Leonid Nevzlin

Leonid Nevzlin was born in 1959 in Moscow

Nevzlin was born in Moscow on 21 September 1959 to a family of Lithuanian Jewish origin. He graduated from the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas in 1981. He later earned an MA in management and marketing from the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics.

From 1981 to 1987 he worked as a software engineer for a Soviet geology trade body. In 1987 he met Mikhail Khodorkovsky and joined MENATEP, and from 1989 to 1991 he was president of Bank Menatep. In April 1996 he became vice president of Yukos, and in 1999 first vice chairman of its board.

He was first deputy director general of the ITAR TASS news agency from 1997 to 1998. From 2001 to 2003 he was a senator for Mordovia in the Federation Council of Russia. In 2003 he served as rector of the Russian State University for the Humanities.

At the end of 2003 he moved to Israel with his family and founded the Nadav Foundation. In 2008 a Russian court convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to life in prison, which he called a show trial. Israel's Supreme Court rejected Russia's extradition requests.

In 2011 he bought 20% of the Haaretz newspaper company, and in 2014 he founded the magazine Liberal. He chaired the board of Beit Hatfutsot. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine he gave up his Russian citizenship, and he lives in Herzliya Pituah.