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Badri Patarkatsishvili
ბადრი პატარკაციშვილი
Badri Patarkatsishvili in 2007
Born 31 October 1955
Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union
Died 12 February 2008 (aged 52)
Leatherhead, Surrey, United Kingdom
Occupation Former Owner and CEO of Imedi, Oligarch, and Politician
Net worth $12 Billion before death, assets frozen or confiscated by Georgian Government
Spouse(s) Inna Gudavadze

Arkady Shalvovich "Badri" Patarkatsishvili (Georgian: ბადრი პატარკაციშვილი 31 October 1955 – 12 February 2008) was a Georgian businessman who also became extensively involved in politics. He contested the 2008 Georgian presidential election and came third with 7.1% of the votes. Although his first name was Arkady, he was best known by the nickname "Badri".[1] From the early 1980s, until the time of his death, he was a flamboyant figure in business and was behind some of the most successful companies in today's Russia.[2] From humble origins, he became the wealthiest citizen in Georgia with an estimated wealth of $12bn.[3] He was also one of the country's largest philanthropists.[4] Patarkatsishvili died intestate in February 2008 sparking one of the largest estate battles in legal history.[5]

Early life

Born in Tbilisi to a Jewish family,[6][7] Patarkatsishvili became an active member of the Komsomol, the youth wing of the Soviet Communist Party during the 1980s. He eventually became Komsomol leader at Maudi, a large textile operation.[8]

In 1984, Badri became Deputy Director General of Gruzavtovazprom, a company that purchased and delivered cars and spare parts from AvtoVAZ, which was at the time, the largest car manufacturer in the Soviet Union. It was during trips made to the AvtoVAZ plant that he first met Boris Berezovsky who was to become a close friend and business associate.[9] In 1989, Badri and Berezovsky founded LogoVaz with some of the senior executives of AvtoVAZ. LogoVaz developed software for AvtoVAZ, sold Soviet-made cars and serviced foreign cars.[10] It was established as a joint venture with Logo Systems, an Italian company, which at the time was seen as pioneering in commercial relationships between East and West. LogoVaz established an office in Georgia and Badri became Deputy Director General of the company.[11]

Move to Moscow and involvement with ORT

In 1992, Badri and his family moved to Moscow where he quickly became part of Berezovsky's increasingly influential political circle. LogoVaz had by this time become an extremely successful company and had made Badri a wealthy man. At the time, the Soviet Union was collapsing and there was a great deal of political uncertainty in the region. Badri, along with Berezvosky and other successful businessmen were supportive of Boris Yeltsin as he had liberalised trade with foreign countries, allowing their businesses to grow, however the wider economy was performing badly and there was growing support for Nikolai Ryzhkov's reformed communist party.[12]

By 1994, Berezovsky had secured control of ORT, the largest TV station in Russia at the time, and he installed Badri as First Deputy General Director.[13] Badri and Berezovsky then use the station's influence to assist Boris Yeltsin to victory in the 1996 presidential election.[14] From 1994 until mid 2000, Badri was a key figure at ORT.[15]

The Sibneft Privatisation

In 1997, he was selected to oversee the privatization of the Sibneft oil company.[16] Sibneft was the youngest oil holding company in Russia at the time having been created hastily in early 1995 out of Rosneft. An unknown entity, Oil Finance Corporation (NFK), that had been created out of Menatep, a holding company started by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, won the auction.[17] Berezovsky had an interest in the Menatep Group and for this reason, there was some speculation that the auction had been fixed.[18] It later emerged that the company had been sold for a fraction of the market value.[19]

After Badri died, in 2012, the Sibneft privatisation was to become the subject of a high court legal battle between Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich and Berezovsky. According to The Times,[20] Roman Abramovich submitted a 53-page court defence that accused Boris Berezovsky and Badri Patarkatsishvili of demanding huge sums for helping him to rise from obscurity. Badri emerged as the key intermediary, passing messages between Abramovich and Berezovsky. Badri was offered $500 million by Roman Abramovich, the defence papers that were submitted admit, for protecting Roman in Russia's aluminium wars.[21]

