Gennady Timchenko, a Russian oligarch and multibillionaire businessman, was born on November 9, 1952. The Volga Group is a private investment company that he started and owns.
He had previously shared ownership of Gunvor Group. Vladimir Putin and Timchenko have been close friends since the early 1990s. Putin authorised Timchenko to export oil in 1991. Later, Timchenko established Gunvor, which went on to export Russian oil valued at billions of dollars. The massive natural gas company Novatek is a key shareholder in Timchenko’s investing company Volga Group. A Timchenko business, which was a significant player in the Novatek venture, was found to have gotten huge loans through covert offshore shell firms, according to the Pandora Papers disclosures.
Timchenko was punished for both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Timchenko was the 6th richest person in Russia back in March 2022 and was ranked 205th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as he had an estimated net worth of US$10.3 billion. He is well-known for holding the positions of President of the SKA Saint Petersburg ice hockey team and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Kontinental Hockey League. He holds citizenship in Finland, Russia, and Armenia.
Gennady Timchenko Bio/Wiki
Birth Name | Gennady Timchenko |
Nick Name | Gennady Timchenko |
Age | 71 years (as in 2023) |
Religion | Christianity |
Sun Sign/Zodiac Sign | Scorpio |
Birth Place | Leninakan, Armenian SSR |
Date of Birth | 9 November 1952 |
Nationality | Russian, Armenian, Finnish |
Hobbies | Playing and watching tennis |
Family |
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Mother's Name | NA |
Father's Name | Nikolay Timchenko |
Brother | NA |
Sister | NA |
Girlfriends/Affairs |
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Affairs/Girlfriends | None |
Marital Status, Wife and Children |
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Wife/Spouse | |
Children | Sergey Timchenko, Xenia Frank |
Education |
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School | NA |
College/University | ITMO University (1976) |
Profession | Businessperson, Trader |
Height, Weight, and Figure Measurements |
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Height (Approx.) | 6 feet |
Weight (Approx.) | 78 kgs |
Extra Ordinary Features |
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Race / Ethnicity | Armenian/Russian |
Hair Color | Gray |
Eye Color | Black |
S*xual Orientation | Straight |
Favourite Things |
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Favourite Food | Mutton |
Favourite Book | NA |
Favourite Colors | Gray |
Favourite Sport | Tennis |
Controversies | Sanctions on him owing to the Russian-Ukraine war as he is one of the oligarchs suspected to be backing Putin |
Early life and Education
Timchenko was born in 1952 in Leninakan, Armenian SSR (now Gyumri, Armenia), Soviet Union. His father participated in World War II as a member of the Soviet military. He lived in the Ukrainian SSR and the German Democratic Republic for six of his formative years (1959 to 1965) when he also learned German.
He earned his electrical engineering degree from the Mechanical Institute of Saint Petersburg, which was then known as Leningrad, in 1976, according to a 2008 Wall Street Journal interview.
Gennady Timchenko Personal life
Elena is the wife of Timchenko. They are parents of three kids. Timchenko’s family is still based in Switzerland, while he currently resides in Moscow, Russia. Putin’s former transport minister Sergei Frank’s son Gleb is married to Ksenia, his daughter. Timchenko said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he had up his Russian citizenship and became a Finnish citizen in 1999.
Helsingin Sanomat reported in 2004 that he had obtained Finnish citizenship and had been residing in Geneva at the time. Timchenko stated that he was a citizen of both Russia and Finland in an interview with the Russian edition of Forbes in October 2012. In an interview with ITAR-TASS in August 2014, Timchenko said that he required Finnish citizenship in the 1990s when it was more difficult to travel with a Russian passport and that he never tried to hide the fact that he had two passports.
He said that for the previous fourteen years, he had paid taxes in Finland and Switzerland. “I carefully transmit the money I owe to the Russian budget to Russia. Theoretically, I could have reduced the transfers by invoking the prohibition against dual taxation, but I never did this since I was aware that the revenues were being used to pay Russian physicians, teachers, and members of the military while I was in no way going bankrupt. If I shared the budget with others, I wouldn’t go hungry.”
He is included as a citizen of Russia, Finland, and Armenia in the US Department of Treasury statement of those subject to sanctions as a result of the 2014 Crimean crisis.
