Nevzlin, Leonid Borisovich

Born in Moscow in the family of an engineer and teacher of the Russian language. In 1981 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Petrochemical and Gas Industry. Gubkin majoring in automation and computer engineering. In 1981-1987, he was a software engineer in the foreign trade association Zarubezhgeologiya. In 1991 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of National Economy. G.V. Plekhanov majoring in Management and Marketing.

At CMNTP-Menatep

In 1987, he met Mikhail Khodorkovsky , who headed the Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity of Youth under the Frunze RK of the Komsomol, and became the deputy director of the center, as well as the head of the contract department at the Center for Intersectoral Scientific and Technical Programs (CMNTP, since 1990 JSC Menatep-Invest ; founder of the Menatep association); Since 1988 - Deputy Head of CMNTP; in 1989 - 1991 - President of the Commercial Investment Bank for Scientific and Technical Progress (Bank Menatep); in 1991-1992 - director of relations at Menatep Bank and at the same time head of the Natural Resources Department of the IFI Menatep; 1992-1994 - Head of the Client Relations Department, Menatep Bank; since 1993 - First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of OKFP Menatep; 1993-1996 - First Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Bank Menatep, at the same time Head of the Office of Public Relations (1994-1996); since March 1996 - First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the financial and industrial group ROSPROM.

At Yukos

In April 1996, Vice President of Yukos Oil Company JSC and a member of the Board of Directors of Yukos Oil Company JSC. Then he entered the rating of the 50 most influential entrepreneurs in Russia. Since 1997 - First Deputy Joint Management Board of the ROSPROM-Yukos Group; from September 1997 to October 1998, First Deputy General Director of ITAR-TASS (oversaw the development of the agency, analytics and economic topics, photo chronicle, developed a project for the gradual corporatization of the agency).

In the Council of the Federation of the Federal Assembly

In 1993, he ran for the State Duma on the list of the Transfiguration association (the association represented the interests of entrepreneurs; it did not go to the Duma). 2001–2003 Member of the Council of the Federation of the Russian Federation from the executive body of state power of the Republic of Mordovia , member of the Committee of the Council of the Federation on Foreign Affairs, since February 2002 - Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs. Awarded the Certificate of Honor of the Federation Council ^[7] .

In 1993-1994, a member of the Coordinating Council of the All-Russian movement "Entrepreneurs for a New Russia"; in 2001-2003 and. about. President of the Russian Jewish Congress (REC). He headed the Public Council of the Russian State Humanitarian University , was engaged in charity work ^[8] . In the spring of 2003, Yukos shareholders allocated $ 100 million in charitable funds for the improvement and development of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU) ^[9] .

On July 4, 2003, Nevzlin and his partner Mikhail Khodorkovsky were summoned to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation to testify in the case of one of the Yukos co-owners Platon Lebedev , who was accused of embezzlement of a 20% stake in Apatit .

In the summer of 2003 he left for Israel , according to him, to work on his dissertation ; claimed that this was not an escape from the investigation.

On January 15, 2004, the Prosecutor General was put on the international wanted list on charges of a number of economic and tax crimes. According to the investigating authorities, as a result of its illegal financial operations, the Russian treasury did not receive more than 27 million rubles ^[10] .

On July 14, 2005, the Russian government submitted a request to the US government to extradite Nevzlin. Nevzlin was accused of several crimes, including the organization of contract killings ^[11] . Nevzlin considered these charges political persecution for supporting opposition parties in Russia ^[12] .

On December 27, 2006, the Russian prosecutor’s office in a press release called Nevzlin one of the suspects in the poisoning of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko ^[13] .

Extradition Request from Israel

Back in 2005, the Russian government turned to the Israeli government with a request to extradite Nevzlin, both as a result of charges of murder and attempted murder, and as a result of charges of a number of economic crimes.

In 2006, a group of Israeli citizens visited Russia (in particular, lawyer Yoram Mushkat and publicist Julius Nudelman ), who concluded a deal with the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, promising her assistance in extradition of Nevzlin and agreeing to represent the interests of the Russian government in Israel ^[14] . The visit was made only after in February 2006, Nudelman filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Israel demanding that Nevzlin be extradited to the Russian authorities (the petitioner paid particular attention to the request related to the murder and attempted murder charges, and not to the request related to charged with economic crimes ^[15] ), depriving him of Israeli citizenship. Following Nudelman, in October 2006, a similar petition was filed by Israeli pensioner Eliezer Shimoni ^[16] . The petitioners expressed their interest in the results of the case as solely caused by their personal civic position and considerations of public interest ^[15] .