TV6 and Kommersant

Following his success at ORT, in April 2001, Badri was appointed General Director of Russia's TV6 channel, which, like ORT, was partly owned by Berezovsky. Under his control, TV6 became notorious for its anti-Kremlin line.[22]

In the late 1990s, Berezovsky and Badri also purchased Kommersant the one of Russia's most influential political newspapers. In 2006, Berezovsky sold his controlling stake to Badri increasing Badri's holding to 100%. Badri then organised the sale of Kommersant in August 2006 to senior Gazprom executive Alisher Usmanov.[23][24]

Political trouble in Russia

By mid 1999, Boris Yeltsin began losing his grip on power and Boris Berezovsky began to play an important role in the hunt for his successor. He did this in order to counter the political aspirations of the Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who was seen as more of a statist.[25] As Berezovsky lost favour with the Kremlin, investigations began into his business affairs which Berezovsky claimed to be politically motivated. This eventually led to an arrest warrant for Berezovsky being issued in April 1999 by the Prosecutor General, Yury Skuratov.[26] Although Badri had sought to distance himself from Berezovsky's political dealings his proximity to Berezovsky was such that he began to fear that he may also be arrested so in 2000 Badri left Moscow for his native Georgia.[27]

When Vladimir Putin was elected in March 2000, Badri hoped that the situation for Berezovsky and himself in Russia would improve. He and Berezovsky had supported Putin in his election campaign.[28] Badri later claimed that he had recommended Putin to Pavel Borodin, then a senior member of President Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin administration.[29] Berezovsky had also gotten Putin appointed as Russian FSB director.[30]

However, Berezovsky quickly fell out with the new president. On May 31, Berezovsky sharply attacked the constitutional reform proposed by Putin, which would give the Kremlin the right to dismiss elected governors. In an open letter to Putin published in Kommersant Berezovsky, then a Duma deputy, said that he would be obliged to vote against the president's legislative project, which was "directed toward changing the state's structure" and represented a "threat to Russia's territorial integrity and democracy."[31] Things came to a head in August 2000 when Berezovsky used ORT to attack Putin for his handling of the sinking of the Kursk submarine, blaming the death of 118 sailors on the Kremlin's reluctance to accept foreign help.[32] This began to put pressure also on to Badri, whose association with Berezovsky was well known and was at the time, controlling the ORT station.

In December 2000, Nikolay Glushkov a co-founder of AvtoVAZ and a close associate of Badri and Berezovsky was arrested as part of the Russian Prosecutor General's investigation in Aeroflot, a company that Berezovsky had an interest in. Badri and Berezovsky believed the arrest to be politically motivated and part of the Kremlin's attempt to put pressure on their businesses. Glushkov suffered from a hereditary blood disease and had to receive special medical treatment in hospital. Badri and Berezovsky began negotiations with the Government for his release agreeing to give up their media interests and for Berezovsky to end his political ambitions.[33] However, in June 2001, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office charged Badri with organizing an attempted escape from prison of Glushkov and issued an arrest warrant for him through Interpol.[34] Knowing that he would not be given a fair trial, Badri refused to come in for questioning and, on July 4, 2001, he gave an interview to the Kommersant newspaper setting out his version of events in an attempt to clear his name.[35] To avoid prosecution in Russia, Badri moved to Tbilisi where he had been granted political asylum. [36] Further charges relating to the misappropriation of AvtoVaz were added in October 2002.[37]

Investment and philanthropy in Georgia

Upon his return Badri began investing much of the vast wealth that he had accumulated in Russia into his native country. He had become personally wealthier than the entire state budget and so was able to invest in business ventures and charitable projects in a scale that had been previously unimaginable to the impoverished country.[38] He bought the Tbilisi city football team, Dinamo Tbilisi, the Kulevi oil terminal and financed a new shopping centre in the capital and a holiday resort on the Black Sea.[39] He also became the head of the federation of Georgian businessmen and head of the Georgian National Olympic Committee, subsidized social programs and cultural activities, and on two occasions paid debts for the gas and electricity consumed by Tbilisi residents. He funded several charity projects including schools, amusement parks - even a monastery.[40] In return for these paternal gifts, the then president Eduard Shevardnadze agreed to allow Badri the state's protection from charges against him in Russia.[41]

In December 2001, he founded Imedi Media Holding, the first independent broadcasting station in Georgia.

