Biography
Telman Mardanovich Ismailov is a Russian entrepreneur of Azerbaijani origin, who also has Turkish citizenship. He was the owner of the Cherkizovsky market in Moscow and is the founder of the famous AST group.
Telman Ismailov began his biography in 1956 in the city of Baku and became the tenth of twelve children in the family. His father was Azerbaijani by origin, and his mother, in addition, also had Jewish roots. Mardan Ismailov was engaged in trade, and he worked hard and with amazing diligence, which is why he constantly needed helpers. Already at the age of 14, Telman began not just to help, but to work full-time with his father, and soon became the director of the first and only commercial store in Baku at that time.
Entrepreneur Telman Ismailov
In 1973, Ismailov entered the Baku Institute of National Economy, but after compulsory military service he transferred to a similar educational institution - the Moscow Institute of National Economy named after Georgy Plekhanov. By assignment, the young man works as an economist at the Ministry of Trade, and later as an expert at Vostokintorg. Then he met Yuri Luzhkov, who at that time worked as chairman of the Moscow City Executive Committee commission. And 20 years later, already being the mayor of Moscow, Luzhkov will personally congratulate Ismailov on his anniversary with the words: “Telman! You are our brother! We walk with you through life!”
When Mikhail Gorbachev announces perestroika in the country, Telman Ismailov organizes his own cooperative enterprise and becomes an official businessman.
Business
In 1988, Ismailov created an enterprise called “Commercial Charity Firm”, which sells various goods, including casual clothing. This cooperative was destined to become the first link in the chain of the future famous group. This is an abbreviation for the names of the businessman and his sons: Alekper-Sarkhan-Telman.
Sons of Telman Ismailov Sarkhan and Alekper
Over time, Telman Ismailov's circle of financial interests expanded. He got involved in the hotel and restaurant business, construction, jewelry production, opened a security company and a private city taxi. Ismailov’s company owned the capital’s Prague restaurant on Arbat, the Voentorg department store, as well as the famous Cherkizovsky wholesale market. It was “Cherkizon” – as it was popularly called – that became the businessman’s main capital.
Today Thälmann no longer owns this profitable sales outlet, which has greatly undermined his income.
Telman Ismailov
It is noteworthy that after the businessman lost the Cherkizovsky market, he tried to buy out the most profitable similar enterprise in Ukraine - the “Seventh Kilometer” market near Odessa, where entrepreneurs not only from all over the country, but also from Moldova and Belarus specially come to shop. But at the same time as Telman Ismailov, then President Viktor Yanukovych had his eye on this market, and the organization passed into the hands of his representatives.
Thälmann himself decided to wait out the crisis in Turkey. He opened the Mardan Palace hotel in Antalya, named after the businessman’s father, who would have turned 100 years old on the day the hotel opened. By the way, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung called the Mardan Palace the most expensive hotel on the continent, as it cost at least a billion dollars to build. The opening of Mardan Palace was truly enchanting. There were countless celebrity guests. Sharon Stone, Richard Gere, Mariah Carey and others came to the celebration. Luzhkov and his wife Baturina also attended the holiday. The host of the evening was Ivan Urgant.
Hotel Telman Ismailov “Mardan Palace” in Turkish Antalya
When the enterprise was launched, businessman Telman Ismailov asked Turkey to give him a second citizenship, and this request was granted.
However, in November 2020, the public learned that ownership of the Mardan Palace hotel was transferred to the Turkish bank Halkbank through an auction sale, since the Russian entrepreneur had a lot of debts to Turkish companies. Today Telman Ismailov is not among the richest people in the country. In 2020, he was officially declared bankrupt by the Moscow Region Arbitration Court, and the shareholders of the AST group he founded are now his sons.
Businessman Telman Ismailov
In March 2020, the court decision on bankruptcy of the businessman was canceled. But already in August of the same year, the court again resumed the procedure for declaring the ex-owner of Cherkizon bankrupt. In January 2017, the amount of his debts reached 31 billion rubles. In February, the Arbitration Court included another 8.9 billion rubles in the register of creditors’ claims. In March 2020, he decided to start selling his property at auction.
