Having analyzed the data of the first thirty businessmen of the Top 200, journalists compiled a portrait of the average Belarusian rich man.
in the photo (from left to right): Pavel Topuzidis, Alexander Tsenter, Arkady Dobkin
Let us remind you that the portal’s editors have been preparing a list of wealthy people in the country since 2007.
The leader of the latest rating is 47-year-old Alexander Moshensky, the “dairy king” from Brest, owner of Savushkin Product and Santa Impex Brest. He moved the country's main "tanker" Viktor Kisly, who led the rating for the last two years, from first place. Now Viktor Kisly is only fourth.
It is not known whether there are dollar billionaires like Bill Gates or, at worst, Roman Abramovich in Belarus. In 2010, the Ukrainian economic magazine Delo named Vladimir Peftiev the richest man in Belarus - according to the magazine, he had a billion dollars.
There is no longer a “weapons king” in the current rating, but there is Viktor Kisly - in 2016, the authoritative agency Bloomberg named the 39-year-old IT specialist a dollar millionaire - he is the one at the helm of the Wargaming company - the same one that created computer “tanks”. In this year's ranking, Kisly takes fourth place.
After analyzing the data of the first thirty Top 200 businessmen, Komsomolskaya Pravda calculated what a typical Belarusian billionaire looks like. This is a 51-year-old Minsk resident who is mainly involved in real estate, retail or IT, married, two children.
Gender: male
Age: 51 years
We calculated the average age of a Belarusian top entrepreneur simply: we added up the lived years of all businessmen and divided them by their number, 30.
The youngest participant in the top 30 is 34-year-old IT specialist Viktor Prokopenya (12th place). His company is developing artificial intelligence and augmented reality technologies, and together with Russian billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev, he is engaged in venture investments.
The oldest participant in the top thirty was 62-year-old IT specialist Sergei Levteev (23rd place) - he runs the IBA company, which develops and promotes IT services and products.
Marital status: married, two children
20 of the 30 richest businessmen are married, for another ten there is no exact information. The average number of children per businessman is 2.4. The record holder is Oleg Khusaenov (19th place), who has four sons and a daughter. Alexander Tsenter (8th place), Alexey Zhukov (20th place) and Sergei Gvardeytsev (29th place) have four children.
Place of birth: Minsk
Not all businessmen have information about their place of birth. But in cases where this is known, the majority turned out to be from Minsk, and many from the regions. Although in general the geography is quite wide. For example, Pavel Topuzidis (3rd place) was born in Abkhazia, Alexey Zhukov (20th place) and Sergey Levteev (23rd place) were born in Russia, Nikolay Vorobey (17th place) in Ukraine. Oleg Khusaenov (19th place) is a native of Kazakhstan.
Current place of residence: Minsk
The vast majority of businessmen from the top thirty live in the Belarusian capital. Three live and work in Cyprus, two more each in Grodno and Monaco, one businessman each in Luxembourg, Brest, Mogilev, Novopolotsk, Moscow, Prague and Riga.
Education: higher technical
It is known that four businessmen from the top thirty graduated from Minsk Polytechnic University, now the Belarusian National Technical University. Six graduated from BSU - usually from the Faculty of Physics or Mechanics and Mathematics. The education of four more is related to aviation; they studied in Leningrad, Riga and Moscow.
Thus, the education of the majority of Belarusian rich people is higher technical. Of course, there are exceptions. For example, Alexander Shakutin (15th place) is a general practitioner, he graduated from the Minsk Medical Institute. Nikolai Martynov (21st place), majoring in political science, studied at the Institute of Political Science and Social Management of the Communist Party of the BSSR.
Nikolai Vorobey (17th place) is a historian, and the owner of the Conte Spa plant, Valentin Bayko, is a primary school teacher.