Gennady Timchenko Awards
In 2013, he received the title of Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in recognition of his work on the Alekhine Memorial Chess Tournament, assistance for the Russian Museum at Saint Petersburg, and establishment of a permanent display of Russian art in the Louvre. Andrey Piontkovsky, a political writer from Russia, claimed that “awarding a criminal with the moniker Gangrene the highest accolade brings humiliation to the French state” in response to this honour.
Gennady Timchenko Family
Elena is the wife of Timchenko. They are parents of three kids. Timchenko’s family is still based in Switzerland, while he currently resides in Moscow, Russia. Putin’s former transport minister Sergei Frank’s son Gleb is married to Ksenia, his daughter.
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Professional Career
Timchenko began working as an engineer at the Izhorsky factory, a power generator manufacturer close to Saint Petersburg, in 1977. He was then transferred to this state-owned company’s trading division. He served as a senior engineer for the Ministry of Foreign Trade from 1982 until 1988. He was elevated to Deputy Director of the state-owned oil corporation Kirishineftekhimexport in 1988, as Russia began to liberalise its economy.
Kirishineftekhimexport was founded in 1987 on the foundation of the Kirishi refinery, one of the three biggest refineries in the RSFSR. Timchenko made the decision to leave Russia in 1991, and Urals Finland Oy, a firm established in Finland that specialised in bringing Russian oil to Europe, recruited him. He resided in Finland and attained Finnish nationality.
Timchenko served as Anatoly Sobchak and Vladimir Putin’s conduit while Sobchak was exiled. International Petroleum Products Oy (IPP) replaced Urals Finland Oy as the company’s name in 1995, and Timchenko was appointed as IPP OY’s first deputy and later CEO. In 1997, he and Swedish entrepreneur Torbjörn Törnqvist co-founded the international commodities trading firm, Gunvor.
A day before the US penalties in March 2014, he sold Törnqvist his interest. Timchenko established the private investment fund known as the Volga Group (Volga Resources Group) in 2007. The energy, transportation, infrastructure, financial services, and consumer sectors are where the Volga group keeps its assets in the domestic and foreign markets.
Gunvor
Timchenko and Torbjörn Törnqvist co-founded the Cyprus-registered Gunvor Group, a company engaged in trading and logistics pertaining to the global energy industry. Timchenko sold his shares in Gunvor to the other co-founder, Torbjörn Törnqvist, on March 19, 2014.
The transaction took place the day before Timchenko was added to the US sanctions list following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Timchenko said he sold his interest to “certainly secure the continuing and continuous operations of Gunvor Group” and to prepare for “possible economic penalties.” The transaction’s value was not made public.
Group Volga
Timchenko established the Volga Resources fund in Luxembourg in 2007. At the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2013, the fund, which combines Timchenko’s holdings, was renamed Volga Group. He said that in the upcoming years, his organisation will concentrate on the growth of infrastructure projects in Russia.
This fund’s objective is to “invest directly and indirectly in value-driven assets in Russia and abroad that generate reliable, long-term returns.” Financial services, consumer products, real estate, and infrastructure development are among the industries in which the firm has investments. Its largest stakes are in the petrochemical business Sibur and the gas company Novatek.
Aviation by Airfix
Timchenko sold a 49 per cent share in IPP Oy, a Finnish corporation that held 99 per cent of the Finnish aviation firm Airfix Aviation, in April 2014. It constituted a little portion of the Volga Group’s holdings. International sanctions were imposed on Timchenko as a result of Russia’s invasion of Crimea in April 2014.
Sanctions have been placed on IPP Oil Products, a company with significant ties to Timchenko in Cyprus. Timchenko’s partner Kai Paananen (Russian: а аананeн) is intimately linked to both the IPP and Airfix Aviation businesses. In the 2014 Ukraine-related sanction lists, the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has designated Volga Group as an SDN (specially Designated Nationals).
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Philanthropic activities
Timchenko helped create the Yawara-Neva Judo Club in 1998. Timchenko and the business Surgutex established the Kluch humanitarian organisation in 2007, which creates expert foster homes in the districts of Ryazan, Tambov, and Leningrad. The Neva Foundation was established in 2008 in Geneva by Gennady and Elena Timchenko to support and fund cultural endeavours in both Russia and Switzerland.
Lyrical art and cooperation with the Grand Théâtre de Genève have been the foundation’s main priorities. Yuri Temirkanov, a well-known conductor of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, served as a trustee. The Ladoga Foundation was established in 2010 by Gennady and Elena Timchenko. The fund’s primary activities have included helping the elderly, restoring monuments to spiritual and cultural heritage, funding cultural programmes, and supporting initiatives in the area of cutting-edge medical technology.