Involvement in politics in Georgia

During his early career, Badri had shown little interest in politics.[42] However, when the Rose Revolution began in 2003 and Badri could see that Eduard Shevardnadze was losing his grip on power, he used his wealth to support the new opposition candidate Mikheil Saakashvili.[43]

Relations between Badri and Saakashvili soon deteriorated however and they became bitter rivals. Badri claimed that this was due to the coverage given by Imedi to opposition parties, Saakasvili however claimed that Badri was attempting to use his wealth to gain control of business life in Georgia.[44] Badri began financing opposition parties in late 2006 and early 2007 and a pro-Patarkatsishvili group in parliament soon emerged that developed into the Our Georgia party.[45]

In late 2007, he became embroiled in a political scandal after former defense minister Irakli Okruashvili on September 25, 2007, accused Mikheil Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, of planning Patarkatsishvili's assassination. Arrested on corruption charges, however, Okruashvili retracted his accusations against the president, winning release on bail of 10 million Georgian lari (about 6,250,000 USD). He also said that his earlier accusations levelled against Saakashvili were not true and were aimed at gaining political dividends for himself and Badri Patarkatsishvili and at discrediting the President of Georgia.[46][47] On November 6, Okruashvili, said on Patarkatsishvili's Imedi TV - by then managed by Fox TV's parent News Corporation[48] - that he had been forced into retracting his accusations against Saakashvili by pressure that he endured in prison. Down the line from Munich, he said: "All of those accusations, all of those facts that I brought against Saakashvili, everything I said about him is the plain truth."[49]

As Badri lost favour with Saakashvili's government In 2007, numerous allegations of corruption were made against him. He was impeached as president of the Georgian National Olympic Committee, and also quit as a president of the Georgian Business Federation. Tbilisi-based Rustavi 2 TV, a channel controlled by Saakashvili's government, linked his name with several notorious murders in Russia and Georgia, including the assassination of Vlad Listyev [Listiev].

On October 29, 2007, Badri publicly announced his plans to finance ten opposition parties' campaign aimed at holding early parliamentary elections in April 2008.[50] On November 2, 2007, he addressed a large anti-government rally held in downtown Tbilisi and pledged to further support it.[51] He left Georgia for London shortly afterwards. After the demonstration turned violent, following police attacks, on November 7, 2007, Georgia's Chief Prosecutor's Office announced that he was suspected of conspiracy to overthrow the government.[52] Nevertheless, he said he would run in the January 5, 2008, snap presidential elections under the slogan "Georgia without Saakashvili is Georgia without Terror."[53] Leaders of the major opposition parties distanced themselves from Patarkatsishvili, who had to run as an independent presidential candidate.[54]

On December 24 and 25, 2007, the prosecutor-general's office of Georgia released a series of audio and video recordings of the two separate meetings of the high-ranking Georgian Interior Ministry official Erekle Kodua with Patarkatsishvili and the head of his pre-election campaign Valeri Gelbakhiani. According to the government, Patarkatsishvili was trying to bribe Kodua to take part in what the Georgian officials described as an attempted coup d'état on January 6, 2008, the next of the scheduled presidential elections. The plan included to stage a mass manifestation against the government and to "neutralize" the Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili. Later independent journalist Vakhtang Komakidze produced what he said was the full transcript of the recorded conversation which showed that Patarkatsishvili was advising against violence and the extracts released had been doctored[55] The accusations forced Patarkatsishvili onto the defensive. He confirmed that he met with Kodua in London, but denied that the bribe was in connection to an alleged coup plot and claimed instead that his intention was to uncover what he said were official plans to rig the election. He also confirmed that he offered Kodua "a huge amount of money" in exchange for defecting from the authorities allegedly to avert a possible use of force by the government against the planned January rallies.[56][57][58]

