In Britain, Alexander Zhukov has faced little scrutiny over his business affairs. The son of a playwright and educated in Moscow, Zhukov, 62, worked as a cinema projectionist in Odessa, Ukraine, before joining the lucrative world of oil logistics and transportation.
He has been married three times. Zhukov split from his first wife, Elena, a molecular biologist, when their daughter, Dasha, was three. She grew up with her mother in Los Angeles. Colleagues quoted by Kommersant newspaper describe Zhukov as understated, saying he prefers to listen in meetings, rather than talk.
Zhukov is wealthy, but precisely how wealthy is unclear. His fortune is smaller than that of his son-in-law, Roman Abramovich, who is valued by Forbes at $8.1bn (£6.1bn).
Zhukov has two sons, 21-year-old twins Boris and Misha, with his second wife, a model. They both live in London. Zhukov’s third wife is the socialite Svetlana Meshyanina. Facebook posts suggest that the couple enjoy a glamorous lifestyle, taking regular holidays in the south of France and Ibiza, spending time on a yacht in Italy and going skiing in the Italian Alps. Zhukov has also attended art exhibitions with Dasha.
As well as a penthouse in Kensington, west London, Zhukov has a home in Sardinia and a 400-acre equestrian club in the Moscow region.
The Panama Papers show that the oligarch is linked to a complex network of offshore firms dating back to the 1990s.
They include the Sintez Corporation, which appears to be linked to Zhukov’s Sintez (UK) Ltd and Odessa-based oil company Eureast International SA.
In 2009, Zhukov asked Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers, to act as agent for Kentwood Investments Ltd, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands.
The leaders of the BVI, a tax haven known for secrecy, refused to attend an anti-corruption summit in London, held following the Panama Papers revelations.
Kentgrove is a holding company for a second firm, Odisseya LLC, which owns an “auto transshipment terminal” near Odessa, according to Zhukov’s spokesman, Alexander Ratskevich. It is not illegal to hold companies offshore.
The Panama Papers include emails from Zhukov’s lawyers in Cyprus and Comatrans SA, a financial services company based in Geneva.
By 2009, Zhukov and the Ukrainian oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov were embroiled in a bitter battle for control of JKX, an oil and gas company listed on the London Stock Exchange. JKX is one of the biggest non-state-owned oil producers in Ukraine.
Zhukov bought an 11.5% stake in the company through his BVI-registered investment vehicle Glengary Overseas Ltd. It was claimed that he had teamed up with Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov to seize control of JKX. In 2013, a dispute with the then board of JKX spilled over into the high court.
JKX’s British managers argued that the trio were colluding to take over the business without paying “a proper premium for the shares”.
The high court judge Mr Justice Mann said Kolomoisky had a reputation for being a “corporate raider” , but did not determine whether the reputation was deserved or not. Bogolyubov “probably” did, too, the judge said, adding that Zhukov did not “seem to have had the same reputation,” but had previously done business with Kolomoisky, Ukraine’s second-richest man.
The board considered that it had reasonable cause to believe that the oligarchs were acting together, Mann found. However, he said the board’s purpose in its actions was improper, meaning its decisions were invalid.
The board appealed, but the supreme court unanimously upheld Mann’s decision last year. One of the supreme court justices, Lord Sumption, had previously acted as QC for Abramovich in his 2012 legal battle against the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky, with Sumption reportedly earning a fee of more than £5m.
It has been reported that, in January, Zhukov and his fellow oligarchs ousted JKX’s directors and replaced them with their own nominees. A spokesman for JKX has denied any connection between the three oligarchs and JKX’s second-largest shareholder, Proxima Capital Group, which achieved the changes.
Months later, Kolomoisky’s global assets were frozen after a separate $380m legal dispute with Russian oil company Tatneft.
The order covered Kolomoisky’s French villa and other assets, following claims that he had seized control of a Ukrainian oil refinery joint venture and siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars into offshore shell companies. Bogolyubov’s assets, including a house in Belgrave Square, central London, were also frozen.
Kolomoisky dismisses the Tatneft allegations as “obviously false”. He has denied “colluding with anyone” over JKX and being a corporate raider and said Mann did not find on this point. Kolomoisky said there were “legitimate reasons” for using offshore structures, not least that Ukrainian presidents use state bodies to redistribute assets when they come to power.
“The reality is that a significant part of the world operates under different conditions to those in the UK,” Kolomoisky said.
Kolomoisky appears in the Panama Papers in connection with five offshore companies and a family trust. His Israeli passport also surfaces, together with that of his daughter, Angelika. Swiss bank UBS wrote the oligarch a glowing reference, saying he was a Geneva-based citizen with an “irreproachable record”.