On 28 August 2006, the Israeli authorities stated that it was not possible to satisfy the request for extradition due to the insufficient evidence base underlying the request. This answer was again given on October 23, 2007 after considering additional materials submitted by the Russian side ^[15] .

On May 14, 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on petitions filed by Nudelman and Shimoni. In its ruling, the Supreme Court noted that the basis of the charges brought by the Russian side are only derivative evidence (based on the mediated perception of information by witnesses), unacceptable in Israeli criminal proceedings, and therefore insufficient to satisfy the request for extradition in accordance with the Israeli Extradition Law. In this context, it was noted that the accusation against Nevzlin is based on the testimonies of hired killers alleging Nevzlin’s involvement in the case based on a statement by the person who paid for their services and died in November 2002 (the Russian side’s assumption that Nevzlin was not involved in this last death was supported by any evidence) ^[15] . The court indicated that it did not find it necessary to examine the issue of the political background of the Russian request declared by Nevzlin, since these reasons were sufficient to reject the request ^[15] .

The court also rejected the allegation of the petitioners to conceal Nevzlin information about the existing criminal charges for obtaining Israeli citizenship . It was noted that Nevzlin’s request for citizenship was filed and granted even before the charges against him were clearly made by the Russian authorities. At the same time, the court accepted the explanation of the Israeli authorities, who did not find sufficient evidence in the evidence presented for the criminal past of Nevzlin to decide on the deprivation of Nevzlin’s Israeli citizenship ^[15] .

Sentence of the Moscow City Court

On August 1, 2008, the Moscow City Court in absentia found Leonid Nevzlin guilty of a number of serious crimes : the organization of murders and attempts, theft and tax evasion ^[17] . For complicity in those murders and attempts, in the organization of which Nevzlin was accused, Alexey Pichugin was previously convicted. According to Nevzlin’s lawyer Dmitry Kharitonov, “the evidence that exists is the testimony of people who suggest that some crimes were beneficial to Yukos. And there is a group of people who have been convicted of various serious crimes, including for life, who say that they were told by people who are no longer alive, that Nevzlin was involved in this. One of these witnesses refused to testify, said that the investigators asked him to speak the names of Nevzlin and Pichugin when they offered him a deal. Such evidence cannot be evidence of Nevzlin’s guilt ” ^[18] .

Nevzlin was convicted of the following crimes ^[19] :

• the organization of the murder of the director of TF Phoenix LLP Valentina Korneeva,
• the organization of the murder of the head of the Nefteyugansk administration, Vladimir Petukhov , who demanded that Yukos pay taxes to the local budget. ^[20]
• the organization of the murder of the driver of the East Petroleum management company, Yevgeny Rybin - Nikolai Fedotov,
• the organization of the assassination attempt on the former head of the department of affairs of CJSC Rosprom Sergey Kolesov, the former head of the department of public relations of Moscow City Hall Olga Kostina and one of the managers of the Austrian oil company East Petroleum Evgeny Rybin.
• theft of property worth more than 3 billion rubles.,
• tax evasion in the amount of 26.7 million rubles. as an individual in the period from 1999 to 2000.

On January 27, 2009, the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the decision of the Moscow City Court, recognizing Nevzlin’s life sentence as legal ^[5] .

On May 24, 2013, the Simonovsky court of Moscow sentenced Leonid Nevzlin to absentia for 6 years in prison on charges of misappropriation of shares in the Eastern Oil Company . ^[6] .

On December 17, 2013, the Moscow City Court upheld the verdict for Leonid Nevzlin ^[21] .

Irina's daughter is married to Knesset Speaker Julius Edelstein

Emigration

In November 2003, received Israeli citizenship. According to the press, after repatriation to Israel, he lived in the Dan Acadia hotel in Herzliya , and then acquired a country house in the Herzliya - Pituach area , worth $ 3.7 million ^[22] .

