3
8
4
1,000 hectares
9
5
➜
1
10
6
2
7
Miratorg
Viktor Linnik
and Aleksandr Linnik
946,778 soccer fields
676,000 hectares
675,000 hectares
945,378 soccer fields
Vadim Moshkovich
RusAgro
N.I. Tkachyov Agrokompleks
Aleksandr Tkachyov
644,000 hectares
901,960 soccer fields
452,000 hectares
633,053 soccer fields
Volgo-Don Agroinvest
Sergei Kukura
and Aleksei Kukura
Avangard-Agro
Kirill Minovalov
RZ Agro+Step
532,212 soccer fields
380,000 hectares
Vladimir Yevtushenkov
and Louis-Dreyfus family
Viktor Dmitriyev
Vasilina
377,000 hectares
RostAgro
Mikhail Shishkhanov and Mikhail Gutseriyev
528,011 soccer fields
362,000 hectares
507,002 soccer fields
Ivolga-Holding
Vasily Rozinov
Prodimeks is Russia's largest sugar-beet producer, while Agrokultura is a greenhouse facility located on 80 hectares of land outside Moscow. Both are controlled by Khudokormov, Russia's 174th-richest person with an estimated net worth of $600 million. Known to keep a low profile, Khudokormov launched his empire in the early 1990s by importing Ukrainian sugar to Russia -- an extremely profitable endeavor at the time. The Russian sugar industry in the 1990s was seen as closely linked to organized crime, though Khudokormov has never been publicly linked to the mafia. One business-news site reported that late Russian crooner Iosif Kobzon, often likened to Frank Sinatra due to his crooning style and alleged mob ties, helped finance Prodimeks in the 1990s. Kobzon denied this. Malta's government announced in 2017 that a man with the same name, patronymic, and last name as Khudokormov was one of hundreds of foreigners who had obtained a Maltese passport.
Miratorg is a leading Russian meat producer and exporter. The company is owned through two Cyprus-registered firms by the Linnik brothers, one of whom serves as its president while the other chairs its board of directors. The Linnik brothers went into business in the 1990s, importing powdered milk from the Netherlands. Miratorg expanded and acquired several pig farms from a French company in the southern Belgorod region in 2005. It later secured a major loan from a state lender after a visit by President Vladimir Putin -- then Russia's prime minister. Miratorg has faced accusations of receiving preferential treatment from the state and bullying smaller farmers. The maiden name of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's wife, Svetlana, is Linnik, though Miratorg's owners say she is not related to the brothers.
Forbes ranks Moshkovich as Russia's 44th-richest person, with an estimated wealth of $2.3 billion. He started his business importing sugar but later expanded into other markets, including White Eagle vodka from the United States that featured in humorous Russian television ads in the 1990s. Moshkovich acquired sugar plants and land, and also went into real estate, developing properties in and beyond Moscow. He is also known as a philanthropist, launching a school for gifted children last year. Moshkovich served in Russia's upper house of parliament from 2006 to 2014, when he resigned to focus on his agriculture business. RusAgro has faced accusations of illegally taking over land from farmers and residents in the Belgorod region. The firm has denied any wrongdoing and sued a Russian newspaper in 2016 after it published such accusations by one retiree.
The holding does not disclose its shareholders, but Aleksandr Tkachyov, the former governor of the southern Krasnodar region who served as Russia's agriculture minister from 2015 to 2018, has said it is controlled by his relatives. Tkachyov was named its board chairman last year, and his son-in-law, Roman Batalov, serves as deputy general director. The holding's revenues increased 33-fold during Tkachyov's tenure as governor from 2001 to 2015, and it became one of the top five Russian landowners during his time as agriculture minister. Tkachyov brushed off suggestions that his family's agribusiness presented a conflict of interest. In 2016, then-Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said the government had found no conflict of interest linked to the Tkachyov family's business. In February, a video published online showed Tkachyov partying aboard a private jet together with Dvorkovich and Medvedev's spokeswoman. The video shows them singing, drinking, and raising a toast "to the farm lobby." It is unclear precisely when it was filmed.