Date of business start: 1993
Most Belarusian top businessmen began their careers during the collapse of the USSR and in the “roaring nineties”. Sergei Levteev (23rd place) was the first to get his bearings from the top thirty. The then 30-year-old electronics engineer started his business in 1985, that is, back in Soviet times. Two decades later, his company IBA has become one of the most successful software development and distribution businesses in the world.
Business in the Republic of Belarus has developed rapidly over the past 25 years. Of course, the richest people in Belarus prefer not to advertise their income, so most of them choose to live outside their homeland. In this state with a population of 9.5 million people there are more than 10 thousand millionaires.
Andrey Melnichenko
The ranking of the wealthiest people in Belarus is headed by Andrei Melnichenko. Despite his Russian citizenship, Forbes magazine classifies Andrei Igorevich as a Belarusian businessman because he was born in the city of Gomel. His capital is $10.1 billion as of 2016.
Mr. Melnichenko began his career in 1991, as a student at Moscow State University, Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. Then he created the travel company Sputnik. Now Andrei Igorevich has 90% of the shares of the Eurochem company, the same percentage of shares of the Siberian Coal Energy Company and the Siberian Generating Company. All 3 enterprises have enormous influence in Russia and the world.
Over the past year, the businessman has slightly lost his position in the Forbes world ranking. Andrey Melnichenko is ranked 139th in the world compared to 137th last year.
Dmitry Mazepin ranks second in the ranking of the richest people in Belarus with a capital of $1.4 billion. A native of Minsk also has Russian citizenship. In addition, he was a deputy of the Kirov Regional Assembly for 2 years (2012-2014).
Dmitry Mazepin
Dmitry Arkadyevich has 2 higher educations: Minsk Suvorov Military School, MGIMO and Faculty of Management of St. Petersburg University. Mr. Mazepin began his business career in 1992 with the insurance company Infinstrakh. Today he owns 95% of the shares of Uralkhima, 20% of Uralkali and 20% of Onexim. The businessman is also known for being included in the top list of Russian billionaire philanthropists, taking 7th place.
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The peak of Dmitry Mazepin's financial power came in 2013. At that time he owned $3.2 billion. However, due to Uralchem's debts, the businessman suffered significant losses. Therefore, Dmitry Andreevich left the ranking of the 100 richest people in the CIS.
Andrey Klyamko is the most non-public billionaire on the list. A native of the city of Novogrudok in the Grodno region of Belarus, he has a fortune of $1.24 billion as of 2016.
Andrey Klyamko
Andrei Stanislavovich does not have a higher education, but this did not become an obstacle to the opening of the Smart Holding business group in the mid-90s. At this time, he is a citizen of Ukraine and has a variety of assets throughout the CIS countries.
According to 2018 data, Mr. Klyamko took 683rd place in the world ranking. By this time, he had suffered losses of $1 billion.
Other billionaires
A native Minsk resident, Viktor Kisly, is known to the world community as the president of the Wargaming.net company. Without changing his Belarusian citizenship, he moved to Cyprus, from where he conducts his business. A childhood passion for computer games brought the businessman a fortune of $1.5 billion.
Today, Victor is the youngest billionaire in Belarus, he is 39 years old. A physicist by training, Kislyi began doing business in 1998, when he founded the company Wargaming.net. The company's most successful product was the game "World of tanks". By 2012, the company had acquired shares in many other American and European gaming firms. In the world list of Forbes magazine, Viktor Kisly occupies 701st place.Mikhail Abyzov, a native of the Belarusian capital, entered the ranking of the richest people in Belarus, being a prominent politician of the Russian Federation and at the same time a US citizen. His fortune is estimated at $1.2 billion.
Mikhail Abyzov
Mikhail Anatolyevich organized his first company when he was still a freshman at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow State University in 1990. Then he was engaged in the trade of Turkish consumer goods. Today, Mr. Abyzov has assets in large companies in the energy sector (Elsib, Sibeco), agriculture (Kopitanie) and construction (Dalmostostroy).
Many people are interested in who is the richest and most successful person in Belarus. In this article we will tell you who the richest people in Belarus are, how much they earn and what kind of wealth they own. We recently presented a ranking of the richest people in Russia, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with it too.