How Russia's first bankrupt citizen Telman Ismailov outplays his creditors
This week the real bankruptcy of a real individual began. And what kind? The first Russian bankrupt citizen promises to be Telman Ismailov - essentially a concentrated expression of Russian capitalism of past decades. The Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region on Monday declared the dollar millionaire and former owner of the Cherkizovsky market bankrupt and appointed him an insolvency administrator.
Biography of Telman Ismailov
is a short but real course in the history of the Russian market system. Built back in the conditions of total deficit in the USSR, it boiled down to the simple production of consumer goods and the import of the latter through the leaky southern borders of the Soviet Union. The money earned in this way was then laundered through real estate and popular culture. It makes no sense to blame Ismailov himself for this, as well as his clientele - a society of simple and unpretentious consumers.
New Russian dream
At the beginning of 2008, construction of a new hotel complex began on Nikitsky Boulevard. Obtaining permission for such a project 800 meters from the Kremlin was not easy, but not for Telman Ismailov. An entrepreneur from Azerbaijan received the first facility in the high-status part of Moscow back in the 90s. The Prague restaurant was transferred to the structures of Telman Ismailov by order of Yuri Luzhkov for $30.5 million. Strategic relations with the mayor of Moscow brought Ismailov’s empire to the Moscow commanding heights.
By the beginning of the 90s, Telman Mardanovich Ismailov already had sufficient experience in the market system. The son of a famous Baku shop worker, in 1980 he graduated from the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy, a landmark university for the era of late stagnation. After which, predictably (for that time), he continued his market career in the Ministry of Trade and Vostokintorg. The All-Union Export-Import Association "Vostokintorg" specialized in the supply of goods from the countries of the Middle East. The presence of connections and relationships in this direction became a decisive factor in the success of Ismailov’s trading business.
In Soviet times, these structures solved one problem - they made massive purchases of imported consumer goods using proceeds from the export of resources. Strictly speaking, from an economic point of view, the 90s did not change anything in this model, only the business form of activity changed. However, communication with government agencies, despite the “bazaar nature” of the new business, played a decisive role both in terms of organizing all the logistics of passing customs control and in terms of reinvesting the resulting trade profits in Moscow real estate.
The empire created by Ismailov reached the peak of its success just in 2009. Then, according to press estimates, the net profit of the Cherkizovsky market, of which he was the main owner, reached 1 million US dollars per day.
Turkish gambit
The year 2009 became fatal in the business history of Telman Ismailov. It was then that the attack began on the heart of the Moscow market system - Cherkizon.
There is a beautiful story that the reason for this attack was the opening of the Mardan Palace hotel in Turkey. Telman Ismailov invested about 1.5 billion US dollars in its construction. The holiday itself turned out to be no less beautiful, to which popular stars were invited, as well as close friends of the hero of the occasion - the then capital mayor Yuri Luzhkov
and Kazakh President
Nursultan Nazarbayev
.
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The capitalist model on which the billionaire rose was, meanwhile, coming apart at the seams under the pressure of collapsing energy prices and currency devaluations. It was this fact that became the real reason for the collapse of the entire Mardan Palace structure - both literally and figuratively. At that moment, the general political situation in the country was already developing according to the laws of war.
And in 2010, Ismailov was hit by a real perfect storm. And it didn’t happen in Moscow markets at all, but on the yacht of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
- leader of the Turkish nation and the country's first president. A special forces team landing directly from helicopters onto the yacht discovered on board the vessel, sacred to all Turks, a real brothel with youngsters and models from the Russian Vogue franchise.
It is not known for certain who was on the yacht at the time of the landing. But at the court hearings, where the fate of businessman Tofik Arifov
, the main suspect in organizing the floating brothel, Telman Ismailov was noticed and even photographed. Although he and his guards tried in every possible way to prevent this.
Kazakh businessman Tofik Arifov
, a former employee of the Soviet Vneshtorg with experience, is not without reason considered the godfather of Russian capitalism in general and the famous TWG group in particular.
