Farkhad Akhmedov
Farkhad Teimurovich Akhmedov (, Russian: "Фархад Теймурович Ахмедов;" born 15 September 1955) is an Azerbaijani businessman and a former politician in Russia. He is a former representative in the Federation Council of the Russian Federation. Early life and education. Akhmedov was born in Baku, Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. He was raised in Goychay located in the central region of Azerbaijan, where his father worked. He graduated from high school there in 1971. His father, Teymur Faraj oglu Akhmedov, was Director of the Goychay Cannery Factory before being arrested in 1971 and executed in 1973 by the Heydar Aliyev regime . Akhmedov left Azerbaijan in 1971, at the age of 15, and moved to Moscow. In Moscow he entered Vocational Technical School No. 85 (assembling fitter) before being called up for military service, serving from 1975 to 1977 in the Navy as a senior sergeant and platoon commander. At the end of his service, on the recommendations of his naval commanders, he submitted an application for admission to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) but was turned down, because of his father's conviction. In 1978, Akhmedov entered the Moscow Veterinary Academy named after K.I. Skryabin, graduating on an  extra-mural basis in 1983 with a degree in Technology and Merchandising Process of Fur Products. Business career. From 1986 to 1994, Akhmedov lived in London, initially engaging in the sale of furs in international markets. Later he founded and headed the Tansley Trading company specialising in the supply of equipment for the oil and gas industry of the USSR and also traded in oil and oil products. Northgas. In 1995, Akhmedov concentrated on business in Russia. He bought a minority stake in Northgas from Bechtel, an American construction company. He headed the Board of Directors of the FARCO Securities  investment company (1995 - 1998) and entered the Board of Directors of Northgas Closed Joint Stock Company (1994-2001). He headed the Board of Directors of Northgas, CJSC in 2002.  Under his leadership the company moved into long term profitability. In 2005, threatened with the loss of his license to produce gas by the Russian state, Akhmedov agreed to give Gazprom 51% of his shares, in return for not pursuing any claims against Akhmedov. In 2012, Akhmedov sold his 49% stake in Northgas to Novatek for $1.375 billion. Earlier that year, Akhmedov had threatened to sue Gazprom in the London  Court of International Arbitration for failing to abide by the 2005 settlement agreement signed by Akhmedov and the then-CEO of Gazprom, now Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, by increasing tariffs on gas production and reducing the quotas which Northgas was permitted to produced. Azerbaijan. At the turn of 1990s, he took part in international negotiations on the development of deep-water oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea basin. Using previously established contacts, he helped to attract American oil companies, Amoco Eurasia Petroleum Corporation and McDermott International to the project. He was involved in an agreement signed  in Baku on 20 September 1994 between the newly independent Azerbaijan and an international consortium of oil companies on the development of Caspian energy resources. According to Akhmedov's memoirs, these negotiations, which began before the collapse of the USSR, presented political, organisational and technical challenges. The team which helped bring them to a successful conclusion included Natik Aliyev and Khoshbakht Yusifzade who later became Heads of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan. Since 2009, he has been the Chairman of the Board of Directors and a shareholder of the AZNAR Closed Joint-Stock Company named after his father, Teymur  Akhmedov. Political career. Russia. In 2004, Akhmedov was appointed a representative of the Administration of the Krasnodar Territory in the Federation Council of the Russian Federation (until 2007). He was the first, and remains the only ethnic Azerbaijani to have sat in the upper chamber of the legislative authority of the Russian Federation. From 2007 to 2009, he was a representative of the Assembly of Deputies of the Nenets Autonomous Area in the Federation Council. In the period 2007 - 2010, Akhmedov was in the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). He has a personal  blog on the Echo of Moscow portal. According to Akhmedov, he has been involved in negotiations to resolve international disputes between Russia and Turkey. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu described Akhmedov as a diplomatic go-between "who has worked closely with Putin and knows Putin well." In January 2018, Akhmedov was included in the so-called ""Kremlin report"" - a US Treasury document submitted to the US Congress in accordance with the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Azerbaijan. He supported the reforms of Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev. Akhmedov acted as a middleman between the American PR firm Ballard  Partners and the authoritarian Ilham Aliyev regime in Azerbaijan. In 2017, he was photographed at a Republican National Committee alongside Lev Parnas and Republican megadonor Steve Wynn. On September 15, 2020, Aliyev signed a decree on awarding Fərhad Teymur oğlu Əhmədov (Akhmedov) with the Dostlug Order for merits in the development of mutual relations between Azerbaijan and Russia after the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020. Personal life. Akhmedov has been married three times with six children from those marriages, Anna Akhmedova (born 1979), Teymur Akhmedov (born 1993), Edigar Akhmedov (born 1997), Suleiman Akhmedov (born 2014), Aria Akhmedova (born 2018) and  Adam Akhmedov (born 2020). His wife, Anna Akhmedova (née Adamova) was born in 1983. His children were born in the USA and UK, they are believed to have dual-citizenship. Teymur Akhmedov owns assets in the United Kingdom that were gifted to him by his father. During a 2021 divorce trial between Teymor's parents, Teymur revealed that he had lost more than $50m in a single day of trading on the stock market in 2012 while a student at the London School of Economics. Akhmedov is the main sponsor of the Goychay Pomegranate Festival. Wealth. Since 2011 , Akhmedov has permanently been on the list of top 200 richest people in Russia according to the Russian version of Forbes magazine. In 2019, he ranked 67th in the rating of the richest people in Russia (estimated private fortune - $1.4 billion). In the list of billionaires of the world version of Forbes, he ranks at 2141st. Akhmedov owns the £300 million superyacht "Luna," which he bought from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich"." In 2015, he acquired the painting "Untitled Yellow and Blue" by the American artist Mark Rothko for $46.5 million. Divorce proceedings. After Akhmedov sold his stake  in Northgas CJSC, his ex-wife, Tatyana Akhmedova, with whom they had been divorced in Russia since 2000, initiated a lawsuit in London. In December 2016, the High Court of London awarded her £453 million ($585 million, or 41.5%) in a divorce settlement. This decision of the court was promoted by Akhmedov's refusal to cooperate with it. Akhmedov refused to recognise the court's decision, after which the court issued an international order to freeze his assets. Further, Tatyana Akhmedova secured financing from Burford Capital, to pursue enforcement of the High Court judgment. In the midst of  the legal proceedings was the yacht "Luna", owned by the Akhmedov family. in October 2017, the vessel was moored in Dubai following a London court order. The two-year process ended in October, 2019 with a verdict in favour of Akhmedov and the removal of the order on the vessel. Tatyana Akhmedova tried unsuccessfully to file a lawsuit against Akhmedov in a court in the Moscow Region. Their lawsuit was rejected. In January, 2020 they filed a new lawsuit in London. In 2021, a British court found that Farkhad Akhmedov's son Teymur had worked with his father to help  him avoid paying a £453 million settlement to his mother in the divorce. Teymur helped his father to hide assets worth hundreds of millions of pounds.