Leonid Lebedev (born May 2, 1956) is a Cypriot-Russian businessman, and a former elected representative in Russia's Upper House of Parliament. Lebedev is former sole owner of Sintez Group, a privately held energy, oil and gas and property development company. In 1988 he co-founded the company, which he left in the early 2000s. According to Forbes Russia Sintez ranked 154th among private companies in Russia in 2012. According to Forbes, Leonid Lebedev is listed at position 162 with $750 million in 2021. He has also been a businessman in music and film, serving as a producer, during the 1980s and more recently, in the creation of independent films such as Hipsters and The Geographer Drank His Globe Away. In 2002, he was elected to the Federation Council (Russia), Russia's Upper House of Parliament, representing the Republic of Chuvashia until he retired form politics in 2015. Early life Leonid Lebedev was born in Moscow. He earned a degree in engineering from the D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia in 1979. He served as a consultant to the USSR Chamber of Commerce and Mosconcert during the early 1980s. Entrepreneurship In the early 1980s, Lebedev began his entrepreneurial career by organizing rock concerts. Sintez Records In 1989 Lebedev co-founded Sintez Records, a recording studio and label for underground rock artists. The label recorded music by Nautilus Pompilius, Time Machine and Oleg Gazmanov, among others. Sintez International In the 1990's, following Perestroika, Lebedev co-founded Sintez International, an American joint venture, which traded in commodities and industrial supplies. According to Forbes, Lebedev is "one of the few Soviets who experimented with joint business ventures between the capitalistic US and the socialistic USSR in the 1980s." He is "not your typical Russian businessman who took advantage of early privatization or operated under some influential politician's wing." Forbes further states, "He sunk wells where there were none and struck black gold," pointing out his "entrepreneurial experience" accumulated in "tumultuous times in Russia." Sintez was the first Russian private company in the oil sector to conduct offshore exploration in the Arctic. In Western Siberia, Sintez built an oil production plant, called Negusneft, developed its infrastructure, and undertook industrial trading and exports. Sale of Russian energy supplier TGK-2 In relation to the sale of the Russian energy company TGK-2 in 2008, Sintez sued the German company RWE in 2011 for damages of around 700 million euros. RWE