Yevgeny Prigozhin

Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin was born an only child on 1 June 1961 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia). His mother, Violetta Kirovna Prigozhina, was a hospital nurse. His father, Viktor Yevgenyevich Prigozhin, was a mining engineer who died when Yevgeny was nine. His grandfather, Yevgeny Ilyich Prigozhin, was a captain in the Red Army during World War II, who fought in the Battles of Rzhev and received a medal "For Courage". Prigozhin sponsored the 2020 war film Rzhev, based on a 1991 novel by Vyacheslav Kondratyev that mentions his grandfather.

His father and stepfather are believed to be of Jewish descent. Prigozhin's great-uncle was Soviet scientist Yefim Ilyich Prigozhin. He settled with Yefim for several years during his childhood in the Ukrainian city of Zhovti Vody, where he worked in an open-pit uranium mine. His stepfather, Samuil Fridmanovich Zharkoi, was a ski instructor and introduced Prigozhin to cross-country skiing. Aspiring to be a professional skier, he graduated from Leningrad Sports Boarding School No. 62 in 1977. However, he abandoned his sports career after an injury. He later worked as a fitness trainer at a children's sports school.

After his release from prison in 1990, Prigozhin began selling hot dogs alongside his mother and stepfather at the Apraksin Dvor open-air market in Leningrad. Soon, according to a New York Times interview with him, "the rubles were piling up faster than his mother could count them". From 1991 to 1997, Prigozhin was heavily involved in the grocery store business. He became 15% stakeholder and manager of Contrast, which was the first grocery store chain in Saint Petersburg and founded by his former classmate Boris Spektor.

Around the same time, Prigozhin became involved in the gambling business. Spektor and Igor Gorbenko brought Prigozhin on as CEO of Spectrum CJSC (Russian: ЗАО «Спектр»), which founded the first casinos in Saint Petersburg. This trio went on to create many other businesses together throughout the 1990s across various industries, including construction, marketing research, and foreign trade. Novaya Gazeta notes that this may be when Prigozhin met Vladimir Putin for the first time, as Putin had been chairman of the supervisory board for casinos and gambling since 1991.

In 1995, Prigozhin entered the restaurant business. When revenues of his other businesses began to fall, Prigozhin persuaded a director at Contrast, Kirill Ziminov, to open a restaurant with him. They opened Prigozhin's first restaurant: Old Customs House (Russian: Старая Таможня) in Saint Petersburg. In 1997, they founded a second restaurant, New Island, a floating restaurant that became one of the most fashionable dining spots in the city. Inspired by waterfront restaurants on the Seine in Paris, Prigozhin and Ziminov created the restaurant by spending US$400,000 to remodel a rusting boat on the Vyatka River. He said his patrons "wanted to see something new in their lives and were tired of just eating cutlets with vodka". Before Prigozhin decided to focus on upscale dining, one of his dining establishments initially featured a striptease show. Prigozhin was reportedly known to punish poor performance or misconduct of employees of his catering businesses with physical violence.

In 2001, Prigozhin personally served food to Vladimir Putin and French president Jacques Chirac when they dined at New Island. He hosted US president George W. Bush in 2002. In 2003, Putin celebrated his birthday at New Island. Over the course of the 2000s, Prigozhin grew closer to Vladimir Putin. By 2003, he left his business partners and established his own independent restaurants. Notably, one of Prigozhin's companies, Concord Catering, began winning numerous government contracts. He received hundreds of millions in government contracts for feeding school children and government workers. In 2012, he received a contract to supply meals to the Russian military worth US$1.2 billion over one year. Some of the profits from this contract are alleged to have been used to start and fund the Internet Research Agency.

