Lev Tchernoi
Russian-born businessman, partner of David and Simon Reuben in Trans-World's Russian aluminium business in the 1990s
| Lev Tchernoi
| |
|---|---|
| Image | .jpg) Lev Tchernoi (photo: BioTech Rosva) |
| Born | December 1954 Tashkent, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union |
| Residence | Israel (reported 2020) |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Known for | Trans-World, Russian aluminium industry |
| Sibling(s) | Mikhail Tchernoi |
Lev Tchernoi (also spelled Chernoy, Chernoi, Cherney and Tchernoy; born December 1954) is a businessman from Tashkent. In the 1990s he ran the Russian side of Trans-World, the metals group of the brothers David Reuben and Simon Reuben, as it built up large holdings in the Russian aluminium industry.[1][2] He and the Reubens sold their main Russian aluminium assets in February 2000 to a group that included Roman Abramovich.[3] His elder brother is Mikhail Tchernoi.[2]
Early life
His company, Elden Group, says that he was born in December 1954 in Tashkent, then in the Uzbek SSR, and that he entered the Tashkent Polytechnic Institute in 1972.[4] Fortune reported that he had polio as a boy and walks with a severe limp. It said that in the Soviet shadow economy he had become a large trader in timber and fish, among other goods.[2]
The Guardian reported that Lev and his brother Mikhail were employees of a French company called Trans Commodities, and that they left shortly after 1993 to become involved in Trans-World.[5] The Center for Public Integrity reported in 1999 that the New York commodities trader Semyon Kislin said he knew Lev Chernoy only in passing.[6]
Partnership with the Reuben brothers
The Economist reported in 1995 that in mid-1992 David Reuben put together a group of investors to supply the Krasnoyarsk smelter with alumina under "tolling" arrangements. To manage the Russian end of the operation, it said, he chose Lev Chernoy, "a Russian from Tashkent who had first approached Mr Reuben with some aluminium for sale". The partnership, Trans-CIS Commodities, was based in Monte Carlo and, according to Reuben, was based on trust rather than written agreements. By June 1994, the paper said, citing the Izvestia reporter Alexei Tarasov, the partnership and its associated companies held 20% of Krasnoyarsk, around 50% of Bratsk and 68% of Sayansk.[1]
Fortune gave David Reuben's account that Lev came to his Moscow office in 1992 and later introduced him to his elder brother. It said that the partnership was never put in writing, and that Lev served as "a sort of Uber-manager", moving between Moscow and the plants in Siberia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The magazine referred to the Reubens and the Chernoys together as Trans World's "four principals".[2] Forbes likewise wrote in 2001 that the Trans-World group "was led by two Russian brothers, Mikhail and Lev Chernoi, and two traders based in Western Europe, David and Simon Reuben".[7]
Fortune reported that both Chernoy brothers moved to Israel in spring 1994 and settled in villas outside Tel Aviv. Lev, it said, put the move down to an illness for which his doctor had advised a change of climate. He continued to oversee operations from abroad and did not return to Russia for more than four years.[2] The Center for Public Integrity reported that, according to publicly available research data, Lev had used three New York residences of Arik Kislin as addresses on at least three occasions between June 1993 and April 1997.[6]
According to Fortune, Lev stayed with Trans-World and ran its Russian business from Israel after the Reubens parted with Mikhail in 1997. His relations with the plant managers had worsened since he left Russia, and by the end of that year Trans-World had lost control of about half of its holdings. Lev moved back to Russia by early 1999.[2] The magazine also reported that the Reubens had sent Lev the $22 million used to buy the newspaper Kommersant in 1999, which Boris Berezovsky later said he had bought, and had deducted it from Lev's Trans-World profits.[2]
Sale of the aluminium assets
The Guardian reported that on 17 February 2000 Lev Chernoi and Oleg Deripaska met Roman Abramovich and Iskander Makhmudov in Moscow. The meeting led to the creation of Russian Aluminium (Rusal).[5] In the High Court case Berezovsky v Abramovich, Mrs Justice Gloster described Trans-World as "owned by Mr. Lev Cherney and the Reuben brothers and managed by Mr. Dmitry Bosov". The judgment records that by a Master Agreement, dated 10 February 2000 but in fact concluded on 15 February 2000 and backdated, Lev Cherney, Mr Reuben, Dmitry Bosov and Vasily Anisimov agreed to sell shares in the Krasnoyarsk and Bratsk aluminium plants, the Krasnoyarsk hydro-electric power station and the Achinsk alumina refinery. The original price was $550 million, later increased to $575 million.[3]
Fortune put the sale price at $500 million. It reported that the Reubens took one half and Lev was promised the other, and that shortly before the sale Lev held about 32% of Bratsk through two Cyprus companies.[2] In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta published on 25 February 2000, Lev said that he had fully divested his Russian aluminium holdings, according to the Jamestown Foundation.[8]
Litigation against Oleg Deripaska
