threw a huge Graff diamond, which he had given him, into the ocean and how then everyone who witnessed this scene dived for the “count” with scuba gear.
Aven himself is not very keen to talk to anyone - for example, with Berezovsky’s common-law wife Lena, who lives in London, or with Vladimir Gusinsky, who has settled in Israel.
Vladimir Aleksandrovich has been living a different life for a long time; a large aberration of vision has occurred. However, maybe we can talk one day.
Someone has not yet given consent: Konstantin Ernst and Berezovsky’s long-time associate Samat Zhaboev are cautious. Roman Arkadyevich seems to have promised, but he can’t coordinate his busy schedule with the no less busy schedule of Pyotr Olegovich. Although without the person who, together with Berezovsky, explained the features of national privatization to the London court, the book would have been tragically incomplete.
I wonder if the first line was written - after all, some authors write from the middle, while others need to start from a bright, polished phrase. Yes, it's written. Aven will start with temptation. Since the nineties, when “the temptation to live in a new way was in the air, oozing from all the cracks, repainting and re-voicing the world around us.” When everything previously unattainable suddenly became possible - just extend your hand. With an irresistible temptation to quickly become rich and strong. At any cost. Berezovsky became the symbol of this irresistible attraction.
Sometimes it seemed to me that he deliberately made me believe that “everything is allowed,” there are no rules, and following ordinary ideas about what is right and possible is stupid and ineffective. And there is no such word - “impossible”.
They were introduced in 1975 by Leonid Boguslavsky, a graduate student of Father Aven, a professor and corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a specialist in the field of computer technology. Boguslavsky's mother was the writer Zoya Boguslavskaya, his stepfather was Andrei Voznesensky, the first poet with whom Aven became seriously interested - at sixteen. Golden boys, glamorous Moscow intelligentsia. At the Voznesensky-Boguslavskaya house, in a Stalinist high-rise on Kotelnicheskaya embankment, Vysotsky sang, Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin celebrated the New Year there... The bright and charismatic Berezovsky, an enterprising graduate of Lestekh, was five years older than Leonid and had a great influence on him. He was a mentor in terms of career and life in general; they even had one car between them.
Boris first wanted to meet me because I was his father’s son,” admits Aven. Boris intended to advance along the scientific line and eagerly sought the favor of Aven Sr. Pyotr Olegovich’s mother recalled how once, when Berezovsky was not given the Lenin Komsomol Prize, he came to his friend (Aven was nine years younger) and immediately retired to the kitchen with his father, discussing how to get the prize.
Then the two of them became friends, without dad. With stories of the kind that are later retold at birthday parties to deafening laughter. We went to Togliatti together to buy cars. Berezovsky already had connections at AvtoVAZ, and his friends were promised a chic 93rd model in “champagne spray” color. They plucked up the courage to personally drive the cars home - bandits were rampant on the road from Tolyatti to Moscow, that was the time. But when they arrived at the factory, it turned out that instead of splashes of champagne, they were destined for the color of a child’s potty. They swore and repainted it. Then Aven went to Austria, to Laxenburg, in this car, to work at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. He also bought his next car - a Fiat Tipo - from Berezovsky at Logovaz.
Pyotr Olegovich recalls how he got married and moved with Lena into a separate apartment. And these square meters ended up on the way between the house where Boris lived with his first wife Nina Korotkova, and his mother’s apartment, where he secretly met with his future wife Galya. Berezovsky, then not yet such a desperate heartthrob as he became years later, lost his head. He was torn to pieces. Every day he drove from his wife supposedly to his mother - but in reality Galya was waiting for him. And halfway there he stayed with his friend Aven. Galya and Lena were the same age, quickly became friends, the four of them began to communicate closely, and Aven felt terribly awkward - because he constantly had to visit Boris and Nina at home.
