Leonid Chernovetskyi

Leonid Chernovetskyi was born in 1951 in Kharkiv

Chernovetskyi was born in Kharkiv on 25 November 1951. He left school at 14 to work as a fitter at an aviation factory, then went back and finished his studies. He served his military obligations from 1970 to 1972.

He graduated from the Kharkiv Law School in 1977 and worked as a senior detective in the Kyiv Oblast prosecutor's office. He earned a doctorate in 1984 and taught at Kyiv University until 1989.

After perestroika he went into business and founded the Pravex Group, whose banking arm became Pravex Bank. The bank was sold in 2008 to Banca Intesa São Paulo for 509 million euros. He has acknowledged paying bribes as a businessman.

He was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in 1996 and reelected in 1998 and 2002. He leads the Christian Liberal Party of Ukraine. He won the Kyiv mayoral election in 2006 with 32 percent and a snap election in 2008 with 38 percent.

After a new head of the city administration was appointed in 2010, he lost real power in Kyiv and resigned on 1 June 2012. He then moved with his family to Kobuleti in Georgia and received Georgian citizenship. In 2012 he founded the Chernovetskyi Investment Group.