Translated material
Torrant optimist
Alpha and Omega Vladimir Ashurkov
“I am a tireless optimist,” Ashurkov says, habitually managing Japanese wands with rolls in a restaurant on Taganskaya Street, not far from the Navalny office, where he has been working as the executive director of the corruption Fund for the past two months. Ashurkov is forty, but he looks much younger. Steel-colored shirt, cherry trousers, dietary dark glasses, Swiss chopard on his hand for several thousand dollars, next to him on a chair he put a portfolio-everything is expensive, but without a call, he understands: a successful, wealthy top manager on Friday, when a corporate culture allows him to remove his jacket.
“I have always worked a lot. But as soon as I left Alpha, as there was even more work. Now my day is painted from morning to late evening, ”Ashurkov admits. But he speaks of this with a smile and visible pleasure. The new status and publicity is clearly to his liking.
"Good monsters"
“He wrote a letter to me-something like:“ You now speak out on financial topics, but you don’t understand them, let's help, ”Alexey Navalny told The New Times about his acquaintance with Ashurnov. Then the Director of Control of Asset Management-this was the name of his position in 2009-the Alfa-Group consortium (the total value of the assets $ 59.9 billion) in the evening (“only work is at work,” says Ashurkov) enthusiastically read the Blog of the Podrible in a living magazine. He was impressed by how fun and with a good share of self -irony, the blogger wrote about topics that were close to him: the rights of minorityans, corporate administration, corruption, abuse in the field of public procurement. Soon Ashurkov wrote to Navalny a letter in which he outlined his thoughts. “The situation was completely standard. A lot of people write to me, ”says Navalny. - We entered a long extensive correspondence on various political issues: what needs to be done, what is not necessary. And somehow they felt that we were thinking about about one thing. ” Then they met, and Ashurkov began to help him: “To write letters to the auditors when we complained about Transneft in 2010, to apply to foreign bodies. But the most important thing is that he became a man who coordinated “good monsters”. People like him, who regularly turn and want to help, ”says Navalny. The Rospil project, which was launched in 2010, was also discussed together. The successful corporate manager Ashurkov at first treated the activities of Navalny at first with the skepticism: everything looked interesting in the living magazine, but for a person who worked for the result, calculated by the amount of profit, the question remained: in the end, in real life, not on paper-what? And suddenly everything became very seriously - about the investigations of Navalny began to write a high -quality press both in the country and abroad, almost every post was noisy successful, not only bloggers were discussed - serious investors and businessmen. Ashurkov before many others, possibly, due to the profession, which required the ability to correctly make bets in a serious game for a strategic result, realized: Navalny is not just a superpower blogger - a politician with a prospect appeared in Russia. “Yes, we didn’t put anyone, we lost more often in the courts than won, but the public resonance that received Alexei's activities was an important success,” he explains.
Choice
“In Alpha, one of the leading Russian business groups, which runs the most diverse companies, Ashurkov held a very high and important post,” says Sergey Guriev, the rector of the Russian Economic School, the independent director of Sberbank and one of those 16 who did not hide his personal money in the corruption Fund. - Vladimir was part of a group of people who were responsible for monitoring these assets. In addition to alpha people, in addition to the bank, in addition to the five largest financial institutions of the country, the Altimo telecommunication company, the investment A1 of the groups , which belong to the Kronwerk Cinema and Formula Kinoma and Significant Cinema Cinema and Significant Cinema Cinema and Formula Cinema Networks in X5 Retail Group (owns retail chains “Crossroads”, “Pyaterochka”, “Carousel”, “Kopeyka” and a network of A5 pharmacy), oil and gas TNK-BP, etc. According to international financial reporting standards, the net profit of the group for 2010 is $ 2.8 billion.
Ashurkov, according to his professional duties, was a member of the board of directors of all Alfa companies and headed a group that helped shareholders in managing these businesses: budgeting, investment projects, and company development strategy. “If I hadn’t had to choose in January, I would love to work there and further,” Ashurkov admits.
“A clean, bright guy,” says Peter Aven, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Banking Group of Alfa-Bank.
Ashurkov’s professionalism in Alpha was valued: his annual income, according to the source in the group, amounted to $ 700 thousand to $ 1 million a year. What approximately corresponds, according to Russian Forbes, the average salary of managers of this level.
