Alexander Zhukov

Alexander Borisovich Zhukov (; born 13 June 1954) is a Russian-born British businessman. He is the founder and major owner of the international investment group Interfinance, investing in port and transport infrastructure, food industry and real estate, as well as engaged in portfolio investments. The assets of Interfinance group currently include transshipment port terminals (sulphur, mineral fertilizers and other bulk cargo, vehicles) in Russia and Ukraine, Iceberry group of companies - the Russian ice-cream producer and distributor, development projects in Russia and Ukraine, road construction business and insurance business in Ukraine.

Biography Zhukov was born in 1954 in Moscow. His father, Shayaborg (Boris) Rabkin, was a playwright and writer, and his mother, Inessa Rabkina, was an editor at the Moscow film studio. Alexander Zhukov is related to Georgy Zhukhov, the marshal who led the Red Army in the Second World War. Zhukov gives a lot of money to the Russian Orthodox Church and he restores churches. After graduating from school, he worked as an assistant to a film director at the Moscow film studio "". In 1981, he graduated as specialist in Eastern languages from the Institute of Asian and African Studies under the Moscow State University. After graduation, he worked as editor at "Sovinterfest" (a division of the Goskino organizing exhibitions and festivals).

In the late 1980s, he started his business activity. Zhukov has resided in London since 1993. In 2001, he became a British citizen.

In 2001, Zhukov was arrested in Italy and spent several months under arrest on suspicion of being engaged in arms smuggling from Ukraine to the states of former Yugoslavia. Subject to legal documents, Zhukov was charged of "moral complicity". A report titled Ukrainian Organized Crime compiled by Italian police in October 1998, obtained by reporters from Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, refers to Zhukov as a member of organized crime group "Odesa Oil Mafia." In 2004, Zhukov was absolved from the offences of "moral complicity" in arms trading, because (as was stated in court decision) the offences, for which he was charged, did not occur.

According to Institutional Investor, Zhukov was a client of a Jersey-based offshore trust company La Hougue which engaged in tax minimisation through legal loopholes and other avoidance measures.

Family Zhukov met his first wife while both were students in Moscow and was married for three years until 1984 to a member of the Moscow intelligentsia, the Russian-Jewish molecular biologist Yelena Zhukova (born 1957 or 1958), who emigrated to the United States in 1991 only two months before the collapse of the Soviet Union and, in 2024, remarried media mogul Rupert Murdoch. He has one daughter, Darya "Dasha" Zhukova (born 1981), and two sons: Mikhail Zhukov and Boris Zhukov. Through his daughter Dasha, who was married to oil oligarch Roman Abramovich, he has a grandson, Aaron Abramovich (born 2009), and a granddaughter, Leah Abramovich (born 2013). In March 2021 his third grandchild, Philip Stavros Niarchos, was born after his daughter's wedding to Stavros Niarchos II, the grandson of a Greek shipping tycoon and son of Philip Niarchos.

Business activity

In the late 1980s, Zhukov founded the cooperative "Byte" and started the business of selling personal computers.

In the early 1990s, jointly with his acquaintances Leonid Lebedev and Mark Garber, he founded the cooperative named "Sintez". (Lebedev was looking for where to get oil, Zhukov was looking for whom and how (logistics) to sell it, and Garber was responsible for relations with government agencies.) "Zhukov has very good business brains, he is a very good trader," stated Garber.

In 1992, Sintez founded a company named "Negusneft" that acquired a license to explore and develop a small Varyngskoe field in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District. Also, Sintez acquired 10% share in "Nizhnevartovskneftegaz" (the core of the future company TNK), 15% in "Rosneft-Sakhalinmorneftegaz" and 15% in the Yaroslavl Oil Processing Plant. In 1997, the group's turnover reached US$1.5 billion.

In 1993, the group began to cooperate with the Odesa Oil Processing Plant. At the same time the group were making investments to the port development. The investments amounted to US$100 million. By the end of the nineties the capacity of the oil intake, storage and transshipment facility reached 25 million tons per year.

In 2005, the group acquired the Ice-Fili ice-cream production and sale business later reorganized into Iceberry group of companies. Interfinance continues to own and develop this business.

In 2005, Zhukov started transport logistics business in Russia. He acquired a site and built a bulk cargo (sulfur) transshipment terminal at the port of Ust-Luga, Russia. Currently the construction of the second stage - a mineral fertilizer transshipment terminal - is being finalized.

In 2007, the Interfinance group sold its Russian gas asset – the Koshekhablskoe field in Adygeya to JKX.

Early in 2016, Glengary sold its shares in JKX and Zhukov ceased to be a shareholder therein.