The company is owned through a Cyprus offshore by Sergei Kukura, a former vice president of the Russian oil company LUKoil, and his son, Aleksei. The elder Kukura left the oil business in 2017, cashing out his shares in the firm for nearly 10 billion rubles ($150 million) and investing in agriculture ventures managed by his son. Most of the cash was used to buy the Russian companies of Swedish agricultural holding Black Earth Farming. The deal gave the company nearly 250,000 hectares, mainly in the Kursk and Tambov regions, and vaulted the Kukuras into the top five of Russian landholders. Sergei Kukura grabbed international headlines when he was abducted in 2002 by captors demanding a $3 million ransom. He was later released without the ransom being paid. Little was known about Aleksei Kukura's business until 2016, when he reportedly bought 54,000 hectares from state lender VTB for more than 2.3 billion rubles ($35 million).EndFragment
The company -- which works primarily in the Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, and Lipetsk regions -- is focused on wheat, sunflowers, sugar beets, barley, buckwheat, and corn. It is also involved in dairy production and livestock. Forbes ranks Minovalov as Russia's 123rd-richest person, with an estimated wealth of $900 million. The founder, president, and chairman of the Russian bank Avangard, Minovalov was accused by civic activists of being ferried in a cortege of cars that struck and killed four road workers in 2011. Novaya gazeta reported that the one of the vehicles was registered to an Avangard-Agro subsidiary. The bank denied that it owned the car, and Minovalov never faced charges. Avangard-Agro is one of the world's largest malt producers and owns four malting plants in Russia and Germany, respectively. EndFragment
Forbes ranks Yevtushenkov as the 49th-richest person in Russia, estimating his wealth at $2 billion. He is the founder and co-owner of the holding company AFK Sistema, which controls Russia's largest mobile-phone operator. Sistema began acquiring farmland in 2011 and launched RZ Agro Holding the following year with members of the Louis-Dreyfus family of the eponymous French-owned conglomerate. The partners later announced plans to boost their Russian farmland to 500,000 hectares. In 2014, Sistema acquired the agro firm Steppe, which Yevtushenkov has used to boost his land holdings. In 2014, Yevtushenkov was arrested and charged with money laundering in connection with the acquisition of the regional oil firm Bashneft. Sistema's stake in Bashneft was seized by the authorities and later bought by state-owned oil major Rosneft, which is led by close Putin ally Igor Sechin. The charges, which Yevtushenkov called an "act of intimidation," were later dropped.
The holding operates in the Samara, Saratov, and Orenburg regions, producing wheat, sunflower, corn, and other crops. It is also involved in livestock and fish farming. Despite its substantial land holdings, the company has a quiet public profile. Dmitriyev, a former farm veterinarian in the Samara region, is listed in corporate registries only as a co-founder of several of the companies within the holding. It's unclear exactly who owns Vasilina, which does not even have a company website. Even experts specializing in the Russian agriculture industry appear to be in the dark about the holding's ownership structure.
Gutseriyev (pictured) and his nephew, Shishkhanov, are prominent Russian tycoons who were first linked to the company -- previously called RosAgro -- by media reports in 2016. The owner, on paper, was someone named Iman Aliyev, who transferred formal ownership to someone named Magomed Khatsiyev in May 2018. According to Forbes, the holding began snapping up Russian farmland beginning in 2012-13. Russian lender BinBank, which was owned by Shishkhanov and Gutseriyev, was hit with financial difficulties and bailed out in 2017 by Russia's Central Bank. RostAgro and its agricultural assets last year were transferred to a subsidiary of Trust Bank, a so-called "bad bank" that the Central Bank took over last year. As of 2018, RostAgro owned land in the Saratov, Penza, and Voronezh regions.