The fact that the entire company is closely acquainted with Donald Trump
, a well-known developer in various circles and also a candidate for US President, gives a special charm to the whole story.
The ugly story in Turkey was hushed up, and the investigator who led the case soon fell into the abyss due to too risky motorcycle riding in the mountains. But from that moment on, Thälmann’s star in Turkey went downhill. And it finally disappeared after the Mardan Palace hotel was sold under the hammer for some $128 million.
Strategic bankruptcy
Ismailov lost his property in Turkey for debts, because in addition to his own funds, he invested credit money in the palace under construction. Around the same time, a campaign was launched to deprive him of his assets in Moscow, led by Bank of Moscow, a member of the VTB group. From 2012 to February 2014, he issued loans to two legal entities - and the Dutch Tropicano Finance BV, with Telman Ismailov as the guarantor. The total amount of debt reached $286 million.
Ismailov tried to defend himself in the traditional way - by transferring the company to his sons, but VTB managed to confiscate the debtor’s property and put up for sale the famous Prague restaurant, as well as the business.
Immediately after the law on personal bankruptcy came into force (October 1, 2020), representatives of the VTB Group filed a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court to declare the founder of the AST Group bankrupt. If these demands are met, VTB could gain control over the oligarch’s personal finances.
The oligarch understood that the easiest move to prevent this was to play proactively and begin a controlled bankruptcy on his own. Therefore, it is not surprising that on November 19, the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region received a new application to recognize Telman Mardanovich Ismailov as insolvent - from a certain Boris Vasilievich Zubkov
. The amount of Zubkov’s financial claims against Ismailov is 15 million rubles. As mentioned above, the court promptly granted this application.
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Whoever stood up first gets the money
Strictly speaking, the fact that the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region gave preference to a 15-million ruble claim over hundreds of millions of dollars of VTB’s debt is also not surprising. Happens…
What is truly amazing is the simplicity with which Telman Ismailov managed to achieve his victory. The fact is that VTB lawyers filed a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court. But shortly before this, Telman Mardanovich Ismailov changed his place of residence, and from September 25, 2015 he was registered at the address: Moscow region, Odintsovo district, village. Skolkovo, 47. Meanwhile, claims for personal bankruptcy should be filed at the citizen’s place of residence. VTB lawyers were certainly aware of this legal requirement. But the fact of Telman Ismailov’s “timely move” is not. But this, of course, turned out to be well known to Zubkov, who filed a claim with the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region and made the right decision, being first in line for the oligarch’s bankruptcy. And VTB lawyers who came to the meeting had to leave with nothing. Theoretically, they can “resubmit” their application to the court of the Moscow region, but this will not change anything: by the right of “first”, the keys to Ismailov’s financial storerooms are now received by a certain Dmitry Valerievich Andreev
, arbitration manager. And the big question is whether the mentioned manager will cooperate with VTB.
But it is quite possible that the lawyers of VTB, which is still the second largest bank in the country, will have their own trump cards up their sleeves, and soon we will be faced with a new stage of the conflict. Unless, of course, you wonder that this whole story is a dramatization for prying eyes, and the entire division of Telman Ismailov’s assets is happening behind the scenes.
The story of the rapid impoverishment of oligarch Telman Ismailov
WAS:
Telman Ismailov's condition
Photo: https://www.forbes.ru/profile/telman-ismailov
According to Forbes, in 2020 Telman Ismailov was in 144th place in the ranking of “Russia’s Richest Businessmen” with a fortune of $600 million
.
OUT OF:
From the decision of the judge of the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region Potapova T.N. from December 21, 2020
At the time of consideration of the application, the debtor has the following property:
• land plot (Moscow region, Odintsovo district, Skolkovo village, 85), cadastral value 13,918,073.90 rubles;
• cash – 25,000 rubles
;
• funds in credit institutions – 88.79 rubles
and
$28.77
.