On December 28, 2007, Patarkatsishvili announced that he would withdraw his bid for presidency, but would nominally remain a candidate until January 4, 2008.[59][60] On January 3, 2008, he reversed himself, however, and decided to run in presidential elections. In response, his top campaign official Giorgi Zhvania (brother of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania) resigned, declaring that Patarkasishvili did not have the unquestionable reputation one would expect of a country's president.[61]

Interest in sports

Patarkatsishvali was chairman of the Dinamo Tbilisi soccer club. He also served as president of the Georgian National Olympic Committee (GNOC), until being impeached on October 9, 2007, after falling out with the government.[62]

In September 2006, Badri announced that he was considering a bid for the London football club West Ham.[63] However, the deal never came to fruition.

Personal life

Patarkatsishvili was married to Inna Gudavadze. The couple have two children, Lianna Zhmotova and Iya Patarkatsishvili.

Death

Patarkatsishvili, aged 52, collapsed at Downside Manor, his mansion in Leatherhead, Surrey, England on February 12, 2008, at 10.45 pm. Ambulance crew members tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at 10.52 pm.[3] As in any other case of unexpected death, Surrey police treated the case as "suspicious" and launched an official investigation.[64]

The businessman spent his last day in the City of London office of international law firm Debevoise and Plimpton, meeting his business partner[65] Boris Berezovsky, his spokesperson Lord Bell and his lawyer Lord Goldsmith QC, as well as fellow exiles, the Russians Nikolai Glushkov and Yuli Dubov[66] From the City he left for Down Street, Mayfair, to visit Berezovsky's office,[67] and at 7.00 pm was returned to Leatherhead with his Maybach. Shortly after dining, Patarkatsishvili told his family he felt unwell and went upstairs to his bedroom where he was found unconscious after a heart attack.[68]

Preliminary reports indicated a heart attack as the cause of death.[69] According to the first post-mortem tests, the death of Patarkatsishvili appeared to have been from natural cardiac-related causes. According to the pathologist Ashley Fegan-Earl, he could identify a "severity that could have resulted in a sudden and unexplained collapse and death at any time." He also concluded that chest pain that Patarkatsishvili had had and a sudden collapse "were consistent with death due to coronary heart diseases."[70] Patarkatsishvili's father, Shalva Patarkatsishvili, also died of a heart attack at an early age of 48. The businessman had no history of illness but was reported to have led an unhealthy lifestyle, smoking excessively and taking no exercise. According to Lord Bell, "he [Badri] always looked 10 years older than he was."[71] However, theories of a possible assassination were considered seriously by some. "[A] number of compounds known to be used by the former KGB can induce heart failure, but leave virtually no trace. One is sodium fluoroacetate, a fine white powder derived from pesticide."[72] The British police checked Patarkatishvili's Surrey mansion for radioactive elements but reportedly found none.[73]

British press coverage

London Lite was the first newspaper to inform the British public of the Georgian oligarch's death on the evening of 13 February 2008. In the news of 14 February 2008, Patarkatsishvili's death was covered in The Guardian, The Times, Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, etc. Most newspapers discussed Patarkatsishvili's business history, including his close ties with Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich, Alexander Litvinenko, Mikheil Saakashvili and Vladimir Putin.[74][75]

International press coverage

Reuters reported that Patarkatsishvili feared the Georgian authorities were plotting to kill him, a source close to the late businessman said on the day of death."[76]

Associated Press reported that on December 26, 2007, Patarkatsishvili said that he had obtained a tape recording of an official in his homeland's Interior Ministry asking a Chechen warlord to murder the tycoon in London. "I believe they want to kill me," he said. He said the tape had been given to police.[77]