The richest people in Belarus are not yet on par with their global counterparts. The fortunes of Belarusian oligarchs are relatively small.
It is not customary in Belarus to advertise one’s wealth. This is due to the fact that rich people, the so-called elite, are not very liked in this country. It just so happened.
Belarusian oligarchs have a very large number of assets outside their country: in Russia, Ukraine, and even in some European countries.
Top 5. Vyacheslav Zarenkov.
Vyacheslav Zarenkov was born in the Vetebsk region of the Republic of Belarus. He studied at the Leningrad Civil Engineering Institute, back in Soviet times.
He started his career at Glavzapstroy. He started working as a fitter and ended up as a department head. After that, he took part in the construction of residential and industrial real estate.
In 1987, Vyacheslav Zarenkov organized LenSpetsSMU CJSC. Today, this company is considered a very large one, accounting for 20% of the housing construction market.
Vyacheslav very often uses non-standard solutions to implement his projects.
State: US$500,000,000.
Top 4. Mikhail Abyzov.
Mikhail Abyzov was born in Minsk. Today he holds the position of chairman of the boards of directors of the E4 Group, which includes 13 holdings.
The first time he worked as a slinger in a construction brigade.
Today he owns shares in the following companies: Novosibirskenergo, British Power Fuel, and SibirEnergo holding.
State: US$1 billion.
Top 3. Dmitry Mazepin.
Dmitry Mazepin was born in Belarus, in Minsk. Dmitry is a very private person, we know very little about him.
At the age of 28, he first took a very responsible leadership position, becoming the president of a multinational corporation.
After leaving this post, he opens his own business, organizing the Uralchem holding. Mazepin today employs 12,000 people.
Uralchem has taken second place in the world in terms of ammonium nitrate production.
State: US$1.4 billion.
Top 2. Andrey Klyamko.
Andrei Klyamko takes second place in our ranking of the richest people in Belarus. He is a co-owner of the Smart Holding group. In addition, he invests in profitable sectors of the economy.
Its main assets are located in Ukraine. They work very closely with Rinat Akhmetov.
Andrey Klyamko also owns a business in the agricultural sector.
State: US$1.9 billion.
Top 1. The richest person in Belarus is Andrei Melnichenko.
Today Andrei Melnichenko is the richest person in Belarus. O was born in the city of Gomel. In the 90s, together with his friends, he organized his first business in the tourism sector.
Having received his first profit, Andrey invests money in a new business - currency exchange.
Then the oligarch opened MDM Bank. Having assumed the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Now the businessman is interested in the industry, which brings in very good money.
State US$11.4 billion.
Compare the billionaires of Belarus with the billionaires in Ukraine: .
200 successful and influential businessmen of Belarus is a project of the Internet portal “Daily”, which the publication has been preparing and publishing since 2007.
The project, first of all, has an educational goal. On the one hand, it promotes personal recognition and increases the population’s loyalty to private business in general; on the other hand, it serves as a source of information for potential partners and investors who are going to implement projects in Belarus.
Getting into and being included in the top 200 successful and influential businessmen of Belarus is determined by two criteria:
1. Success is the actual share of a particular person in the price of the business that belongs to him.
Ownership and share are calculated based on data from the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus (Unified Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs), registration authorities of other countries where the main business is located or the entrepreneur conducts business, as well as on the basis of other open sources and insider information. The value of a business, in the presence of financial indicators, is calculated using traditional methods for assessing value (cost, income, comparable sales). Depending on the volume of financial information and its sources, it is chosen which approach is appropriate in assessing a specific business and, accordingly, the current capital of the person involved in the top 200 successful and influential businessmen of Belarus.
2. Influentiality is an additional criterion, given by us due to the specific conditions of doing business in Belarus and the impossibility at the moment to publish monetary indicators.