You know, Dovlatov said that women love rich men not for their money, but for the qualities that made them rich. So, it was not immediately clear that Berezovsky would become rich. And only when he got rich, he began to attract women to himself,” says Aven.
Although Galina Besharova recalls in an interview that when she first saw Berezovsky, she immediately felt a “boom”: “I had not yet heard his voice, I knew nothing about him, but I said to myself: “What smart eyes this man has. He will go far". Later, when Berezovsky had money, he still lived in Galina’s tiny three-room apartment, in a twelve-meter room - with his son Tema and his wife’s parents behind the wall. “He liked living with a family, both being a child and having grandparents. This didn't bother him. It didn’t matter at all to him what kind of walls, what kind of floors,” Galina recalled...
It was Berezovsky who contributed to Aven leaving for Austria in 1989 - they did not want to let Peter out. Although he himself considered his friend’s departure a mistake. Russia smelled of money. Everyone around was making money on pseudo-scientific things. Aven wrote dissertations for money. Boris also wrote, but with the hands of his students.
Then some self-supporting topics began, completely legal, without any farce,” recalls Aven. - First you agree with one, then with another. Boris was the first to have the idea of getting everyone together, creating a normal company, dividing shares and working.
In the summer of 1989, in the Atrium cafe on Leninsky Prospekt - by the way, it is still alive - Berezovsky gathered his friends and encouraged them to chip in as much as they could. He was then asked: “What is the goal? What do we want? Without blinking an eye, he said that the goal was very simple - to earn everyone a billion dollars.
You don't understand what it looked like then. Before the “splash of champagne” I had a broken “penny”. I could only save for the next car. A billion dollars - it wasn't even funny. But he was completely serious.
Aven still left for Austria. But Berezovsky tempted. One day I flew to a friend’s place on a private jet. It was good in Austria, but at that moment Aven said to his wife: “Something like that is happening there. Apparently we’ll have to go back.” Lena did not want to return. Boris rented a VIP meeting room, it was beautiful and he spent a lot.
It felt like he had a completely different life there. He tempted everyone in different ways. But the main thing is that anything is possible. That there is no morality. Just “go ahead, and don’t be afraid of anything.” Someone told me the other day that he was a cowardly Jewish man - well, he was absolutely desperate. Perhaps he cried into his pillow at night, more on that later. But in his everyday behavior he was frostbitten fearless.
In 1991, Aven finally returned. He headed the Committee for Foreign Economic Relations of the Russian Federation, was First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Foreign Economic Relations in the Gaidar government. In 1993, he went into business: first FinPA, then Alfa-Bank.
They were still friends with Berezovsky. It is believed that Boris Abramovich owes most of his acquaintances in the highest echelons of power to his younger comrade. It was Aven who introduced him to Valentin Yumashev, his guide into the world of the all-powerful presidential family. It was not without Aven’s help that the Berezovsky-Abramovich tandem emerged. And even BAB was introduced to the modest vice-mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, by a friend of his youth.
What happened next? Where is the point of no return after which they stopped communicating?
There were several episodes that changed my attitude towards him,” says Aven. - Borya owed me money. We have a joint business project. Only once in my life. I came up with some kind of financial scheme for which I did not have money. Having sold it with funds raised by Berezovsky, we had to divide the profit. I was owed five million dollars - a huge sum at that time. I ran after him, he didn’t give up. This was a very big shock for me, because in my value system it is impossible not to give away money. Then there was a similar story with Alfa-Bank lending to Logovaz. In general, I became more mature, and the charm of Borey and his charisma began to dissipate.
And yet they were friends, went to restaurants. They continued to meet when Boris Abramovich left for London. The last straw was the sale of Kommersant. A group of businessmen, including Aven, had the idea to buy a newspaper for ten to fifteen people so that Kommersant would remain independent. And Berezovsky, at any cost, wanted to buy the newspaper alone. It took a long time to convince him. As a result, he called Friedman and, in his usual manner, asked not to interfere, otherwise he would destroy Alpha.