Novaya Gazeta reported the following information. Patarkatsishvili, living in London, was approached by members of the Saakashvili government demanding that he sell his controlling share in the dissident Imedi TV network. Initially, Patarkatsishvili refused, but was then offered an unprecedented deal: exchanging ownership of Imedi for ownership of the entire Georgian railroad system. Being a businessman, Patarkatsishvili reportedly agreed; however, when the Saakashvili side sent him the contract, there was a new clause, which required Badri to invest $2,000,000,000 in the "improvement" of the railroad property. He refused, but died shortly after. Novaya Gazeta's source is one of the lawyers from the legal side of this deal.[78][79][80]

Estate Battle

Following Badri's death, several of his closest business associates made attempts to fraudulently claim his business assets from his family members, who were (Badri having died without leaving an valid will), under Georgian law, entitled to his residual estate.[81]

Shortly after Badri died, Joseph Kay, the step son of Patarkatsishvili's aunt and someone who had assisted Badri with his business affairs, along with the American lawyer, Emmanuel Zeltser, attempted to take control of Imedi, Mtatsminda Park and the Rustavi Metallurgical Plant in Georgia, as well as other assets belonging to Inna Gudavadze and the Patarkatsishvili family, including a large development on Fisher Island in Florida, by claiming to be in possession of Patarkatsishvili's last will and testament that appointed Kay as executor of the estate.[82] These documents were later declared to be forgeries in the UK High Court.[83] Kay's case was comprehensively dismissed by Mr Justice Dudley in the Supreme Court of Gibraltar in February 2010. Justice Dudley described Kay's case as "wholly unconvincing" adding that he was a "mendacious individual" and "certainly not a witness of truth."[84] After several further legal battles in the US, UK, and Georgia, the assets were returned to the Patarkatsishvili family.[85][86]

Another claim over the estate was launched in 2012 by Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky claimed that half of Badri's assets belong to him under a handshake agreement that the two men made in 1995 to split all their commercial interests equally.[87] However, following the judgement of Gloster J in Berezovsky v Abramovich 2012 that gave a damming report of Berezovsky's character, Berezovsky quickly settled his case against the Patarkatsishvili family. The details of the settlement however remained confidential.[88]

In 2013, Inna Gudavadze, her two daughters, Iya Patarkatsishvili and Liana Zhmotova, and Badri's mother Natela Patarkatsishvili brought a $1.8bn action against another of Badri's business associates, Vasily Anisimov. The family claimed that they had a part-entitlement to the 20% share formerly held by Anisimov in mining company Metalloinvest. The case was settled in March 2014 before it came to court.[89]

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External links

• Badri Patarkatsishvili, Civil Georgia's profile. 2008-02-13
• (in Georgian) Patarkatsishvili: The Oligarch's Way.[permanent dead link]NewsGeorgia's profile. 2008-02-38
• Mark Hollingsworth and S Lansley, Londongrad: From Russia With Cash: The Insdie Story of the Oligarchs. 4th estate, 2009
• Badri Patarkatsishvili Full Biography

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Let Them Eat Cake
by Linda Yablonsky at the LA MoCA gala
November 16, 2011

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Left: Artist Marina Abramović and Debbie Harry. Right: Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. (All photos: Linda Yablonsky)

WHEN TWO PROTEAN ARTISTS face off against each other, the confrontation can be titillating. So it went last week in Los Angeles, over the Museum of Contemporary Art’s annual artist-designed fundraiser, conceived this year by Marina Abramović. “The shit has hit the fan,” Abramović said on Thursday, when the leaked draft of a letter that choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer wrote, but hadn’t yet sent, to LA MoCA director Jeffrey Deitch went viral on the Internet.

Rainer was protesting Abramović’s plans for the gala, “An Artist’s Life Manifesto,” scheduled for Saturday, November 12. The “entertainment,” Rainer wrote, promised to exploit the young people Abramović was training to perform for such meager pay that it amounted to abuse by the rich. Their job was to either lie naked under plastic skeletons revolving on the $100,000 dinner tables, or poke their heads through the $50,000 and $25,000 table tops while turning themselves on lazy Susans and locking eyes with guests throughout the evening.