Personal life
In the personal life of Telman Ismailov, everything is stable. He has been married for a long time and raised two sons, Sarkhan and Alekper, who succeeded him in business. Some of the entrepreneur’s many brothers are also known to the public. For example, Fazil Ismailov several years ago served as prefect of the Northern Administrative District of Moscow. And recently another brother, Rafik Ismailov, became infamous. He is suspected of organizing the murder of two businessmen - the founder of Lyublino Motors, Yuri Brilev, and the owner of a chain of shopping complexes, Vladimir Savkin.
Telman Ismailov with his wife
Soon Thälmann was also accused of this crime. The Basmanny Court of Moscow authorized the arrest of the businessman in absentia, since at that time he left Russia.
Telman Ismailov is a very generous person. Everyone around him was used to receiving gifts. Also, the man did not deprive his celebrity guests of similar attention. For example, he gave singer Nikolai Baskov a villa in Turkey, actress Sharon Stone a diamond necklace, TV presenter and psychologist Ilham Mirzayev a gold Koran, and singer Tom Jones a platinum watch. In addition, among Ismailov’s acquaintances are such celebrities as Jennifer Lopez, Monica Bellucci, Paris Hilton, Joseph Kobzon, Andrei Malakhov, Philip Kirkorov and others.
Monica Bellucci and Telman Ismailov
More than once they became guests at his birthday. There were rumors that he more than once provided his plane to Lyudmila Putina, at that time she was still the wife of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But this at least looks illogical. In one of his interviews, he said that he knows Donald Trump, and their children became friends and even visit each other.
The main hobby of an entrepreneur from Azerbaijan is collecting wristwatches, of which there are over two thousand pairs in his collection. Thälmann also tried twice to become a co-founder of a football club. In 2010, he became vice-president of Ramzan Kadyrov’s team “Terek” from Grozny, but took over the club only three years later, organizing a friendly match with the Israeli “Beitar” from Jerusalem, during which two profitable transfers of football players were formalized. At the same time, Telman was going to acquire ownership of the Israeli team, but the fans ruined this deal, after which the businessman lost interest in football.
Mardan Palace Hotel
After the closure of Cherkizon, Ismailov went to live in Turkey. There, two months before the market closed, he built the seven-star Mardan Palace hotel, named after his father: a portrait of Mardan Ismailov hangs on the ground floor of the hotel. The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper rated it as “the most expensive hotel on the continent”: the cost is $1.4 billion. Gold leaf, crystal jewelry, Italian marble were used for its construction, and the sand for the beach near the hotel was specially delivered from Egypt.
Mardan Palace Hotel
There is a zoo and singing fountains on the territory. The opening ceremony was attended not only by Hollywood stars - Sharon Stone and Monica Bellucci, but also by Moscow Deputy Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
Telman Ismailov with his wife
Vladimir Putin also paid attention to the hotel. He said that he did not see any crime in Ismailov’s construction of a hotel in Turkey, but hinted that it would be nice to create the same projects in Russia, for example, in Sochi for the Olympics. In response, Telman Ismailov signed an agreement with the Olimpstroy corporation in 2010 to build hotels in Sochi worth $800 million. However, no money was found, and the construction of Olympic facilities had to be abandoned.
Telman Ismailov now
All the latest news about Telman Ismailov is related to the criminal case and the “sale” of his property.
In May 2020, a shopping center on Izmailovskoye Shosse, which also belonged to the AST holding, went under the hammer.
Telman Ismailov
Also this year, Mehman Kerimov, a defendant in Ismailov’s criminal case, was sentenced to 13 years in prison. At the moment, according to the investigation, Telman is the organizer of this crime, while Kerimov was the perpetrator. The former owner of Cherkizon has been put on the international wanted list. And where he is today is unknown.
But the seven-star Mardan Palace hotel will soon be operational again. Despite the fact that news constantly appeared in the media that the hotel was being plundered, the general director of the hotel said that they were negotiating with travel agencies, discussing the prospects for the 2020 summer season. He also noted that 200 people continue to work in the state. And the main event of the upcoming season will be an Indian wedding with a budget of $10-15 million.
