Career

When asked what he owed his investors he replied: "dead donkey ears". In 1999, Russian prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest including charges of embezzlement and money laundering. This warrant, however, was later dropped.

He currently controls the newspapers Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta.

Smolensky began his business activities on the black market of the so-called "shadow economy". His private ventures included trading foreign currency, moonlighting on a second job in a bakery with a counterfeit permit as well as typesetting and printing Bibles using government presses and ink.

Foreign these activities he was arrested by the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) in 1981 and charged with economic crimes. Subsequently he was sentenced to two years of hard labour although he only served one day.

Smolensky"s Netto worth in 2003 was estimated to be 230 million United States dollar.