It is based on the concept of business sustainability in the economic conditions that have developed over 25 years in the Belarusian economy. First of all, this is an assessment of the level of communication of a particular business owner with the state regulator, as well as his role (influence) in the region and the economy as a whole. A group of experts (at least 10 people), which is directly related to one of the markets whose participants are represented in the top 200 (IT, finance, woodworking, mechanical engineering, food industry, etc.), uses a point system to determine the degree of influence of that or another person for a given period of time.
The Top 200 successful and influential businessmen of Belarus are used as a source of information on private business in Belarus not only by Belarusian companies and government agencies, but also by the European Commission, the EAEU and departments of other countries of the world.
Several features of the 2016 rating are the sharp decline of the previous leader, Yuri Chizh. From first place he jumped to 12th. And his arrested comrade Vladimir Yaprintsev was completely ignored by experts. Meanwhile, the rating was topped by the founder of World of Tanks, Viktor Kisly.
1. Victor Kisly
39 years (1976)
Nicosia (Cyprus)
General Director of Wargaming Group Ltd., Deputy Director for Development of Game Stream JLLC
2. Vitaly Arbuzov
51 years old (1964)
Minsk
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fenox Global Group, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fenox Venture Capital
Interests: auto components, auto production, venture capital investments, retail
3. Alexander Moshensky
45 years (1970)
Brest
General Director of JV LLC "Santa Impex Brest", member of the supervisory board of OJSC "Development Bank of the Republic of Belarus"
Interests: food, retail, leisure and entertainment, real estate
4. Pavel Topouzidis
59 years (1956)
Minsk
Chairman of the Board of Tabak-Invest LLC
5. Alexander Shakutin
56 years (1959)
Minsk
Chairman of the Board of Directors of OJSC Amkodor - Holding Management Company, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of CJSC Absolutbank
Interests: mechanical engineering, fuel and energy complex, investments, finance
6. Evgeniy Baskin
50 years (1965)
Mogilev
General Director of SJSC Servolux
Interests: food, agriculture, retail
7. Sergey Litvin
49 years (1966)
Monaco (Monaco)
8. Vladimir Vasilko
49 years (1966)
Monaco (Monaco)
Member of the supervisory board of Eurotorg LLC
Interests: retail, trade, alcohol, real estate, food, finance
9. Alexey Oleksin
Director of SJSC Energo Oil, member of the supervisory board of CJSC MTBank
Interests: fuel and energy complex, finance, real estate, food
10. Alexey Zhukov
48 years (1967)
Minsk
General Director of the Alutech Group of Companies
Interests: building materials
11. Vladimir Peftiev
58 years (1957)
Minsk
Ex-chairman of the general meeting of shareholders of Beltechexport CJSC, ex-co-owner of Beltech Holding Management Company CJSC
Interests: investments
12. Yuri Chizh
52 years old (1963)
Minsk
Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Triple Group of Companies, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of CJSC FC Dynamo-Minsk
Interests: construction and real estate, building materials, retail, food, agriculture, recreation and entertainment, pharmaceuticals
13. Viktor Petrovich
Director of Tabak-invest LLC
Interests: tobacco, retail, real estate, recreation and entertainment
14. Arkady Dobkin
55 years (1960)
Newtown (Pennsylvania, USA)
Co-owner, president and chairman of the board of directors of EPAM Systems Inc.
Interests: IT
15. Nikolay Katselapov
Nicosia (Cyprus)
Interests: IT, finance, real estate
16. Ivan Mikhnevich
Nicosia (Cyprus)
Co-owner of Wargaming Group Ltd.
Interests: IT, finance, real estate.
