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From the small street of Seymour Stto Londonyou can see marble marchthe triumphal arch erected at the entrance Hyde park. However, the path has nothing of Imperial England. The whole area is a kind of Arabia Minor of the capital: the great artery Edgeware Street it is an endless series of characters, all in Arabic, incomprehensible to most: it seems to have been suddenly catapulted to Islamabad.
A modern glass building stands out on the street: it conveys the feeling of a large American corporation. And in fact it is the headquarters of Access Industriesthe European heart of the empire of Len Blavatnik. Len stands for Leonid: a first and last name that couldn’t be more Russian. Today he is just under the richest man in England 40 billion dollars of legacy: His empire ranges from the famous record company Warner Musicthe world superstars like hat Madonna, Ed Sheeran and liam gallagher; and the British luxury brand Tory Burch. But he is much more famous for being the master of DAZN, the internet platform that broadcasts football in Europe; and in Italy he made an agreement with Tim for the A league.
American passport, of Russian origin
The registry office registered Blavatnik as a citizen double pass American and British: He did not end up on the British government’s blacklist against the Russian oligarchs, nor did he receive half a sanction from Europe. But his is a curious case of a pseudooligarch rampaging War between Russia and Ukraine: was 1958 a Odesa, now a Ukrainian port on the Black Sea, the most strategically important city in the entire conflict. Back then, ten years after Yalta Conferencethat was all The Soviet Union.
Born in Russia, he would be a Ukrainian citizen today, but in reality he’s neither: He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1978, but he wasn’t a child because he was already 20 years old, making him an adultblown Russian citizen . While Roman Abramovich he’s an outcast in London, his assets frozen and forced to be sold, and he moves his multibillion dollar megayachts around the world in hopes of avoiding sanctions; Blavatnik, on the other hand, continues his life as a Mega Scrooge and enjoys a wealth that has earned him the title of one baronetuntil Queen Elizabeth the second. However, his professional career would fully place him in the category of oligarchs.
A pseudooligarch
In theory he’s a Cold War émigré, but his immense fortune was built right under postcommunist Russia Boris Yeltsin and especially from Wladimir Putin. Like so many other climbers, he used the privatizations of the Soviet industrial giants to become a minority shareholder in the steel group in 1996 sual: was the controlling shareholder Viktor Vekselberg who then sold everything Russianthe world’s largest aluminum producer.