Who Is The Richest Man In Ukraine? Rinat Akhmetov Net Worth In 2022

Rinat Akhmetov, the founder and president of holding company System Capital Management (SCM), is the richest man in Ukraine.

As of March 2022, the 55-year-old businessman was listed by Forbes as the 432nd richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of $6.3 billion. He ranked 327th in the magazine's 2021 richest billionaires list with a net worth of $7.6 billion at the time.

Akhmetov is one of Ukraine's "half-dozen or so" billionaires who could potentially lose a large percentage of their fortunes due to the ongoing Russian invasion of the eastern European country, Forbes reported.

Born in 1966 in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, Akhmetov started his own business trading coal in 1990.

In the next decades, he consolidated his ownership of Ukraine's most important steel and coal mining companies. He founded SCM in 2000, and he remains the sole owner of the firm today.

The majority of Akhmetov's wealth is derived from SCM, which controls over 100 companies, according to Bloomberg.

SCM has investments in metallurgy, mining and energy. Its most valuable assets include a stake in the mining and steel firm Metinvest Group, one of the largest private companies in Ukraine, and DTEK, a firm with coal mines, thermal power generation and the country's largest wind farm.

Other SCM assets include Ukrtelecom, a telecommunications company, Lemtrans, a private railway company, and First Ukrainian International Bank, one of the country's leading banks.

The second richest in Ukraine is Victor Pinchuk, the founder of Interpipe Group, one of Ukraine's leading pipe, wheel and steel producers. He has a net worth of $2.3 billion, according to a Forbes estimate.

Ihor Kolomoyskyy, who has a net worth of $1.8 billion, is the third richest man in Ukraine. Together with fellow Ukrainian billionaire Henadiy Boholyubov, he co-founded PrivatBank, which handles more than a third of private deposits and serves approximately half the country's population.

Pinchuk was ranked 1369th, while Kolomoyskyy was ranked 1697th in Forbes' list of the richest billionaires in the world.

Russian billionaires lost $39 billion less than 24 hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the attack on Ukraine Thursday, Bloomberg reported. Ukraines’ billionaires have as much and likely more to lose from armed conflict, according to Forbes.

The value of assets held in the separatist-held regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which Putin recognized as independent states and deployed troops to on Feb. 21, “had likely tumbled by as much as 40% in the days leading up to the attack, while holdings elsewhere in the country had lost at least 20%,” according to Forbes Ukraine.

Akhmetov was hit hard by the war between Russia and Ukraine in 2014, the outlet noted. During the conflict, several of his assets — including real estate and dozens of gas stations — became worthless overnight.

On Feb. 22, Akhmetov announced that SCM would pay 1 billion Ukrainian hryvnias ($34 million) in taxes in advance to shore up state finances.

“Our common goal is a strong, peaceful, independent, united Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders,” he said in a statement to Interfax-Ukraine. “Everyone must do everything in their power to strengthen the country … Unity is a matter of [the] country’s survival now.”