26 Facts About Viktor Vekselberg

Viktor Felixovich Vekselberg was born on April 14,1957 and is a Russian-Israeli businessman and oligarch.

Viktor Vekselberg is the founder and chairman of Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate.

Viktor Vekselberg was born in 1957 to a Ukrainian Jewish father and a Russian mother in Drohobych, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Viktor Vekselberg's father fought for the Soviet Union during World War II.

In 1988, after the Gorbachev administration relaxed restrictions on private business as part of its new policy Perestroika and Glasnost, Viktor Vekselberg founded company Komvek, and in 1990, he co-founded Renova Group with college classmates, Leonard Blavatnik and Vladimir Balaeskoul.

Viktor Vekselberg became a pioneer in the Russian solar power sector.

In 2017, Viktor Vekselberg inaugurated Platov International Airport in Rostov-on-Don, the first greenfield airport built in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.

In 2018, Viktor Vekselberg stepped down as chairman of Skolkovo Foundation.

Viktor Vekselberg arranged a bank waiver to negotiate with all lenders and shareholders for a long-term solution and at AGM in April 2010 Renova Group agreed to inject capital in Oerlikon as part of the restructuring plan.

In March 2017, he was offered citizenship of the Republic of Cyprus due to his investments in the country; however, a spokesperson for Viktor Vekselberg reiterated that he only had Russian citizenship.

Viktor Vekselberg is one of many Russian "oligarchs" named in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2017.

In February 2021, Viktor Vekselberg complained that approximately $1.5 billion of his funds were frozen in American and Swiss bank accounts and that he was not allowed to send at least part of them to charity.

On September 1,2022, several properties believed to be linked to Viktor Vekselberg were searched by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

In March 2022, following Russia's invasion against Ukraine, the United States strengthened its sanctions and the UK, Poland and Australia placed sanctions on Viktor Vekselberg, thereby seizing his assets and imposing a travel ban.

Viktor Vekselberg is a Russian Jewish Congress Consul for Countering Antisemitism, a member of the Bureau of the Presidium of the Congress.

Viktor Vekselberg has provided support to local Jewish communities throughout Russia and Ukraine in the course of the past decades.

Since the 1990s, Viktor Vekselberg has funded the maintaining of the Bronnitsky Wood Memorial near Drohobych to honor the memory of Jews murdered by Nazis during World War II.

Viktor Vekselberg donated $4.5 million to the construction of the $50 million Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, and until February of 2021 he was the chairman of the museum's board of trustees.

Viktor Vekselberg financed the restoration works and managed to track down the Torah scroll which had been taken out from Drohobych during the Holocaust and later to be hidden in Israel in 1946.

Viktor Vekselberg donated this scroll to the synagogue in the loving memory of his father, Felix Solomonovich Vekselberg.

In 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic broke out, Viktor Vekselberg donated over 2 billion rubles to buy medical equipment, personal protective equipment, and food for socially vulnerable groups of citizens.

In February 2004, Viktor Vekselberg purchased nine Faberge Imperial Easter eggs from the Forbes publishing family in New York City.

Viktor Vekselberg is the single largest owner of Faberge eggs in the world, owning fifteen of them.

Viktor Vekselberg is married to Marina and has two children, a daughter and a son.

Viktor Vekselberg identifies himself as multi-national and does not attend weekly synagogue or church services.

Viktor Vekselberg has a daughter and grandson who live in New York.