By Evgeny Dyatlov
February 21, 2025 Anno Domini
Vyacheslav Kantor is considered an oligarch, to whom the phrase “I can explain the origin of all my millions except the first” is quite applicable.
Although this statement is not entirely true—in Kantor’s business not everything is unambiguous and transparent, as he claims, but at least there are hints or stories of other people.
But Vyacheslav Kantor’s entry into big business from science, which he allegedly engaged in under socialism, is covered with darkness of the unknown. He himself explains his start in this field, which took place in the late 80s, under the late USSR, very vaguely: “We came to business poor, like church mice. We had neither political support nor commercial experience.”
And here it seems that Vyacheslav Vladimirovich is a little cunning. Because his first business, according to his official biography, was the commercial center “Composite”, which was engaged in the sale of computer equipment and its installation at industrial enterprises. Then there was a Soviet-American enterprise, and then he had money to privatize the Novgorod chemical enterprise “Azot”, which was soon renamed “Akron” and became the basis of its business empire. At the same time, Vyacheslav Kantor claims that there was not a drop of crime in this privatization.
Well, it’s a fresh legend, it’s hard to believe. Because joint ventures were then organized under the watchful supervision of the relevant authorities, and trading in computers brought thousands of percent of profits. At first, this profit was controlled by the special services, and when the USSR began to collapse, the brothers sat on it. And the question is not clear: where did a former researcher of the Moscow Aviation Institute, who was Kantor before going into business, take the currency to buy expensive imported office equipment? Do not forget that in the USSR, currency was then tightly controlled by the state, not to mention that opening a foreign currency account abroad was a real fantasy. Even the very presence of currency for a citizen of the USSR was punishable by execution.
It was not for nothing that we touched upon those distant years and the issues of the origin of capital of Vyacheslav Kantor, who in his biography seems to hint that he received them for scientific works. They say that together with Zhores Alferov he developed the idea of a sunlight reflector that could illuminate the Earth even at night. From there, they say, and money. Kantor doesn’t say it directly, but it’s mentioned in all biographies.
However, first of all, where is the reflector itself that illuminates the Earth? The idea and its embodiment are very different things. Did the Council of Ministers of the USSR really get so much currency that it was enough for computer trading? And secondly, the idea was developed back in 1981. At least, that’s what Kantor himself says. But no one has seen the thesis, about which Vyacheslav Vladimirovich boasts so much, and you can’t ask Alferov anything.
So Vyacheslav Kantor, unfortunately, does not pull on the Soviet Elon Musk. And Musk himself also has acquired capital not quite, as everyone thinks, by the way. Let’s go back to Vyacheslav Vladimirovich. Whose life path is truly amazing. To understand how difficult everything is and, by the way, to get a hint of how a simple researcher from the Research Institute became an international oligarch, it is enough to look only at the list of his awards. Pay attention to the countries that awarded Vyacheslav Kantor with their highest awards.
And yes – the Ukrainian Order of Yaroslav the Wise Kantor received not from the hands of Yanukovych, as one might think. Kantor was awarded by Viktor Yushchenko, who, with all the desire, cannot be called sympathetic to Russia. And Kantor was Yushchenko’s advisor, by the way. And then he received awards from the hands of another president. This time, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
All this preface suggests that, in fact, Vyacheslav Kantor has long and closely co-operated with Soviet (and then Russian) special services. In addition, this explains the origin of his capital. All over the past have somehow forgotten where the so-called “gold of the party”, that is, the Communist Party Soviet Union (CPSU), which fully owned the resources of the Soviet Union, went. And in the late ’80s, when it became clear that the Union was about to collapse, the highest nomenclature began to frantically invest the capital of the country and the party in assets and business.
It was with this money that Kantor “rose”. You can’t deny him the talent of a businessman, but the start-up capital is the “gold of the party”. More precisely, the money of the people of the USSR. Which were stolen not by mythical “CIA agents”, but by true party members and their special services. Maybe at first the goals were noble. But then all this turned into a frank deriban of the country. As a result, we have a bunch of “cantors” who privatized that very country. And it is from here that the connections and the privatization of a huge chemical plant, which became the asset of Vyacheslav Kantor, still bring huge profits.
