Michael Cherney

Michael Cherney was born in 1952 in Uman

Cherney was born in Uman in 1952 and grew up in Tashkent in an Ashkenazi Jewish family. He is the eldest of three sons, and his brothers Lev and David later became his business partners. He began working at 14.

After high school he was drafted into the Soviet Army and attended a technical college. His interest in boxing and football led him to work in sports administration.

In 1987 he moved to Moscow and, with his brother Lev, imported furniture and clothing and later traded coal and steel. In 1991 he joined David and Simon Reuben in Trans-World Group, an aluminum trading company. In 1997 he left that partnership and worked with Oleg Deripaska in Siberian Aluminum, which later merged into Rusal.

In the early 1990s he immigrated to Israel. Bulgaria expelled him in 2000, and the United States has denied him a visa since 1999 over alleged ties to organized crime. He is wanted on an Interpol warrant on allegations of money laundering and organized crime, which he planned to contest.