The prospect of this “grotesque spectacle,” the outraged Rainer wrote, reminded her not of Abramović’s The Artist Is Present, the performance empress’s three-month-long sit at the Museum of Modern Art last year, or of her Nude with Skeleton from 2002, but of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 film Salò, where fascist sadists sexually abuse beautiful youths.



“Subjecting her performers to public humiliation at the hands of a bunch of frolicking donors is yet another example of the Museum’s callousness and greed, and Ms Abramović’s obliviousness to differences in context and to some of the implications of transposing her own powerful performances to the bodies of others,” Rainer wrote, suggesting that MoCA rename itself “MODFR, or the Museum of Degenerate Fund Raising.”

[x]
Left: Dealer Shaun Caley Regen with artist Sue Williams. Right: Artists Adam McEwen and Andrea Bowers.

But it was the contretemps, not the exploitation issue, that notched up the pre-gala buzz. On her Facebook page, one LA artist called Abramović “deluded” and hoped the performers would rebel. Another posted an article about Vanessa Beecroft’s 1998 invitational performance at the Guggenheim Museum, where nearly naked models had to stand for hours while tuxedoed swells stared at them and nobody cried abuse. Yet the controversy barely flickered to life among the artists and curators at Regen Projects’ Thursday night opening for Sue Williams’s sexually scatological paintings, while Abramović joined the frolickers at collector Eugenio López Alonso’s dinner for designer turned photographer Hedi Slimane. But Deitch took the bait and invited Rainer to a rehearsal on Friday. Abramović, though cooperative, was not pleased.

She was especially exercised by the letter’s allusion to fascism, when she had spent her life opposing everything that her parents, Communist Party heroes in the former Yugoslavia, stood for. The gala, I gathered, would be something like a reverse Occupy MoCA, where wealthy, overdressed patrons would be given white lab coats to “democratize” the proceeding. Five hundred people had auditioned to be the heads and nudes on the tables, knowing they would be paid only $150 for their several hours on display. Though the chosen performers had signed confidentiality agreements to ensure the event would come as a surprise, one of them had complained to Rainer and then quit.

At a prerehearsal gathering that turned into a pro-Abramović rally, Rainer appeared a bit shaken by how quickly her unsent letter had gone public, but sat quietly among the ninety performers while Abramović acknowledged her presence and addressed her complaints. The small fee was all the museum could pay, she said, adding that she was getting no fee at all. She was hiring young people not to take advantage but because it took stamina to get through one of her durational pieces. “I’m the idiot,” she said. “I’m sixty-five and still doing this!”

Their performance as gala centerpieces would not be easy, she said, but she was taking every precaution to protect them. Diners would be instructed not to feed them, touch them, talk to them, or disrupt their performance in any way. Guards would make sure they were unmolested, but if anyone wanted to leave, they could walk out at any time. “It’s an experiment,” said Abramović, “not an entertainment. There’s a huge risk of failure, but this is my work.” This was greeted by a tremendous cheer of support and the rehearsal went forward, with Rainer interviewing the performers one by one. “I wonder how she’d like it if I did that at one of her rehearsals,” Abramović sniffed later.

[x]
Left: LA MoCA chief curator Paul Schimmel with Susan Jenkins, LA MoCA's manager of exhibition programs. Right: LA MoCA trustees Eli and Edythe Broad and Maria Bell.

That night, at the MoCA annex in the Pacific Design Center, Deitch defended Abramović for curious guests attending the opening of Slimane’s “California Song” photographs. Slimane was invisible in the darkness of an installation that projected his high-contrast, magazine-ready portraits on a cube at the center of the black-box gallery. “Any pictures that large are going to look good,” groused one observer, before moving on to Adam McEwen’s debut at Gagosian in Beverly Hills.