Yuri Shefler, in a conversation with you, recalls that Berezovsky wanted to kill the then editor-in-chief of Izvestia, Igor Golembiovsky, because there was not a day when the newspaper came out without an article incriminating him.
There were several people in Boris's life whom he theoretically wanted to kill. But he didn't kill anyone - as far as I know. He was such an operetta killer because he couldn’t really organize anything. Stanislav Belkovsky, in a conversation with me, said that God took Berezovsky away, so he is not such a bad person. Then Alfa-Bank had a conflict with Kommersant. In court, Alpha sued the publication for an astronomical amount of eleven million dollars for such kind of litigation. Andrei Vasiliev, the then editor-in-chief of Kommersant, plucked up courage and invited Mikhail Fridman to Vladimir Solovyov for the “Duel” to show the world how bad Alfa-Bank is. Fridman said live that Berezovsky threatened him. Boris Abramovich filed a lawsuit in England.
Pyotr Olegovich had to testify.
It was pure idiocy, because he really threatened us. But we lost the trial. For the reason that they did not understand how English justice works, they did not understand their arguments. For example, the lawyer says: “You claim that Berezovsky threatened Friedman and you.” - "Yes, sure". - “And six months later you had dinner with him there and there.” - “Yes, this is also true.” Lawyer: “Mr. Judge, can you imagine a person who was threatened going with a potential murderer to dinner at a restaurant?” Boris Nemtsov testified in much the same way, and they didn’t believe him either, because “then he and Borya swam in the sea together somewhere.”
After the trial, Berezovsky did not shake hands with Aven for the first time. Then he wrote a book about how he won the trial. A few months later they met by chance in London, at the private club Aspinall’s. Aven entered. At this time, Berezovsky was giving an interview while sitting on the sofa. Aven extended his hand, Boris Abramovich looked at this hand for a long time, but did not offer his own. Aven’s wife Lena came in next. Berezovsky always had an ideal relationship with her, she was even listed in his laboratory before Peter’s business trip to Austria: by law he had to work somewhere. Lena rushed to kiss: “Borenka!” He performed exactly the same number. A year later, in the same place in London, at Yuri Shefler’s birthday party, the birthday boy invited Berezovsky to the table where Aven was, but he said that he would not sit at the same table with his old friend.
For me it was absolute nonsense. To be honest, I didn’t see a reason for such behavior. But Borya told everyone that we were conformists, collaborating with the authorities: he was already fighting with all his might against Putin. Many friends later said that he was very sorry that he had quarreled with me. Although if I really regretted it, I would have called. Aven didn’t call either. It happens often.
But now, perhaps secretly from himself, wanting to make up for the feeling of understatement, he is writing a book. And he learns unexpected things about his former comrade. For example, that he had been experiencing panic attacks and thoughts of suicide for a long time.
Stanislav Belkovsky, who had been friends with Borya in recent years, was the first to tell me about this. He had suicidal intentions back in the early 2000s, before all these disasters. And Galya recently told me the same thing for the first time. Neither I nor Lenya Boguslavsky, his best friend, knew this. They did not suspect that at times he was crushed and unsure of himself.
Was it really suicide?
I have no doubt about it. He definitely committed suicide. This is clinically clear. You know, when you think about a person, you always talk not to him, but to yourself. I always thought that I understood something about life. And about Berezovsky, it seemed to me that I knew everything. But when you listen to different people, you see completely different assessments of the same situation. You interview professionally, you know how to step back - this is a skill. I always had my own assessment of everything. Very definite. And conversations about Berezovsky taught me to avoid harsh judgments. Here Yuri Shefler tells how Berezovsky calls him: “You have to help me. Must kill Golembiovsky,” and how much effort he put into reconciling them. And two hours later, Yuliy Dubov, Berezovsky’s colleague at LogoVaz, cries into my voice recorder, talking about Borya’s phenomenal qualities.
