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Alexander Smolensky

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Alexander Smolensky (Александр Смоленский in Russian) (born July 6, 1954) is the founder and president of one of the largest Russian banks, Stolichny Bank (also known as SBS/AGRO), which controls the newspapers Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta. Mr. Smolensky began his business activities on the black market of the so-called "shadow economy". His private ventures included trading foreign currency, moonlighting on a second job in a bakery without a permit as well as typesetting and publishing bibles using government presses and ink to do so. For these actions he was arrested by the KGB in 1981 and charged with economic crimes. Subsequently he was sentenced to two years of hard labor although he only served one day.

References Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko. Death of a dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, The Free Press (2007) David E. Hoffman. The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia, PublicAffairs (2003) ISBN: 1586482025

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