Sergei Yurievich Polonsky (, born 1 December 1972) is a Russian businessman. He is the owner and head of one of the largest real estate companies in Russia, Mirax Group (2004–2011). He was one of the richest men in Russia before the late-2000s financial crisis. Now, he is a shareholder and investor in a number of commercial structures incorporated by the holding company Potok . He is currently awaiting trial in Moscow on charges of fraud. On 12 July 2017 he was found guilty, but the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the crime was committed for the court's decision to be implemented. Early life Polonsky was born 1 December 1972 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) Polonsky finished secondary school No. 99 of the Vyborg District of Leningrad. In 1989, he joined the Airborne Troops. He completed his military service in the 21st Separate Air Assault Brigade (1990–1992), which was stationed in the time of the armed conflict between South Ossetia and Georgia in the combat zone at Tskhinval. In 2000, Polonsky graduated from the St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering. He qualified as an economist and manager with a specialization in economics and management of building enterprises. In 2002, he defended his PhD thesis "Formation of Functional Procurement Strategies in Construction". In 2008 Polonsky attempted doctoral, but, considering the academic council biased, he withdrew the work and posted the text of the thesis for an open discussion on the Internet. Career Stroymontazh In 1994, when Polonsky was 22, he founded Stroymontazh LLC with his longtime friend Artur Kirilenko. Stroymontazh was a construction and real estate firm set up with the initial intention of selling apartments that they had plastered and finished. However, when the building owners ran into financial difficulty, they began to pay the pair in apartments. It was through these means that Polonsky and Kirilenko took control of their first unfinished building, starting them on the path to being property developers. In 1996 the company took its first contract job, completing an apartment project in St. Petersburg for a company called Lenenergo. It was during the 1998 financial crisis in Russia, however, that Polonsky and Kirilenko began to achieve huge financial success. According to The New York Times, by paying construction costs in rubles and selling property in dollars they were able to profit in the lag time