Probably my main conclusion: if you judge, be careful. And it’s not for me to judge Boris. I don’t compare myself to Chekhov or Shakespeare, but it seems to me that the main quality of a great playwright is that each play can be interpreted differently, staged differently. I would like the conclusions that readers draw to be different. Belkovsky once wisely said that there are good people, and there are kind people. Good and kind, bad and evil are completely different things. So, in his opinion, “Borya was bad, but kind.” And in any case, he was a man of colossal charisma, charm, which flawlessly acted on both men and women, if he needed it.
And he was also a man of not even different moral values than Aven. He was completely without morals.
But he spent millions of dollars not only on yachts, planes and girls, but on some of his valuables. This is unique: almost a billion dollars to organize a revolution. Somewhere. You can, of course, say that this is also about money, but this is not so. Material things, by the way, always worried him much less than women - women were in his first place, he was insatiable in this sense. But all these revolutions are self-realization. Plus, he always gave money to various cultural projects, and he simply gave it away to some homeless people.
Once in “Snob” Aven quoted Stanislav Rassadin’s remarkable discussion about Konstantin Simonov. When Simonov died, a lot of people began to say that he was immoral, a Stalinist, an opportunist. Rassadin explained: Stalin offered Simonov a prize that he had not offered to anyone - to become the first poet of the era. And this is in the country where Pushkin and Blok were. A fantastic challenge that is hard not to respond to.
Anyone who has not been tempted in this way has no right to judge. I wrote the same thing to Sergei Parkhomenko when he harshly attacked Chubais. And Berezovsky... The prize for which he fought was absolute power.
Power... Aven probably knows its value, understands what is possible and what is not. And therefore avoids loud political statements. He probably believes that he has no right to risk investors’ money in order to defend his beliefs.
We are talking about different things. About the stunning Kandinsky that hangs in Aven's house in England. That he will give several paintings and unique porcelain objects to the exhibition “Russia 2017” at the Royal Academy of Arts. That someday he might create a private museum, but where is not yet clear, because “the collections in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum are much richer than mine, there is no point in creating a museum in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Western Europe there is no one specializing in Russian art.” I’m not interested, but I’ll definitely come up with something.” We talk about osteopaths and the rumor that excited Spartak fans that Aven, a long-time fan of the red and white, is buying the club from Fedun: “Leonid and I signed an NDA - a complete confidentiality agreement.” About the house in England, where Aven used to live regularly, but now rarely comes. Because in August 2015, Lena, with whom they lived for thirty years, passed away, and life was forever divided into “before” and “after.” Forever to such an extent that it is impossible to talk about it. At least for now.
But there are wonderful children - twins Denis and Dasha. They studied at the English Catholic school St George's Weybridge and will graduate from Yale this year. From all sides they told me only good things about Aven’s son and daughter. I ask an urgent parental question: “How to raise a worthy person?”
This is the merit of my wife rather than mine; all my life I worked more than raised. But we raised them tough. The only thing that can be done is to instill the right values in children. The main thing that the wife taught them, their son first of all, is that they should derive pleasure from their achievements, and not from anything else. Not from the fact that you are sitting on the beach with a girl, but from the fact that you have achieved, overcome yourself. I always explained to my children that the ordinary life of rich Moscow teenagers is not something to strive for. By the way, when the children were born in Vienna, Boris and Galya, with their children, were the first to come to congratulate us. Their gift - a silver service - stands in a prominent place in the kitchen... As if it were yesterday. But in fact - in another life.
Ten pm. An osteopath is about to come to Aven. Already standing on the threshold, I ask the last question:
Was Berezovsky a vain man? Would he like it if a book was published about him?
Undoubtedly. This is one of the thoughts that made me happy when I thought about whether I had the moral right to talk about him. If I asked him now, he would answer: “Be sure to write. The main thing is don’t forget!”
Ksenia Solovyova