Next morning, an e-mail from Rainer had her “revised” letter attached, this time with dozens of signatures from other artists and writers joining the protest. The gist of it was the same as before, though this time Rainer took special care to respect Abramović’s work while denouncing her use of live heads and women-only nudes as “decorative centerpieces” at the gala to come. She claimed that the performers at the rehearsal were all “young, beautiful, and white” (I saw many black, Latino, and Asian faces, along with several white, not all young). She admitted they appeared both “touching and somewhat comic,” but recoiled at the thought of them being subjected to “possible public humiliation and bodily injury” at the hands of those frolicking donors. “Their cheerful voluntarism says something about the pervasive desperation and cynicism of the art world,” she concluded, “such that young people must become abject table ornaments and clichéd living symbols of mortality in order to assume a novitiate role in the temple of art.”

She had a point, but perhaps she has never seen one of the benefits for the Watermill Center that Robert Wilson creates. Rainer told me that she never goes to openings and was unaware that such celebrity clusterfuck fund-raisers had become common practice, more or less out of necessity. As Abramović said at the rehearsal, “Kings, aristocrats, and popes used to be the supporters of art. Today, in Europe, governments do it. In this country, we have businessmen and they want to be entertained. I want to take a different approach.”


Left: MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach with filmmaker Kenneth Anger and Jeffrey Deitch. Right: Collector Maja Hoffmann.

By 7 PM that evening, the museum on Grand Avenue was filling with a parade of patrons who seemed oblivious to the debate. In very short order, I came across last year’s gala artist, Doug Aitken, Americans for the Arts advocate Nora Halpern, Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin, actress Rosanna Arquette, Guggenheim Foundation deputy director Ari Wiseman, and artists Mark Bradford, Alex Israel, and Rosson Crow. The latter was on the arm of designer Jeremy Scott and decked out in a vintage yellow gown by Don Loper—“Lucille Ball’s favorite designer,” Crow was quick to point out. Strolling through the collection galleries, I came across former gala artist Francesco Vezzoli (in Prada) with model Shala Monroque (in Rodarte). “I’m happy that Marina can still raise controversy,” Vezzoli said. “I wish the same for me at her age.”

While Minnie Driver, Gwen Stefani, Will Ferrell, Kirsten Dunst, Pamela Anderson, and David LaChapelle walked the red carpet outside, burlesque artist Dita Von Teese (in Jean Paul Gaultier) and sometime filmmaker and jewelry designer Liz Goldwyn (in a vintage red dress) joined the crowd previewing “Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles” and “Kenneth Anger: Icons,” a Hollywood Babylon showcase of Anger’s films and memorabilia, within. “We’re a very creative museum!” said chief curator Paul Schimmel, noting that the shows came on the schedule only recently, and giving the impression he wasn’t all that thrilled at their entry. (His sweeping, and historic, Pacific Standard Time show at MoCA’s Geffen Contemporary took years to pull together.) “You just gotta roll with the punches and all the changes,” he said.

Guards asked everyone to proceed to the humongous dinner tent outside, where one tenet of Abramović’s manifesto was projected over the entrance. “An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist,” it said. Under it, a group of the hired performers helped patrons into their lab coats, though some, like Crow, refused.


Left: Rosanna Arquette. Right: Jerry Brown's table.

Inside, all thought of exploitation quickly faded, as the 769 guests, who included California governor Jerry Brown and Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as well as Beecroft, took their seats before the rotating heads and nudes-with-skeletons and dug into their food unfazed. (It was delicious.) Some people did hold the gaze of the heads; others winked and elicited forbidden giggles. After brief speeches by gala cochairs Eli Broad and Maria Arena Bell, and another by Deitch, who called Abramović and Deborah Harry, the evening’s main entertainment, “giants in their field,” Abramović took the stage to exhort everyone to keep on their lab coats for the sake of the experiment at hand. (Not all obeyed.) She went on to explain that it hadn’t been her idea, but the museum’s, to use only women as the nudes. Artists rarely made manifestos anymore, she said, referring to the gala’s title, adding that they were necessary in these troubled times to establish a “codex of moral and social behavior.”