EndFragment
Rozinov, one of Kazakhstan's wealthiest tycoons, founded a small company called Ivolga in 1992, dealing in imported German cars. The company has since grown into an agricultural conglomerate. In 2013, it managed a total of 1.5 million hectares of land in Russia and Kazakhstan, making it one of the world's largest owners of farmland. Rozinov has close ties to the ruling Nur Otan party of authoritarian Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev. The company was hit with financial difficulties in 2013, and three years later, the Eurasian Development Bank filed suit to force Ivolga into bankruptcy. After a change in management in 2017, new general director Aidarbek Khodzhanazarov said Ivolga's previous assets had been reorganized and that the company was now called Olzha Agro. Khodzhanazarov told RFE/RL that the new firm no longer had any Russian assets, but that they might still be controlled by Rozinov and his creditors. EndFragment
EndFragment
Russia’s Largest Farmland Owners
A tad smaller than
CYPRUS
925,100 hectares
1,106,442 soccer fields
790,000 hectares
Igor Khudokormov
Prodimeks + Agrokultura
1,000
hectares
577,000 hectares
Bigger than
BRUNEI
KOSOVO
420,300 hectares
Mikhail Shishkhanov and Mikhail Gutseriyev
Prodimeks is Russia's largest sugar-beet producer, while Agrokultura is a greenhouse facility located on 80 hectares of land outside Moscow. Both are controlled by Khudokormov, Russia's 174th-richest person with an estimated net worth of $600 million. Known to keep a low profile, Khudokormov launched his empire in the early 1990s by importing Ukrainian sugar to Russia -- an extremely profitable endeavor at the time. The Russian sugar industry in the 1990s was seen as closely linked to organized crime, though Khudokormov has never been publicly linked to the mafia. One business-news site reported that late Russian crooner Iosif Kobzon, often likened to Frank Sinatra due to his crooning style and alleged mob ties, helped finance Prodimeks in the 1990s. Kobzon denied this. Malta's government announced in 2017 that a man with the same name, patronymic, and last name as Khudokormov was one of hundreds of foreigners who had obtained a Maltese passport.
EndFragment
Miratorg is a leading Russian meat producer and exporter. The company is owned through two Cyprus-registered firms by the Linnik brothers, one of whom serves as its president while the other chairs its board of directors. The Linnik brothers went into business in the 1990s, importing powdered milk from the Netherlands. Miratorg expanded and acquired several pig farms from a French company in the southern Belgorod region in 2005. It later secured a major loan from a state lender after a visit by President Vladimir Putin -- then Russia's prime minister. Miratorg has faced accusations of receiving preferential treatment from the state and bullying smaller farmers. The maiden name of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's wife, Svetlana, is Linnik, though Miratorg's owners say she is not related to the brothers.
Forbes ranks Moshkovich as Russia's 44th-richest person, with an estimated wealth of $2.3 billion. He started his business importing sugar but later expanded into other markets, including White Eagle vodka from the United States that featured in humorous Russian television ads in the 1990s. Moshkovich acquired sugar plants and land, and also went into real estate, developing properties in and beyond Moscow. He is also known as a philanthropist, launching a school for gifted children last year. Moshkovich served in Russia's upper house of parliament from 2006 to 2014, when he resigned to focus on his agriculture business. RusAgro has faced accusations of illegally taking over land from farmers and residents in the Belgorod region. The firm has denied any wrongdoing and sued a Russian newspaper in 2016 after it published such accusations by one retiree.
The holding does not disclose its shareholders, but Aleksandr Tkachyov, the former governor of the southern Krasnodar region who served as Russia's agriculture minister from 2015 to 2018, has said it is controlled by his relatives. Tkachyov was named its board chairman last year, and his son-in-law, Roman Batalov, serves as deputy general director. The holding's revenues increased 33-fold during Tkachyov's tenure as governor from 2001 to 2015, and it became one of the top five Russian landowners during his time as agriculture minister. Tkachyov brushed off suggestions that his family's agribusiness presented a conflict of interest. In 2016, then-Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said the government had found no conflict of interest linked to the Tkachyov family's business. In February, a video published online showed Tkachyov partying aboard a private jet together with Dvorkovich and Medvedev's spokeswoman. The video shows them singing, drinking, and raising a toast "to the farm lobby." It is unclear precisely when it was filmed.
The company -- which works primarily in the Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, and Lipetsk regions -- is focused on wheat, sunflowers, sugar beets, barley, buckwheat, and corn. It is also involved in dairy production and livestock. Forbes ranks Minovalov as Russia's 123rd-richest person, with an estimated wealth of $900 million. The founder, president, and chairman of the Russian bank Avangard, Minovalov was accused by civic activists of being ferried in a cortege of cars that struck and killed four road workers in 2011. Novaya gazeta reported that the one of the vehicles was registered to an Avangard-Agro subsidiary. The bank denied that it owned the car, and Minovalov never faced charges. Avangard-Agro is one of the world's largest malt producers and owns four malting plants in Russia and Germany, respectively.
