Mikhail Gorbachev sang right there,” Evgeny Lebedev says emphatically, pointing to a patch of flattened grass on his back lawn, which still bears the outline of a marquee that has just been removed. A few nights earlier, the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, of which Lebedev is chairman, held a charity gala here at his family’s estate just outside London. Some 350 guests listened as the former president warbled a love song in memory of his late wife. Now in its fourth year, the gala has become a top-drawer event in London’s glittering summer social season, and Lebedev himself, just 29, has gained prominence along with it.
Unlike most of his fellow Russian tycoons who base themselves in London, Lebedev has spent most of his life in Britain. He was eight when his father, Alexander, took a job at the Soviet embassy. Unbeknownst to most people, including his son, he wasn’t a diplomat but a KGB spy. Following the collapse of Soviet Communism, in 1992, the family returned to Moscow, where Alexander later bought the National Reserve Bank, nabbed 30 percent of Aeroflot and made other investments that earned him billions. He has since been dubbed “the spy who came in for the gold.”
The fortune has made both father and son sought-after figures in British society. The lawn where they pitched the aforementioned tent is on the grounds of Stud House, a mansion within the Queen’s parkland of Hampton Court Palace, which the Lebedevs acquired in 2007 for about $16 million. While Alexander visits occasionally from his home in Moscow, the place is used mostly as a weekend retreat by Evgeny, who lives in central London.
Further cementing the family’s status among the English establishment, Evgeny and Alexander became the country’s newest press barons in January, with their surprise purchase of the London Evening Standard, one of the city’s oldest and most venerable newspapers, from Lord Rothermere. The close of the deal coincided, of course, with the world financial meltdown, which hit Russia’s so-called oligarchs particularly hard. Forbes recently reported that Alexander lost around half of his fortune, which had been estimated at $3.1 billion in 2008—a claim the gentleman refuted and threatened to sue the publication over.
Either way, Alexander surely has some rubles left. Though the price of the Standard was reported to have been just one pound (a figure its new editor, Geordie Greig, disputes), its new owner assumed the paper’s considerable debts and estimated annual losses of around $30 million. Although Alexander is chairman, he put the paper’s shares in Evgeny’s name and has apparently left him in charge. As senior executive director, Evgeny spends two days a week at the Standard’s offices, overseeing the business side of the operation.
Only a few years ago, Evgeny seemed to be making a name for himself as a classic spoiled playboy. Once described in British GQ as “a snake-hipped vodka-drinking Soviet,” he was named Britain’s third most eligible bachelor by Tatler magazine in 2006 (after Sam Branson and Russell Brand), and he has been linked to a succession of models, pop stars and actresses, including Sophie Dahl, Geri Halliwell and, currently, Joely Richardson.
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