Hermann Gräf (, born February 8, 1964), better known as Herman Gref, is a Russian politician and businessman. He was the Minister of Economics and Trade of Russia from May 2000 to September 2007. He is the CEO and chairman of the executive board of Sberbank, the largest Russian bank. Education and early career Herman Gref was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (now Kazakhstan) into a family of German deportees who were exiled there in 1941. Later Gref was involved in the return of exiled Germans to Russia - with his assistance an entire German village called Strelna was built near St. Petersburg. There are two versions of what Gref did after graduation. According to one of them, Gref entered the faculty of international economic relations at MGIMO of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, but after the first year he was expelled from the university. According to the other version, after school Gref and his first wife, Elena Velikanova, entered Omsk State University, but failed the exams. In 1981-1982, he worked as a legal advisor for the Irtysh District Department of the Pavlodar Region. From 1982 to 1984, Gref served in the army. After fulfilling two years of military service, he studied law at Omsk State University in Siberia from 1985 to 1990. After that he enrolled in the post-graduate program at the Law Department of St. Petersburg State University. He graduated in 1993 under the guidance of Anatoly Sobchak. However, he did not defend his dissertation until 2011. From 1992 to 1998 Gref worked on several positions at the Saint Petersburg City Administration, notably a term as vice-governor from 1997 to 1998. He became a friend and ally of Vladimir Putin during this period; he also made acquaintance with Alexei Kudrin, Dmitry Kozak, and Dmitry Medvedev. Work for the Russian government In August 1998, Gref was appointed First Deputy Minister of State Property of the Russian Federation, and was a member of its board until 2000. He was also appointed to the board of the Federal Commission for the Securities Market of the Russian Federation and the board of state-owned Svyazinvest and Gazprom in 1999. Gref was first appointed as Minister of the newly formed Ministry of Economic Development and Trade on May 18, 2000 and was reappointed to the position in the succeeding Cabinet in 2004. Gref was a major advocate of Russia's