Lev Chernoy was one of the claimants, with Trans-World Metals SA (Bahamas), David Reuben and Simon Reuben, in a claim in the British Virgin Islands High Court against Bluzwed Metals, Oleg Deripaska and others. The claimants alleged that a joint venture set up in late 1994 and 1996 covered all business done with the Sayansk aluminium plant, and that the defendants had ended it without notice in January 1998 after setting up "shadow" companies. The defendants denied that any such general agreement existed. On 22 March 2005 Barrow J (Ag.) gave judgment on the defendants' challenge to service of the claim out of the jurisdiction.[9] The Daily Telegraph reported in April 2005 that the claimants had won permission to sue Deripaska for $300m in the British Virgin Islands.[10] The Sunday Times reported in July 2005 that Deripaska had settled the dispute, paying the bulk of the money, with a smaller payment still due.[11]
Investigations
The Guardian reported in October 1999 that Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service had looked at Lev Chernoi, and that he was also being studied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Switzerland's federal office for police matters. A Trans-World spokesman said that Chernoi was known to the company, as he was to any serious operator in the metals market, but denied that he exercised any control over it.[12]
The Dublin Sunday Tribune reported in 2001 that Lev and his brother Mikhail had in the past won damages from Russian media over accusations that they were involved in criminal activities in Russia.[13]
The Center for Public Integrity reported that a 1996 Interpol report, citing the Russian police, said that the brothers, natives of Uzbekistan and Israeli citizens, were "suspected of money laundering, embezzlement of funds, contract killing". It added that they had never been convicted, and that the Chernoys and David Reuben had denied any wrongdoing.[6]
Fortune reported that Russia's Interior Minister, Anatoly Kulikov, said in 1997 that he was intensifying the investigation of Lev and his associates over the theft of more than $100 million from Russia's central bank in the early 1990s. In March 1998 the new Interior Minister dismissed Lev as a criminal target in that inquiry. The ministry had concluded, the magazine said, that there was no proof that the Chernoys knew the money was stolen.[2] The magazine also reported payments by the Reubens of more than $1 million in 1996 to Anatoly Bykov, who became a board member of the Krasnoyarsk plant by 1996 and later its chairman. Lev told the magazine: "I have no connections whatsoever with Mr. Bykov".[2]
In June 2020 the Swiss investigative website Gotham City reported that a ruling of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court showed that Lev Chernoy, by then living in Israel, was banned from entering Switzerland. It said his name was in the federal police's JANUS database on suspicion of "money laundering, contract killings, fraud and links with a criminal organisation" (translated from the French).[14]
Later activities
Elden Group describes him as its head and as a professor of economics, and lists books he has written on economics and entrepreneurship. It says he is the main sponsor and honorary president of the Paralympic football club "Lev Tchernoy – Olimpia".[4] In a 2016 interview republished by BioTech Rosva, he described the company's grain-processing plant in the Kaluga region of Russia, a project of about 30 billion roubles, and the Olimpia club, based at a Moscow boarding school for children with cerebral palsy.[15]
Affiliations
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Economist (US edition), 21 January 1995, reproduced as King of the castle: Russian aluminium reubenbrothers.com, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 Richard Behar, Capitalism in a cold climate Fortune, 12 June 2000 (online 12 April 2000), accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Mrs Justice Gloster, Berezovsky v Abramovich [2012 EWHC 2463 (Comm)], approved judgment, High Court (Commercial Court), 31 August 2012, paragraphs 981–985, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Elden Group, About, eldengroup.org, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Nick Kochan, The deal that made a Russian oligarch The Guardian, 6 July 2003, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Knut Royce, FBI tracked alleged Russian mob ties of Giuliani campaign supporter Center for Public Integrity, 14 December 1999, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ Gangster-free capitalism Forbes, 26 November 2001, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ Chernoy confirms selling off aluminum holdings Jamestown Foundation, 25 February 2000, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ Barrow J (Ag.), Trans-World Metals SA (Bahamas), Lev Chernoy, David Reuben and Simon Reuben v Bluzwed Metals Ltd and others [2005 ECSC J0322-1], High Court of the British Virgin Islands, claim no. BVIHCV2003/0179, 22 March 2005, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ Caroline Muspratt, "Reubens sue Russian for $300m", The Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2005, reproduced as Reubens Sue Russian for $300m reubenbrothers.com, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ John Waples and Dan Box, "Oligarch settles Reuben dispute", The Sunday Times, 3 July 2005, reproduced on reubenbrothers.com (Wayback Machine copy captured 1 March 2007), accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ Dan Atkinson, Trans-World denies money laundering The Guardian, 13 October 1999, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ Áine Coffey, "From Russia with many twists", Sunday Tribune (Dublin), 4 February 2001, p. 30.
- ↑ L'ex-oligarque Lev Chernoy est persona non grata en Suisse Gotham City, 3 June 2020, accessed 31 October 2026.
- ↑ BioTech Rosva, Interview with Lev Semenovich Chernoy, Vestnik (December 2016), republished 6 April 2020, biorosva.ru, accessed 31 October 2026.