17. Nikolai Vorobey
Novopolotsk
Co-owner of Interservice LLC, member of the supervisory board of Absolutbank CJSC
Interests: fuel and energy complex, recreation and entertainment, woodworking, real estate, investments
18. Nikolay Martynov
59 years (1956)
Vitebsk
General Director of LLC "Management Company of the Holding "Belarusian Leather and Shoe Company "Marko", member of the Supervisory Board of OJSC "Belinvestbank"
Interests: shoes, retail, real estate
19. Valentin Bayko
45 years (1970)
Grodno
Chairman of the general meeting of participants of JLLC "Conte Spa"
Interests: textiles, real estate, retail, leisure and entertainment
20. Dmitry Bayko
Grodno
Deputy General Director of Conte Spa JLLC
Interests: Textiles, real estate, retail, leisure and entertainment
21. Valery Shumsky
55 years (1960)
Moscow, Russia)
Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Yukola Group of Companies
Interests: fuel and energy complex, recreation and entertainment
22. Sergey Savitsky
49 years (1966)
Minsk
General Director of LLC "International Automotive Holding "Atlant-M"
Interests: retail
23. Oleg Khusaenov
51 years old (1964)
Minsk
General Director of Zubr Capital LLC, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Atlant-M International Automobile Holding LLC
» updated its “TOP-200 successful and influential businessmen of Belarus”*. The portal has compiled this rating since 2007.
Komsomolskaya Pravda studied new data and drew a portrait of a typical Belarusian billionaire.
IT specialist Kisly ousted Yuri Chizh
The richest and most successful Belarusian businessman is the leader of the "tanks" Viktor Kisly. Photo: youtube.com
Viktor Kisly supplanted the previous leader, Yuri Chizh, who this year found himself only in 12th place. Together with Viktor Kisly, his fellow students, owners of 17% of the gaming business each, Nikolay Katselapov (15th place) and Ivan Mikhnevich (16th place) were at the top of the list. 17th was Arkady Dobkin, co-owner, president and chairman of the board of directors of EPAM Systems, who dropped from eighth place.
The most outstanding breakthrough was made by a little-known ex-manager of the fuel division five years ago “ Belvneshtorginvest» Alexey Oleksin (currently in 9th place). Among his assets are oil trading companies Energo Oil, Belneftegaz, Neonafta, Petrotrade (UAE), Broker (UAE). He is also involved in real estate (the Syabry recreation center, the site of the former S. Kirov Machine Tool Plant, a hotel complex project in Minsk). Owns a controlling stake in MTBank, is engaged in the production and sale of meat products (Veles-Meat, Dian Food), invests in the production of biofuel in Latvia, produces and sells beer in Daugavpils, invests in Minsk taxi and restaurant business.
What does a typical Belarusian billionaire look like?
It is not known for certain whether there are dollar billionaires in Belarus like Bill Gates or, at worst, Roman Abramovich. Although in 2010, the Ukrainian economic magazine “Delo” named Vladimir Peftiev the richest man in Belarus - according to the magazine, he had a billion dollars! Considering that Peftiev occupies 11th place in the Belarusian rating, we can assume that people from the top thirty have a hundred or two million dollars in their pockets.
After analyzing the data of the first thirty businessmen in the ranking, we compiled a portrait of the average Belarusian rich person.
Gender: male
Everything is clear here: there are only seven women in the TOP 200. The most successful and influential Belarusian is in 38th place - Diana Kurilo-Shigalova. In February 2014, together with her brother, she inherited a controlling share of the Zhdanovichi Trading House after the death of her father, the founder of this largest private development business in Belarus, Evgeniy Shigalov.
Age: 50 years
The youngest participant in the ranking is 28-year-old Andrei Shimanovich (174th place). He is known as the creator of the mSpy mobile spy application, which can monitor telephone traffic. Now Shimanovich's company is engaged in the development and distribution of software, as well as investments in new daring projects in the UK and the USA.
The oldest participant in the TOP-200 was the 77-year-old owner of Belita-Vitex, Viktor Tereshchenko (82nd place). Cosmetics produced under this brand are well known not only in Belarus, but also in the CIS and Europe.
We calculated the average age simply: we took the arithmetic average of the ages of businessmen from the top thirty.
Marital status: married, two children
Almost 100% of top businessmen are married - of the top thirty, according to the Daily Book, only Vladimir Peftiev (11th place) is divorced.
