Leonid Lebedev

Leonid Lebedev (born 2 May 1956) is a Cypriot–Russian businessman, filmmaker, and former member of the Federation Council from 2002 to 2015. Alongside Alexander Zhukov and Mark Garber, who was a director and asset manager at Fleming Family and Partners, he co-founded the Soviet–American joint venture SINTEZ International in 1988 and the Russia–United Kingdom joint venture SINTEZ Corporation in January 1990, which he left in the early 2000s. According to Forbes Russia, Sintez ranked 154th among private companies in Russia in 2012. According to Forbes, Lebedev is listed at position 162 among richest people with $750 million in 2021.

He has also been a businessman in music and film, serving as a producer, during the 1980s and more recently, in creating independent films such as Hipsters and The Geographer Drank His Globe Away.

In 2002, he was elected to the Federation Council (Russia), Russia's Upper House of Parliament, representing Chuvashia until he retired form politics in 2015.

Early life Leonid Lebedev was born in Moscow.

Sintez Records In 1989 Lebedev co-founded Sintez Records, a recording studio and label for underground rock artists. The label recorded music by Nautilus Pompilius, Time Machine and Oleg Gazmanov, among others.

According to Forbes, Lebedev is "one of the few Soviets who experimented with joint business ventures between the capitalistic US and the socialistic USSR in the 1980s". He is "not your typical Russian businessman who took advantage of early privatization or operated under some influential politician's wing". Forbes further states, "He sunk wells where there were none and struck black gold," pointing out his "entrepreneurial experience" accumulated in "tumultuous times in Russia." In 2015, the Essen Regional Court dismissed Sintez's lawsuit against RWE. However, the court also ruled that a lawsuit against then RWE CEO Jürgen Großmann was admissible. According to media reports, Großmann is said to have pushed the transaction personally and even called in former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to influence the ultimately failed deal through Russian politics. The case is currently still before the New York State Supreme Court.

Film producer Red Arrow Lebedev is a movie producer with more than twenty feature films in his portfolio. He is a co-founder and a co-owner of the "Red Arrow" film studio in Russia.

Lebedev continued his business ventures during his 13-year parliamentary career. A media article states that, "unlike other oligarchs, his companies survived the change from the Yeltsin era to the new Russia under Vladimir Putin without major setbacks." In 2015, he resigned his mandate.

In 2017, it was reported in The Guardian that Lebedev had acquired Cypriot citizenship. and is one of the founders of the Chuvashia Fund, which operates in the Russian region of the same name and supports various initiatives in the region in the fields of healthcare, education, and culture. Among other social projects in the Chuvash region, Lebedev has donated funds for the construction of two churches in Cheboksary. In 2011, he was awarded the Order of the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Innocent for supporting the publication of the book "Orthodoxy in China." He was also awarded the Order of the Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna and the Order of Sergius of Radonezh for his chartable work.

Lebedev was one of the sponsors of the 2005 exhibition of Russian art at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, held to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the UN, which was the first time a retrospective of Russian art from 12th-century icons to modern art objects was shown outside of Russia.

Awards

Order of Honour Jubilee Medal "300 Years of the Russian Navy" Order of St. Innocent