Hunt the Banker

[An] entertaining and wildly self-indulgent account of his life and career in Russia... a noble effort to save an industry in trouble. -- Luke Harding * The Guardian * Alexander Lebedevs new book is a revelatory portrait of power players, from his days in the KGB to multi-million pound deals. [It] lays bare a world in which the grim violence and comic absurdism you might find in Gogols short stories coexist... If Hunt the Banker settles a lot of scores, its also a good-humoured account of his own foibles and business failings. -- Anne McElvoy and Jim Armitage * Evening Standard *

Author Alexander Lebedev is a Russian banker, philanthropist and public figure. A member of the KGBs Foreign Intelligence Service, he worked in the USSR Embassy in London in the 1980s. Since 1992 he has been a businessman, founder and beneficial owner of financial & industrial group National Reserve Corporation, which includes the National Reserve Bank. He has property assets throughout Europe and enterprises in aviation, agriculture, engineering, catering and beyond. He bought The Independent and the Evening Standard newspapers and is a shareholder and investor of investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta in Russia.

Preface: What is the Third Colonialism PART I A Person Resembling the Prosecutor General, and a Bunch of Gangsters 1 Allow Me to Introduce Myself - We have all learned step by step - No cloak, no dagger - How to make a billion while retaining your integrity 2 The Xerox Paper Box - Choose or Lose! - A pyramid for Yeltsin 3 Nothing Personal, Just Business - More banks: some good, some less good - Sleight of hand and just plain fraud 4 Operation Boar on the Run - Money, especially tainted money, prefers stillness - National Reserve Bank under bombardment - Enter the Tormentors - Pioneers of black PR 5 In the Crosshairs 6 Werewolves in White Uniforms - A leviathan against the Bank - Cui prodest? (Who benefits?) 7 Nothing Secret That Shall Not Be Made Manifest - The aberration of the default - 'Rest in peace, dear comrade. Our suspicions proved unfounded - Moskva the Golden PART II The New Hunting Season: Ten Years On 8 Learning from Mistakes - The Promised Land of Crimea - Ones personal wool and the states wool - The Blue Wings crash 9 Dj Vu - Masked Performance: the favourite genre of the siloviki - Whatever happened to Russian Capital? - Redirecting the finger of suspicion - Innocent as charged - Banker gangsters: crime without punishment 10 A Financial Black Magic Performance, and How It Was Done - How Unified Energy System was taken to the cleaners - Aviaprom is bled dry - Setting the standard: the tale of Mezhprombank - How to launder a trillion dollars in the West 11 In Compliance with the Instructions of the Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation - The NTV Show: an unexpected brush with the turbulent Mr Polonsky - Evening TV stops being soporific - A hooligan motivated by political and religious hatred - Advocates and acrobats 12 Faithful to the Legacy of Dr Goebbels - A present for the New Year - Neither in Heaven nor on Earth - The Ukrainian Front - 'Nazi and national-traitor in the same breath - Below the belt - Inside the information war - Get im Out! 13 A Courtroom Farce - The Polonsky Case: a U-turn - Disrespecting society - Bring down the curtain 14 From Popovka to Monaco an Epilogue - Bye-bye, Forbes! - My Manifesto