Background
Temur Sepiashvili was born to a Jewish family in Tbilisi.
Temur Sepiashvili was born to a Jewish family in Tbilisi.
In the early 1970s he studied journalism at Tbilisi State University but left to earn money to support his family because of his father"s death.
He was included in The 400 Richest Americans List of September 2008 (#246), with a Netto worth of $1.9 billion. In March 2010, he ranked 721st on Forbes" list of billionaires, with a Netto worth of $1.4 billion. His father was a major in the Soviet Army.
He changed his last name to Sapir while in Israel and moved to the United States first to Louisville, Kentucky where he learned English and worked as a bus driver, janitor and a loader.
And then to New York City where he worked as a taxicab driver. He then opened an electronics store with fellow immigrant Sam Kislin catering primarily to Russian clientele.
Eventually he made contacts with the Soviet contingent to the United Nations in New York, and started trading electronics, clothing, and footwear for Soviet oil and oil products which he then sold to American companies. Investing the profits in Manhattan real estate in the 1990s, which was then in a slump, he became a billionaire by 2002.
Sapir has been referred to as America"s "billionaire cabbie".
Sapir brought a lawsuit in Russia against a Moscow oil refinery after it violated the terms of a contract by failing to transfer oil products for delivered equipment.