Rinat Leonidovych Akhmetov (born on 21 September 1966) is a Ukrainian billionaire and businessman. He is the founder and president of System Capital Management (SCM), and is the wealthiest man in Ukraine. As of January 2023, he was listed as the 639th richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of US$11.54 billion. Akhmetov is the owner and president of the Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk. From 2006–2007 and 2007–2012, Akhmetov was a member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) for the Party of Regions. Early life Rinat Akhmetov was born in Donetsk, Ukrainian SSR, to a working-class family. He is an ethnic Volga Tatar and a practicing Sunni Muslim. His father, Leonid Akhmetov was a coal-miner. His mother, Nyakiya Nasredinovna, was a shop assistant. Akhmetov had an older brother, Igor, who also worked as a coal miner but had to resign due to work-related health complications. Igor died on 24 January 2021. Akhmetov earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Donetsk National University in 2001. Business career Beginnings Details regarding Akhmetov's past, how he obtained his wealth after the fall of communism in Ukraine, and his activities between 1985 and 1995, remain controversial. Akhmetov has stated in interviews that he successfully made risky business investments in the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2010, denied he inherited any money from Akhat Bragin or anyone else: "I have earned my first million by trading coal and coke, and spent the money on assets that no one wanted to buy. It was a risk but it was worth it". Many publications in Ukraine and other European countries have made claims about Akhmetov's alleged "criminal past", some of which later retracted their statements. In his documentary book Donetsk Mafia: Anthology, Ukrainian author Serhiy Kuzin claims Akhmetov held the role of a 'mafia thug' in his early years. According to Hans van Zon, Professor of Central and Eastern European Studies in the University of Sunderland, "As early as 1986, Rinat and his brother Igor were involved in criminal activities.". In 2008, the Donetsk Appellate Court ruled that the book was a work of plagiarism. The authors of the book, Borys Penchuk, Serhiy Kuzin and the Anticorruption Foundation, were obliged to pay UAH200,000 in compensation for a breach of copyright to Oleksandr Kuchinsky, the editor-in-chief of Criminal Express regional weekly and the author of The Chronicle of Donetsk