And then the following happened: at first, at the request of the two departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the counterintelligence of the FSB (Navalny has official paper from Yandex), Yandex-Koshelek was opened, through which hundreds of people transferred their money to the activities of Rospil. This was followed by hacking personal e -mail Alexei Navalny. From the correspondence posted to the network, it followed that the top manager of Alfa-Group Ashurkov is one of Navalny's closest associates. He gives him advice on how to interact with the Russian business surveillance, helps with contacts, even sends a sample of a letter that the former owner of Euroset Evgeny Chichvarkin, who is in London, must be sent.
The Kremlin made appropriate conclusions. What steps followed for this - here the versions diverge. According to one, the leadership of Alfa was then the first deputy head of the administration of President Medvedev Vladislav Surkov (a former employee of Alfa itself) and explained the risks. On the other - from the Lubyanka they sent a report to the very top, from which it followed that the plot was almost ripening in Alpha. Argument: Ashurkov ligament - Naval.
In short, Ashurkova was called to conversation to the owners of the group. As Mikhail Friedman himself told about this, the chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Alfa Group consortium (according to unofficial data, he owns more than 40% of the group), he invited Ashurkov to choose between business and politics. “When we parted, he had the right to choose,” Friedman said in an interview with Ksenia Sobchak on the Rain television channel, “either not to engage in politics or leave business. He chose the path to engage in politics for himself. I understand him humanly, and it seems quite worthy to me. ”
“If they evaluated the risks for business related to my stay in the company as serious - my dismissal for them is a reasonable decision,” Vladimir Ashurkov himself commented on his departure from Alpha in an interview with The New Times.
Amazingly, for the vast majority of friends and Ashurkov’s colleagues, with whom the New Times spoke, his choice was neither extraordinary nor unexpected. Unless Oleg Sysuev, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation, and now the first deputy chairman of the Board of Directors of Alfa Bank was surprised: “Despite his youth, he was a very experienced employee and had non-trivial abilities: brilliant English, excellent knowledge of international finance and reporting systems. I was surprised when he left. "
However, another interlocutor of The New Times in the banking group, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, believes that Ashurkov’s career in Alpha rested on the ceiling, and he wanted more. Syssuyev also shares this point of view: "Ashurkov took a very high position in Alpha and, apparently, was ready for some kind of independent, large work." Such work by Ashurkov considered the Fund for the fight against corruption of Alexei Navalny. 
Pragmatist
Its biography is typical of a successful Russian top manager. Born in a family of engineers who worked in closed research institutes of the military-industrial complex (“mailboxes”)-by Soviet standards, wealth is higher than average, but not at all nomenclature: there are many books in the house, and the school for the child is carefully selected with in-depth study of the English language (No. 36 is one of the best in Moscow). He managed well, he also learned German. “A gentle and affectionate boy,” recalls Olga Sventsitskaya, class teacher Ashurkova. - Never was involved in conflict situations. I always worked as a lead: I remember, I asked them for the summer of Woodhouse (English writer of the twentieth century. - The New Times) to read, and after two weeks he reported to me that the book was read. ”
In high school, according to the classmate Dmitry Erokhov, he was considered an advanced guy-one of the first began to listen to the rock band The Doors.
It was a time of beginning perestroika, when the USSR really turned into the most reading country in the world - previously forbidden authors and novels appeared in thick magazines, and then in bookstores. “He read almost the whole of Solzhenitsyn, Yuri Dombrovsky and the heroes of his novels“ Faculty of Unnecessary things ”and“ Guardian of Antiquities ”made a special impression on me,” Ashurkov recalls. “The way the confrontation between the personality and the state suppression machine is shown in these works very much affected my attitude to what is happening.”
He entered the famous Fizteh-Moscow Physics and Technical Institute. “In the late 80s, Fiztekh was one of the leading, if not the most outstanding university in the quality of students,” says Sergey Guriev, who studied at a physical education at about the same time as Ashurkov: Fizteh was a Soviet analogue of MIT (Massachusetts Technological Institute) and performed a key role in training in the defense region.
“On Fiztekh there was a concept of this -“ Ryuhan ” - a person who thinks well is versed in everything. Here Volodya was one of the most authoritative Ryukhanov on the course, ”said Aleksey Sotzkov, a classmate Ashurkova.
While still in the 3rd year of his faculty of physical and quantum electronics, he entered the evening two-year business program of the American Institute of Business and Economics. Sent again - they sent to Pepsico on a summer internship. In 1995 he graduated from Phiztech (“There was not a single retake for the institute all the time at the institute,” said Anton Kudryashov, deputy dean of the faculty), but he did not defend his diploma: he understood that there would be no more than the quantum, the world of finances attracted him much more. Further-the famous Warton, a business school in Pennsylvania (USA): there was no money to pay for training at a price of $ 40 thousand per year (now $ 62 thousand)-I won a grant under the Muskie program, which was sponsored by the American government. “So I am an agent of the State Department from a young age,” Ashurkov jokes. During training - an internship in the Moscow office of the prestigious Boston Consulting Group, although he could work both in the States and in Europe.