Entrepreneurship

In 2005, the shareholders of the MENATEP financial group acquired a stake in the Israeli petrochemical enterprise ^[23] , and in 2007 expressed interest in acquiring a 20% stake in the Haifa Refinery with an estimated value of $ 1.5 billion ^[24] . According to Israeli Forbes, L. Nevzlin’s fortune in 2006 was estimated at $ 300 million.

Social Activities and Charity

He founded the Leonid Nevzlin Center for the Study of Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. $ 500 thousand is allocated annually to support the center from the NADAV Foundation for the Support of Israeli Education (founded by Leonid Nevzlin, Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov in 2005. The name NADAV is an abbreviation ^{[25] of the} founders of the fund - Nevzlin, Dubov and Brudno) ^{[ 26]} .

The NADAV Foundation for the Support of Israeli Education allocated charity funds according to the plan for the development of higher humanitarian education in the amount of $ 3 million ^[26] . Leonid Nevzlin is the head of the Board of Trustees of the Diaspora Museum and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Keren Hayesod Charitable Organization, as well as the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Agency (Sokhnut) ^[27] . Within the framework of cooperation with the Jewish Agency, the NADAV Foundation has funding plans for $ 1 million in 2007 for the Masa (Travel) program for students from diaspora countries who have come to Israel for a long time, and the Taglit youth project (“ Opening ") for students coming to Israel for 10 days. The Haifa National Museum of Science and Technology will receive more than 5.5 million shekels from the NADAV Foundation ^[28] . Nevzlin’s contribution to the Keren Hayesod charitable programs by February 2006 is estimated at $ 4 million ^[29] . The contribution to the development of the Diaspora Museum is $ 1 million ^[29] . Sponsored the anthology of “120 Poets of Russian Israel” (2005) .

In June 2006, the association of workers at the Israeli Diaspora Museum demanded the removal of Nevzlin from the post of chairman of the board of trustees ^[30] . Museum staff were worried that the businessman was charged with serious crimes and is wanted by Interpol ^[31] .

In April 2019, he severely criticized the behavior of the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Vasily Nebenzya, calling him a boor and a gopnik, as well as a violator of the rules. In reality, Nebenzya did not violate the existing protocol of the meeting, but only reacted to the innovations proposed explicitly by the representative of Germany ^{[32] [33]} . Nebenzya himself, in turn, accused of rudeness (but not gopnichestvo), as well as the use of "slander, insults, warlike rhetoric, blackmail, sanctions and the threat to use force against a sovereign state" representatives of other states: The tone in which this is done has crossed the boundaries of what is permissible. Even during the Cold War, your predecessors did not allow themselves such rudeness in relation to my country. ” ^[34] .

• Order of Friendship (December 31, 1997) - for services to the state, many years of diligent work and a great contribution to strengthening friendship and cooperation between peoples ^[35] .
• Gratitude of the President of the Russian Federation (July 25, 1996) - for active participation in organizing and conducting the election campaign of the President of the Russian Federation in 1996 ^[36] .

• Nevzlin L., Khodorkovsky M. A man with the ruble - M. <Menatep-Inform>, 1992. (The real author of the book is the journalist of the Izvestia or Pravda Vakhmyanin newspapers ^[37] )
• Nevzlin L. B. “Public Relations” - Who Needs It ?: Fundamentals of the Training Course / Preface. L.F. Strzhizhovsky . - M.: Economics , 1993 .-- 223 p.

  — Невзлин, Леонид Борисович в « Живом Журнале » (блог закрыт, последняя запись датирована 26 октября 2011 года)

• Невзлин, Леонид — статья в Лентапедии . year 2012.
• Невзлин в Лентапедии (недоступная ссылка)
• Невзлин, Леонид Борисович
• Леонид Невзлин. Даже если сложить Невзлина с Березовским, то никак не получится Путин с Сечиным (интервью)
• Центр Леонида Невзлина по изучению российского и восточноевропейского еврейства при Еврейском Университете в Иерусалиме, официальный сайт
• Международный исследовательский центр российского и восточноевропейского еврейства
• Интервью Леонида Невзлина о деле «ЮКОСа». Без свидетелей? Дело Невзлина: записки очевидца заочного процесса

Video

• Фрагмент программы «Момент Истины» от 29/07/2008
• Interview to the ITON-TV channel from 02/29/2012