Russian self-made billionaire, political activist, and owner of the Brooklyn Nets, an American basketball team. In December 2011, Prokhorov capped a year of higher-profile political activity in Russian oligarch marriage with the December declaration that he would run as an independent candidate in the 2012 Russian presidential election.

He was third in the voting, amassing 7. Prokhorov was born in Moscow to Tamara and Dmitri Prokhorov. He has one sibling, an elder sister, Irina. Dmitri Prokhorov was trained as a lawyer and handled international relations for the Soviet Committee of Physical Culture and Sport. Tamara Prokhorova was a materials engineer at the Institute for Chemical Machine-Building.

In 1989, Prokhorov graduated from the Moscow Finance Institute. 92, he worked in a management position at the International Bank for Economic Cooperation. In 1992, at the age of 27, Prokhorov partnered with Potanin to run Interros, a holding company that they used in 1995 to effect the purchase of Norilsk Nickel, one of Russia’s largest nickel and palladium mining and smelting companies. Prokhorov’s first major financial success came at MFK, which became a depository institution for the government. Prokhorov held the post of Chairman of the Board from 1992 until 1993. In 1993, Prokhorov became the Chairman of the Board for Potanin’s Onexim Bank, which, in 1993, became the paying agent for Finance Ministry bonds and a servicing bank for the City of Moscow’s external economic activities. Banks holding government funds earned handsome fees and paid minimal interest at a time when inflation was in the triple digits.

In the 1990s, the Russian government needed loans to operate. Their Onexim bank ran auctions for the government, in which bidders won the right to loan the Russian government money. Onexim and its affiliates were the winning bidders at the Norilsk Nickel and other auctions they conducted. The Russian government secured the loans with blocks of shares of the newly privatized state enterprises.