The company is owned through a Cyprus offshore by Sergei Kukura, a former vice president of the Russian oil company LUKoil, and his son, Aleksei. The elder Kukura left the oil business in 2017, cashing out his shares in the firm for nearly 10 billion rubles ($150 million) and investing in agriculture ventures managed by his son. Most of the cash was used to buy the Russian companies of Swedish agricultural holding Black Earth Farming. The deal gave the company nearly 250,000 hectares, mainly in the Kursk and Tambov regions, and vaulted the Kukuras into the top five of Russian landholders. Sergei Kukura grabbed international headlines when he was abducted in 2002 by captors demanding a $3 million ransom. He was later released without the ransom being paid. Little was known about Aleksei Kukura's business until 2016, when he reportedly bought 54,000 hectares from state lender VTB for more than 2.3 billion rubles ($35 million).
Forbes ranks Yevtushenkov as the 49th-richest person in Russia, estimating his wealth at $2 billion. He is the founder and co-owner of the holding company AFK Sistema, which controls Russia's largest mobile-phone operator. Sistema began acquiring farmland in 2011 and launched RZ Agro Holding the following year with members of the Louis-Dreyfus family of the eponymous French-owned conglomerate. The partners later announced plans to boost their Russian farmland to 500,000 hectares. In 2014, Sistema acquired the agro firm Steppe, which Yevtushenkov has used to boost his land holdings. In 2014, Yevtushenkov was arrested and charged with money laundering in connection with the acquisition of the regional oil firm Bashneft. Sistema's stake in Bashneft was seized by the authorities and later bought by state-owned oil major Rosneft, which is led by close Putin ally Igor Sechin. The charges, which Yevtushenkov called an "act of intimidation," were later dropped.
RZ Agro
+Step
The holding operates in the Samara, Saratov, and Orenburg regions, producing wheat, sunflower, corn, and other crops. It is also involved in livestock and fish farming. Despite its substantial land holdings, the company has a quiet public profile. Dmitriyev, a former farm veterinarian in the Samara region, is listed in corporate registries only as a co-founder of several of the companies within the holding. It's unclear exactly who owns Vasilina, which does not even have a company website. Even experts specializing in the Russian agriculture industry appear to be in the dark about the holding's ownership structure.
Gutseriyev (pictured) and his nephew, Shishkhanov, are prominent Russian tycoons who were first linked to the company -- previously called RosAgro -- by media reports in 2016. The owner, on paper, was someone named Iman Aliyev, who transferred formal ownership to someone named Magomed Khatsiyev in May 2018. According to Forbes, the holding began snapping up Russian farmland beginning in 2012-13. Russian lender BinBank, which was owned by Shishkhanov and Gutseriyev, was hit with financial difficulties and bailed out in 2017 by Russia's Central Bank. RostAgro and its agricultural assets last year were transferred to a subsidiary of Trust Bank, a so-called "bad bank" that the Central Bank took over last year. As of 2018, RostAgro owned land in the Saratov, Penza, and Voronezh regions.
Rozinov, one of Kazakhstan's wealthiest tycoons, founded a small company called Ivolga in 1992, dealing in imported German cars. The company has since grown into an agricultural conglomerate. In 2013, it managed a total of 1.5 million hectares of land in Russia and Kazakhstan, making it one of the world's largest owners of farmland. Rozinov has close ties to the ruling Nur Otan party of authoritarian Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev. The company was hit with financial difficulties in 2013, and three years later, the Eurasian Development Bank filed suit to force Ivolga into bankruptcy. After a change in management in 2017, new general director Aidarbek Khodzhanazarov said Ivolga's previous assets had been reorganized and that the company was now called Olzha Agro. Khodzhanazarov told RFE/RL that the new firm no longer had any Russian assets, but that they might still be controlled by Rozinov and his creditors.
MONTENEGRO
1,381,200 hectares
About half of
QATAR
1,143,700 hectares
About a third of
1,090,800 hectares
Almost half of
364,000 hectares
MALLORCA
Estimated net worth:
$600 million
Estimated net worth:
$2.3 billion
Estimated net worth:
$2 billion
Estimated net worth:
$900 million
Source: BEFL, 2018 annual landowner report
By Sergey Dobrynin
and Carl Schreck
Produced by Carlos Coelho