The Elena and Gennady Timchenko Foundation (often known as the Timchenko Foundation for short) replaced the Ladoga Foundation in September 2013 and incorporated all of their humanitarian endeavours. Timchenko was chosen as the Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Council Chairman in 2011. (CCIFR).
He was also named President of SKA Saint Petersburg, the top ice hockey team, and Chairman of the Board of Directors in the same year. He was named head of the Continental Hockey League’s board of directors in 2012. (KHL). He is a member of the board of trustees of the Russian Geographical Society as well as the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. Timchenko made a donation of 2,9 billion rubles in 2020 to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Involvement In Sports
Timchenko enjoys watching and playing tennis. He has supported the IPP Open, an outdoor tennis competition in Finland since 2000, through his formerly owned Finnish business, IPP. He reportedly supported a number of Russian tennis players in addition to the Davis Cup-winning Finnish national team. His sponsorship of a sailing team that competes in the worldwide RC44 yachting tournament has been reported in the media.
Timchenko took over as Chairman of the Board of Directors of SKA Saint Petersburg, the ice hockey team headquartered in Saint Petersburg, in April 2011 from Alexander Medvedev. He was chosen to serve as Club President in May of the same year, as part of the club’s new management structure.
He took over as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Continental Hockey League KHL from Vyacheslav Fetisov in July 2012. The Timchenko Foundation encourages young people to take up chess and ice hockey. He joined the sponsors and organisers of the Alekhine Memorial, one of the most significant international chess competitions in the ELO rating, in 2013.
Sanctions On Him
Timchenko was added to the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN), a list of people sanctioned as “members of the Russian leadership’s inner circle,” by the U.S. Treasury in March 2014, following the Crimean status referendum. The penalties prevent him from entering the US and freeze any assets he may have there.
In the CAATSA declassified report, a list of Russian “oligarchs” is included, including Timchenko. After Russia recognised the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and sent troops there on February 22, 2022, the UK government imposed sanctions on Timchenko.
In connection with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union placed Timchenko on a blacklist and ordered all of his assets frozen on February 28, 2022. His boat Lena was taken into custody by the Italian authorities on March 4, 2022, in the port city of Sanremo. Along with his wife and children, the boat was put on a United States sanctions list.
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Gennady Timchenko Net Worth
His current net worth is $12.4 Billion. The largest investment made by Timchenko was a 23.5 per cent share in the publicly listed natural gas firm Novatek. According to Interfax’s SPARK database, he owns the shares through Volga Group and ENA Invest, his Russia-based investment companies.
According to Novatek’s website, the company produces 10% of all the natural gas in Russia. According to public records and media sources, further assets include a 14.5 per cent investment in the petrochemical business Sibur, 80 per cent in the rail company Transoil, and 52 per cent in the Russian construction company Stroytransgaz.
Prior to the imposition of American economic sanctions, the billionaire sold a 44 per cent interest in Cyprus-based oil trader Gunvor Group to partner Torbjorn Tornqvist in March 2014. Although the transaction’s specifics are unknown, our study estimates that he made $2 billion from the sale. In 2010 and 2011, Timchenko and his billionaire partner Leonid Mikhelson bought Sibur from Gazprombank, the lending subsidiary of the government-controlled energy firm Gazprom.
The valuation utilised to determine the investment cost was the one provided by Gazprombank in December 2010, when it sold the first 25% for $1.3 billion. According to Volga’s spokesman, his lesser assets include around 10% of Bank Rossia and 30% of the coal mining business Kolmar.
When the majority of the peer firms used to assess their interests in trade outside of Russia, risk discounts are imposed to account for the effects of western sanctions. In 2022, the U.K. and the European Union imposed sanctions on Timchenko as a result of the intensifying crisis in Ukraine.
Estimated Net Worth in 2023 (Approx) | $12.4 Billion |
Estimated Net Worth in 2022 (Approx) | $15.6 Billion |
Estimated Net Worth in 2021 (Approx) | $22 Billion |
Estimated Net Worth in 2020 (Approx) | $14.4 Billion |
Annual Salary | NA |
Assets |
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Yachts | |
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FAQs
How much is the net worth of Gennady Timchenko?
$12.4 Billion
Who is Gennady Timchenko wife?
Elena Timchenko
What is Gennady Timchenko age?
71 years
What is the name of the Gennady Timchenko firm?
Gunvor Group