Yury Valentinovich Kovalchuk (Russian: Юрий Валентинович Ковальчук, born 25 July 1951, Leningrad, Soviet Union) is a Russian businessman and financier "reputed to be Putin's personal banker".[1] The May 2008 issue of Russian Forbes listed him for the first time in its Golden Hundred of Russia's richest and introduced him and another new entrant to the List, Gennady Timchenko, as "good acqaintances of Vladimir Putin."[2] The magazine placed him at number 53 (Russians only list) with estimated fortune of $1.9 billion.
From 1987 to 1991 he was the First Deputy Director of Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute.
Since 2004 he is the Head of the Board of Directors of the Russia bank. He is also its largest shareholder.[3][4][5]
Since the early 1990s, Kovalchuk owns a dacha in Solovyovka, Priozersky District of the Leningrad region, which is located on the eastern shore of the Komsomolskoye lake on the Karelian Isthmus near St. Petersburg. His neighbours there are Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Yakunin, Andrei Fursenko, Sergey Fursenko, Viktor Myachin, Vladimir Smirnov and Nikolay Shamalov. On 10 November 1996, together they instituted the co-operative society Ozero (the Lake) which united their properties (See Ozero). [1][2]
His elder brother, Mikhail Kovalchuk, is the Scientific Secretary of the Council for Science and High Technologies attached to the President of the Russian Federation. Despite pressure from Putin, the Russian Academy of Sciences rejected Mikhail Kovalchuk's application for full membership of the Academy in May 2008. This was seen as a blow to Putin's authority, as speculation existed that Putin had wanted to Kovalchuk to become President of the RAS.[6]