“With the degree of MBA Warton, a person automatically receives a good chance of employment in America,” says a classmate in a business school, who wished to remain anonymous. - Vladimir was never interested in this - he only wanted to go to Moscow. This distinguished him from everyone: Vladimir believed in Russia and its prospects, saw himself part of the processes that were then in the economy. ”
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One of the versions: from the Lubyanka they sent a report to the very top, from which it followed that the conspiracy was almost ripening in Alpha. Argument: Ashurkov bunch - Navalny
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Successful manager
Ashurkov’s career also developed more and more successfully: at the end of Wharton, he was invited to the Renaissance Capital investment bank (position: deputy director of the Department of Investment Banking Services)-was part of the group of shares of the telecommunication company Svyazinvest (this was 1997), participated in transactions to attract financing For companies such as Vimpelcom (Beeline), Holy Source and others. “It was a very cool job,” says Ashurkov.
In 1999, he left for St. Petersburg-to the post of financial director of the seaport. In 2001, on the basis of part of the port, a national container company was created, which he headed for two years. Then he returned to Moscow, where he worked in the leadership of two transport companies. In 2005, he was called by the Vice President for Strategic Planning to the Industrial Investors group: “Ashurkov worked with us for only a year until he went to Alfa in 2006,” said Kirill Rubinsky, senior vice president of finance of industrial investors, in an interview with The New Times. - A wonderful professional, a versatile person, always fond of new ideas. Therefore, for me there was no surprise that he has now gone to Navalny. I do not remember that he has ever criticized power, and it seems to me that in the projects of Navalny he is primarily interested in the economic, rather than the political component. But this is my hypothesis. " 
Evolution
However, Ashurkov himself claims that he was always interested in politics. It was just that it was an observer’s interest, nothing more. In 2004, he voted for Vladimir Putin: he considered it correct those reforms that Putin carried out during his first presidential term. He participated as an expert in the development of the transport strategy of the Russian Federation for the period until 2020. And then disappointments began. Ashurkov believed that it was necessary to invest in the country's infrastructure-and the trouble is still with this; He began to notice how it grows into the presence of the state in the economy, the pressure of power on business increases, corruption becomes a form of government. The final disappointment in Putin and his course occurred in 2008, when the crisis erupted: “I strengthened that normal economic mechanisms were replaced by manual control,” he says. “What is happening, I first of all gave my professional assessment.”
In 2010, when he already actively helped Navalny, warned his bosses in Alpha. Then there were no questions. “They understand this position: if something does not suit you in the world around you, you yourself must make efforts to changes. Therefore, they did not ask me the question: "Why are you doing this?" - says Ashurkov. What happened next, you already know.
Last December, Ashurkov first took part in the opposition rallies and has since goes to all protests.
In April 2012, he became the Executive Director of the Corruption Fund (Alexey Navalny-founder of the Fund), and in the next two months the fund “shot” at once with two noisy projects: “16 Friends of Navalny” and “Navalny card”. The first is a public list of 16 fund investors. Among them, in addition to understandable people as Boris Akunin, Dmitry Bykov and Leonid Parfyonov, a number of business people: for example, Rosgosstrakh Vice President Sergey Grechishkin, Rosinvestel Partner Kirill Irtyuga, entrepreneur Denis Sokolov and others. There is one person from Alfa - Alexei Savchenko, director of strategic planning of the consortium. The establishment of ties with these people, their involvement in Navalny’s projects - this was done by Ashurkov. As for the second project, with one of the banks, the Fund for Combating Corruption agreed to issue a special card, from all transactions on which 1%will be expelled to the fund.
“There would have been nothing without him,” Navalny wrote on his blog when he commented on both projects.
Ashurkov himself does not intend to limit public activity - he is thinking about his own business or project. From ordinary hobbies - boxing and swimming, in music - rock, listens to the group "Spleen" and "Pilot". He does not go to the church and does not belong to any denomination, but he says: “The source of optimism for me is a religious worldview. If you think that the world is moving towards light, it gives you strength even for ungrateful, routine work. ”
To the question: "If Navalny creates his own party and goes to power, will you be near?" - Ashurkov answered cautiously: “If I understand that I am able to achieve serious changes in power, then, of course, I will grab this opportunity.”