Alfred Koch

Alfred Reingoldovich Koch (Kokh) (, , born 28 February 1961) is a Russian writer, mathematician-economist, businessman, and former statesman. From 12 September 1996 to 13 August 1997 and from 17 March 1997 to 13 August 1997, he was the head of the State Committee for State Property Management (now Federal Agency for State Property Management) and a deputy prime minister under Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, respectively.

Education and early life He was born in Zyryanovsk, East Kazakhstan Region in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic to an ethnically German father, Reingold Davydovich Koch, who had been deported to Kazakhstan in 1941 under Stalin's wartime policies targeting ethnic Germans, and an ethnic Russian mother. At the age of eight, Koch moved with his parents to Tolyatti, where his father found work at the Volzhsky Automobile Plant then under construction, becoming the head of the department of related industries. He graduated from the Leningrad Financial-Economic Institute (now Saint Petersburg State University of Economics) in 1983 with a degree in economic cybernetics. He oversaw the gas giant's controversial takeover of NTV, an independent television company owned by Vladimir Gusinsky, on which he hosted the game show Алчность, the Russian version of Greed. As Gazprom-Media's general director, Koch was installed as chairman of NTV's board of directors after a contested shareholders' meeting on 3 April 2001 that ousted the network's existing management, with American financier Boris Jordan appointed as NTV's general director.

He was succeeded by Boris Jordan on 16 October 2001. In 2016, he was arrested in absentia on charges of smuggling cultural property after he attempted to leave Russia with a painting whose value was disputed by customs officials.

He has been a critic of Joe Biden.

Personal life His daughter Olga (born 1992), St Petersburg is a stand-up comedian living in London.