The average number of children per businessman is 2.5. The record holder is Oleg Khusaenov (23rd place), who has four sons and a daughter. Alexey Zhukov (10th place) and Sergei Savitsky (22nd place) have four children.
Place of birth: Minsk
Not everyone has information about their place of birth. Most businessmen are from Minsk, many from the regions, but in general the geography is quite wide. For example, Pavel Topuzidis (4th place) was born in Abkhazia, Alexey Zhukov (10th place) and Sergey Levteev (24th place) - in Russia, Vladimir Peftiev (11th place), Nikolay Vorobey (17th place) and Anatoly Ternavsky (28th place) - in Ukraine . Oleg Khusaenov (23rd place) is a native of Kazakhstan.
Place of residence: Minsk
The vast majority of businessmen from the top thirty in the Belarusian capital live in Minsk. Three live and work in Cyprus, two more each in Moscow, Grodno and Monaco.
Education: higher technical
It is known that six businessmen from the top thirty graduated from the Minsk Polytechnic University, now the Belarusian National Technical University. Five graduated from BSU - the Faculty of Physics or Mechanics. The education of four more is related to aviation; they studied in Leningrad, Riga and Moscow.
Thus, the education of the majority of Belarusian rich people is higher technical. Of course, there are exceptions. For example, Alexander Shakutin (5th place) is a general practitioner and graduated from the Minsk Medical Institute. Nikolai Martynov (18th place), majoring in political science, studied at the Institute of Political Science and Social Administration of the Communist Party of the BSSR. Andrei Pavlovsky (26th place) studied at the Military Medical Academy, and Andrei Balabin (29th place) graduated from the Suvorov School.
Date of business start: 1992
Most Belarusian top businessmen began their careers during the collapse of the USSR and in the “roaring nineties”. Sergey Levteev (24th place) was the first to get his bearings from the top thirty. In 1985, a 30-year-old electronics engineer started his own business. Two decades later, his company IBA has become one of the most successful software development and distribution businesses in the world.
Later than all the top thirty, the “tankers” joined in. Viktor Kisly (ranking leader), Nikolay Katselapov (16th place) and Ivan Mikhnevich (17th place) started their game development business in 1998.
Type of activity: real estate, retail and leisure
Two thirds of the top thirty businessmen are involved in real estate. The interests of 14 people lie in the retail sector, that is, retail trade.
The business of ten businessmen from the top 30 is related to the leisure sector, eight people make money in finance, seven people are engaged in food.
STAY IN TOUCH!
* Who compiles the TOP-200 and how?
The Daily Diary has been compiling the “TOP 200 successful and influential businessmen of Belarus” since 2007. This is the Belarusian equivalent of the Forbes rating.
The project does not set out to estimate how much money this or that businessman has, the compilers clarify. - Given the closed nature of the Belarusian economy, this is difficult, controversial and unsafe. The project, first of all, pursues an educational goal.
1. First, based on data from the Ministry of Justice of Belarus, registration authorities of other countries where the business is located, as well as on the basis of other open sources and insider information, the actual share of the businessman in the value of the business he owns is determined.
Depending on the sources and volume of financial information, one chooses which approach is appropriate in assessing a particular business and, accordingly, the current capital of the businessman himself, say the compilers of the rating.
2. Then the degree of influence of a businessman is determined based on the sustainability of the business in the economic conditions that have developed over 25 years in the Belarusian economy.
First of all, this is an assessment of the level of communication of a particular business owner with government regulators, as well as his role in the industry and the economy as a whole, say the compilers.
For each name on the list, there is a group of experts directly related to the person involved’s business area (for example, it could be IT, finance, woodworking, mechanical engineering, food industry). It is these people who, using a point system, determine the degree of influence of a businessman.
It should be noted that the “Top 200” is used as a source of information on private business in Belarus not only by Belarusian companies and government agencies, but also by the European Commission, the EAEU and departments of other countries of the world.