Yury Kovalchuk

Who is Yury Kovalchuk?

Yury Valentinovich Kovalchuk is a Russian businessman and financier "reputed to be Putin's personal banker". The May 2008 issue of Russian Forbes listed him for the first time in its Golden Hundred of Russia's richest and introduced him and another new entrant to the List, Gennady Timchenko, as "good acqaintances of Vladimir Putin." The magazine placed him at number 53 with estimated fortune of $1.9 billion.

From 1987 to 1991 he was the First Deputy Director of Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute.

Since 2004 he is the Head of the Board of Directors of the Russia bank. He is also its largest shareholder.

Since the early 1990s, Kovalchuk owns a dacha in Solovyovka, Priozersky District of the Leningrad region, which is located on the eastern shore of the Komsomolskoye lake on the Karelian Isthmus near St. Petersburg. His neighbours there are Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Yakunin, Andrei Fursenko, Sergey Fursenko, Viktor Myachin, Vladimir Smirnov and Nikolay Shamalov. On 10 November 1996, together they instituted the co-operative society Ozero which united their properties.