Oleg Deripaska: Profile

Until recently, oligarch was a byword for Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea FC.

But over the last 12 months, Oleg Deripaska, a 40-year-old metals tycoon, has dominated the headlines.

According to Forbes magazine, in May he overtook Abramovich as Russia's richest man, with a $28.6bn (?16.8bn) fortune.

His extraordinary wealth is based on the ownership of the world's leading aluminum company.

In an interview with the Guardian last year, he shrugged off the suggestion he was very well off. Asked how much he was worth, he replied: "I don't know." Recently, he has been a high-profile victim of the credit crisis.

Deripaska's friendship with British politicians has placed him at the center of controversy. He has met the business secretary, Peter Mandelson, when Mandelson was the EU's trade commissioner.

Moscow's Pushkin cafe, an elite pre-revolutionary restaurant favoured by Russia's elite, was one dinner venue.

Also present, according to a political blog written by Mandelson's former special adviser Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, was Nathaniel Rothschild, a friend not only of Mandelson but of the shadow chancellor, George Osborne.

According to today's Times newspaper, Rothschild says Deripaska entertained Osborne on his yacht in Corfu last summer.

Andrew Feldman, the Tory party's chief fundraiser, was there. Feldman tried to solicit a ?50,000 donation for the Tories from Deripaska, it is alleged, though this is denied.

Deripaska had his multi-entry visa revoked by the US in mid-2006. He has been involved in legal cases in the US, and in Britain a former business partner, Michael Cherney, is suing him in the high court.

The cases date back the 90s. It was then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that a new class of businessmen - the oligarchs - ruthlessly carved up the country's newly privatized state industries.

Deripaska was involved in the struggle for control of an aluminum plant in Sayanogorsk, Siberia, which became part of privatization legend, described as the "aluminum wars".

He dismisses claims that at one point his enemies tried to blow him up on a mountain road using a grenade launcher.

Like many super-wealthy Russians, Deripaska is an Anglophile. He has a ?20m house in Belgravia and speaks fluent idiomatic English, learned when he studied at Moscow state university. his young son and daughter have mastered the language, thanks to their English nanny.

He has business interests in the UK: in 2006 his investment company, Basic Element, bought the ailing British van-maker LDV.

Deripaska has no plans to live in Britain, and has denied rumors he was at one point interested in buying Arsenal. "It's not my thing," he said of football last year.

Like many oligarchs, he came from humble origins, growing up in a small rural village in southern Russia with his widowed mother, an engineer.

By 1993-94, he had accumulated a 20% stake in a Siberian aluminum factory.

In 2000, Abramovich bought most of the holdings in Russia's aluminum industry and merged them with Deripaska's company. They created Rusal - Russian aluminum. Abramovich later sold his stake to Deripaska, leaving him the biggest player in one of the world's most lucrative industries.

Deripaska has shown an uncanny knack for cultivating the rich, powerful and important. He is well connected inside Russia: in 2001 he married Polina Yumasheva, the daughter of Boris Yeltsin's powerful chief of staff, Valentin Yumashev, who is married to the late president's younger daughter, Tatyana.

Deripaska is very close to Vladimir Putin, Russia's powerful prime minister.

What is unclear is why Deripaska would want to cultivate the Tories - even assuming that they will form the next government.

In his Guardian interview, Deripaska made it clear that Britain was of little strategic interest to him. His global empire, he explained, was based on smelters, hydro-electric dams and cheap Siberian power. "I'm dealing with industrial things, and Britain is a post-industrial economy," he said.