Farkhad Akhmedov

Farkhad Akhmedov got his start in business in the late 1980s selling Russian sables at the London commodity exchange. In 1987, he founded Tansley Trading, which supplied equipment to Russian gas producers. Six years later, he became a minority shareholder in Nortgas, an oil and gas company in Siberia. Russian natural gas giant Gazprom had a controlling stake in Nortgas but Akhmedov steadily bought up shares and eventually managed to dilute Gazprom's stake to 0.5%, while proclaiming that Gazprom did not invest a dime in Nortgas. But to wage a war with Gazprom is to pay dearly. Gazprom took legal action and in 2005 the parties settled, with Akhmedov returning a 51% stake in Nortgas to Gazprom for free. In 2012 Gazprom competitor Novatek, owned by billionaires Leonid Mikhelson and Gennady Timchenko, bought Akhmedov's stake in Nortgas. Akhmedov has invested $55 million in a pomegranate juice factory in his native Azerbaijan, where his father worked during the Soviet era and named it after his father. Akhmedov, 62, who featured this week on the US “Putin list” of officials and oligarchs close to the Kremlin, was ordered to give his 41-year-old ex-wife 41.5% of his “staggering” wealth by a high court judge in 2016. The gas and oil tycoon who is close friends with Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, married Akhmedova more than 20 years ago. The couple, who have two sons, moved to London in 1993 and Akhmedova raised the children without the help of a nanny, the court was told. Akhmedov is appealing against the divorce settlement.