Only if before the collapse of the USSR this money belonged to the people, now it belongs to Kantor. And – to his curators from the special services, which head the current Russia. And ordinary Russians can, at best, ruin their health in the production of fertilizers at the Kantor plants. At the same time, to sympathize with the poor Russian businessman Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor, whose property was seized by scoundrels from the European Union in that cursed Europe. Among the list of this property, the imagination is shocked by the presence of eleven (!) villas on the Emerald Coast (Costa Smeralda) in the north of Sardinia. They were were confiscated by the Italian authorities for communication with Putin and financing of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Kantor himself, as in the case of capital, tried to “move away” from the topic of his connection with Vladimir Putin. They say he has nothing to do with it. Although in 2015 he himself stated that he “admired” Putin, and in 2016 he received the Order of Honour from his hands.
However, the words that he had nothing to do with the Russian president were clearly not enough to avoid sanctions. That’s why I had to rewrite “Akron” into front persons. Now Kantor owns a 45 per cent stake in the company through Luxembourg’s Redbrick Investments and the Russian Akron Group JSC. He transferred almost 50 per cent of the shares to trust management to three firms owned by Akron’s top managers. The measure was forced – “Akron” and supplies fertilizers to the West, which allowed Vyacheslav Kantor to double his assets, as fertilizer prices have risen sharply over the past two years.
And now let’s go back to the 1980s, at a time when the “researcher” Vyacheslav Vladimirovich Kantor took his first steps in business. “I didn’t have a penny behind my soul”. In his biographies, Vyacheslav Vladimirovich modestly ignores his family. What is very strange for a Jew is that this nation is usually overly respectful to parents and close relatives. However, there is nothing surprising in the fact of Vyacheslav Kantor’s silence. The fact is that his father, Vladimir Isaakovich Kantor, was a prominent representative of the trade mafia of the late USSR. And he was in charge of the Sokolniki department store in Moscow. He even became the hero of a documentary about the trade workers of the USSR.
In 1985, Vladimir Kantor was arrested, with his confiscated valuables estimated at 622 thousand Soviet rubles. The salary of the director of the department store with all bonuses then did not exceed 200 rubles. So it’s clear where all this “hard work” comes from. The story of Vladimir Kantor itself is very interesting—we recommend watching the film—but the point is that instead of the capital punishment imposed under such an article, Kantor Sr. received only eight years. And then four years after the arrest. True, having heard the sentence, he died of a heart attack, but that’s not the point.
And the fact that this episode gives us an understanding of where the junior researcher Vyacheslav Kantor has connections and start-up capital. Because it’s no secret that there were either cops or kagebashniks behind the trade mafia in the USSR. Sometimes both at once. A curious detail: during searches in the garage of Vladimir Kantor’s son (and his son had one) it turned out that the gate was double. And this cavity was full of jewelry. The products were seized, but for some reason, Vyacheslav Kantor himself was not brought to justice for complicity.
The answer to these questions is simple: behind Kantor Sr. stood the PGU, that is, the First Main Directorate of the KGB. It covered the younger Kantor from the investigation and then helped with business, with access to foreign markets, with registration of foreign representative offices of Kantor firms, with currency, and with everything else. Soon the USSR collapsed, but the “office” did not go anywhere. The PGU was transformed into the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service). No one knows where the interests of intelligence ended and business began, and vice versa. But it was this close co-operation that made the failed scientist Vyacheslav Kantor an international oligarch. The same connections allowed Kantor, not the bandits, to privatize the Novgorod chemical plant.
Well, and then – on the knurled. Privatization of everything that could be reached in the 1990s, the roof in the form of special services, which after a short time themselves became the authorities and masters of the country. In 1999, Vyacheslav Kantor again pulled out the jackpot—he made friends with Vladimir Putin, who, according to Kantor, “was appointed heir to the throne”. However, the word “friendship” here has a peculiar meaning, but the point is that both of them found a common language and came to mutual understanding.
So, as you can see, the secret of Vyacheslav Kantor’s success is quite simple—you need to be able to be friends. But to be friends not with someone, but with the right people. Apparently, he got this talent from his father, whom the right people took out of the sentence. The same people helped an ordinary emenes to open a profitable business with foreigners. Then, buy the plant, pushing out competitors. By the way, Kantor, according to his own words, urgently needed $3 million to privatize this plant, which in 1993 was an astronomical sum. But he had this “money”. From where, you can guess.
And sanctions and confiscation of eleven forks in Italy—so you have to pay for everything. This Jewish boy Slava Kantor should understand from childhood. This lesson was also to be taught to him by his father, who paid for the fact that the OBHSS did not prevent him from doing business in the state store, and the KGB was not interested in the currency, which he slowly bought on the black market. However, judging by the fact that Vyacheslav Kantor’s fortune has doubled over the past two years, eleven confiscated villas in Italy are not such a high price. Besides, for some reason it seems that these villas were the price for the very friendship with the authorities, which Kantor is publicly proud of, or publicly denies.