Victor Mykhailovych Pinchuk (, Viktor Mykhailovych Pinchuk; born 14 December 1960) is a Ukrainian businessman and oligarch. As of January 2016, Forbes ranked him as 1,250th on the list of wealthiest people in the world, with a fortune of US$1.44 billion. Pinchuk is the founder of EastOne Group LLC, an international investing, project funding and financial advisory company based in London, and of Interpipe Group, one of Ukraine's leading pipe, wheel and steel producers. Pinchuk is the owner of four TV channels and a popular tabloid, Fakty i Kommentarii. He has been a member of the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, for two consecutive terms from 1998 to 2006. He is married to Olena Pinchuk, the daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Early life and career Pinchuk was born in 1960 in Kyiv to Jewish parents who moved to the industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk. He graduated from Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute with a doctorate in industrial engineering in 1987. Three years later, he founded the Interpipe Company on the basis of his patented innovations, which were adopted by leading metallurgical factories in the USSR. Interpipe is a major producer of seamless pipes and railway wheels. In 2004, Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov, two of Ukraine's richest men, acquired the Kryvorizhstal steel factory for about $800 million. Then-President Leonid Kuchma, who is Pinchuk's father-in-law, authorized the state asset sale, which competitors complained was far below market rate. Later, the first Tymoshenko government reversed this sale, and held a nationally televised repeat auction that netted $4.8 billion. In 2006, Pinchuk founded an investment advisory company, EastOne. Its portfolio includes industrial assets such as production of pipes and tubes, rail car wheels, specialty steels and alloys, machinery, as well as media. Pinchuk was a member of the Ukrainian Parliament between 1998 and 2006 for Labour Ukraine. He left politics after he came to the conclusion that Ukraine had reached a level of development when business and politics should be separated. Pinchuk is a member of the Board of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, of the International Advisory Council of Brookings Institution and of the Corporate Advisory Board of the Global Business Coalition against HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. Pinchuk holds a share of VS Energy International Ukraine together with Mikhail Spektor and Igor Kolomoisky. In 2013, American steel makers filed a case with the United States Department of Commerce alleging that Interpipe Group was