In 2012, Prigozhin moved his family into a Saint Petersburg compound with a basketball court and a helicopter pad. By this point he owned a private jet and a 115-foot (35 m) yacht. Prigozhin was later linked to several aircraft, including two Cessna 182s as well as Embraer Legacy 600, British Aerospace 125, and Hawker 800XP jets. The Anti-Corruption Foundation accused Prigozhin of corrupt business practices. In 2017, they estimated his illegal wealth to be worth more than one billion rubles. Alexei Navalny alleged that Prigozhin was linked to a company called Moskovsky Shkolnik (Moscow Schoolboy) that had supplied poor-quality food to Moscow schools, which had caused a 2019 dysentery outbreak. On 11 December 2018, a company claimed to be unaffiliated with Concord Catering called Msk LLC (Russian: ООО "Мск") was paid 2.5 million rubles for an annual "Heroes of the Fatherland Day" banquet held at the Kremlin. However, Msk LLC shared the same contact phone number with Concord. On 11 December 2019, the company received another 4.1 million rubles for another banquet. Prigozhin was declared the 2022 Corrupt Person of the Year by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Prigozhin was married to Lyubov Valentinovna Prigozhina, a pharmacist and businesswoman. She owns a network of boutique stores known as the Chocolate Museum («Музей шоколада») in Saint Petersburg. In 2012, she started the Crystal Spa & Lounge, a day spa located along Zhukovsky Street in Saint Petersburg, which won a third place award in 2013 for the Perfect Urban Day Spa. She owns a wellness center in the Leningrad Oblast and a boutique hotel called the Crystal Spa & Residence which won the Perfect Spa Project award in 2013. She owns the New Technologies SPA LLC (ООО «Новые технологии СПА») which is located at plot 1, Granichnaya street in Lakhta Park, Sestroretsk, Kurortny District, Saint Petersburg. She is also the owner of Agat, part of the Concord group (Russian: Агат).

The couple had two daughters: Polina (Полина), born 1992, and Veronika (Вероника), born 2005, and a son Pavel (Павел), born on 18 June 1998. In 2004, Prigozhin published a children's picture book, with his children listed as co-authors (the book was never put on sale—Prigozhin handed out the book to friends and associates as a gift). Until the invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin's children were able to move freely across the European Union. On 20 February 2022, Prigozhin's daughter Veronika took part in equestrian competitions in Spain.

Prigozhin's mother, Violetta Prigozhina, is a former doctor and educator, and the current legal owner of Concord Management and Consulting LLC (ООО "Конкорд менеджмент и консалтинг") since 2011, Etalon LLC (ООО "Эталон") since 2010, and Credo LLC (ООО "Кредо") since 2011. All above family members were sanctioned by the European Union, the United States, Ukraine, and many other countries due to Prigozhin's involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Criminal history and imprisonment

In 1979, 18-year-old Prigozhin was caught stealing and was given a suspended sentence of two years and six months in prison. He served his sentence working at a chemical plant in Veliky Novgorod. In 1980, he returned to Leningrad and joined a gang. He participated in a burglary spree in Leningrad, before being caught after choking a woman on the street during a robbery, with him and accomplices then stealing the woman's earrings and boots. In 1981, he was sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment in a high-security penal colony for robbery, theft, fraud, and involving minors in criminal activity.

According to Prigozhin, he violated the terms of his solitary confinement "on a regular basis" until he was sent to general population in 1985, where he started to "read intensively" and worked as a lathe operator, tractor driver, and cabinet maker after receiving training at a vocational school. In 1988, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union reduced his sentence to ten years on good behavior, noting that he had begun "corrective behavior". He was sent to a medium-security penal colony and was released in 1990. In total, Prigozhin spent nine years in detention. Immediately after his release, he started attending the Leningrad Chemical and Pharmaceutical Institute to get a pharmaceutical degree, but failed to complete his studies. Prigozhin would later flaunt his prison past to convince prisoners to join the Wagner Group.

On 16 February 2018, Prigozhin, the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management, another related company, and other connected Russian individuals were indicted by a US grand jury. Prigozhin was charged with funding and organizing operations for the purpose of interference with the US political and electoral processes, including the 2016 presidential election, and other crimes including identity theft. Charges against Concord Management were dismissed with prejudice on 16 March 2020.

In February 2021, Prigozhin was added to the wanted list of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In February 2022, the United States imposed visa restrictions and froze assets of Prigozhin and his family, due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In July 2022, the US State Department offered a reward of up to $10 million for information about Prigozhin, the Internet Research Agency, and other entities involved in 2016 US election interference. On 7 November 2022, Prigozhin said he had interfered in US elections and would continue to interfere in the future.