John Baldessari and Meg Cranston seemed pleased to be seated ringside, where half-naked and very buff pallbearers periodically mounted the catwalk-like stage carrying a shrouded body on a bier. At trustee Wallis Annenberg’s front-and-center table, Governor Brown was smiling but seemed uncomfortable at the nude before him. “That’s a fake vagina, isn’t it?” asked collector Michael Ostin, refusing to believe that the woman on display did not have “some kind of enhancement.”

He was not the only doubter. During Serbian folk singer Svetlana Spajic’s performance of a haunting tune from Robert Wilson’s The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, someone at the table beside mine loudly expressed his displeasure to Broad Foundation curator Joanne Hyler, dealer Sara Watson, Creative Time director Anne Pasternak, and Schimmel. “This is offensive!” he shouted. “This is shit, not art. Who is she kidding? Jeffrey! Yo, Jeffrey! Stop this!” The source turned out to be artist Thomas Houseago, who evidently had imbibed more than his share of the “Rauschenberg Spirit” wines. He continued his diatribe during a reading by the performers of Abramović’s full manifesto (“An artist should not steal ideas from other artists; an artist should not make themselves into an idol . . . ”) before leaving his dinner partners in peace.


Left: The Marina Abramović cake. Right: Performer Svetlana Spajic.

Once again, the pallbearers mounted the stage, only this time the person under the shroud was the platinum-haired Harry, who sang her first number from a reclining position on the bier before hopping off to do “Heart of Glass,” followed by a rousing “One Way or Another” that brought much of the cheering, camera phone–wielding audience to its feet. After her final number, two more shrouded bodies were brought onstage. Under them was dessert: two eerily lifelike cakes fashioned to look like Abramović and Harry by LA’s Rosebud Cakes and Raphael Castoriano’s Kreëmart organization. Wielding lethal-looking knives, Abramović joined Harry to cut out the hearts of each of their cakes to a shouting, astonished crowd.

Chaos followed, as guests fought over pieces cut by the bare-chested pallbearers. “I want the breast! Give me the vagina!” they screamed, hardly noticing that Tilda Swinton had arrived for photo ops, looking very much like David Bowie in his Thin White Duke phase. When it was all over, the cut-up cakes resembled mutilated bodies that made for a ghoulish sight.

A man I didn’t know accosted me. “Is it me or was this all about violence against women?” he asked. “It’s you,” I said. “Look at that cake!” he exclaimed. “It’s a horribly mutilated woman with knives in her chest. Doesn’t that bother you?” “It’s a cake,” I said. “It represents all the indignities women have suffered at the hands of men. It is women telling their own history.” Apparently, the point was lost on him. “It’s disgusting,” he replied. I asked his name, which he declined to give. “I’m in the social register!” he growled, brushing past me to let Deitch know that this violence against women would result in the withdrawal of funding from the museum.

“Don’t be afraid of art!” Deitch said, when the man stormed off. “Wow,” he added a moment later. “That was intense.” In the end, the gala raised $2.5 million.

— Linda Yablonsky

[x]
Left: Gwen Stefani and Debbie Harry. Right: Artist Francesco Vezzoli.


Left: Marina Abramović cuts the cake. Right: Debbie Harry enters.

[x]
Left: Artist Vanessa Beecroft. Right: Artist Rosson Crow and designer Jeremy Scott.

[x]
Left: Artists John Baldessari and Meg Cranston. Right: Gemma Ponsa Salvador and Doug Aitken.

[x]
Left: Dealer Sam Orlofsky with curator Chistine Kim and art consultant Sandy Heller. Right: Dita Von Teese with filmmaker Liz Goldwyn.

[x]
Left: ForYourArt's Bettina Korek with artist Alex Israel. Right: Curators Douglas Fogle and Franklin Sirmans.

[x]
Left: Artist Billy Al Bengston with Wendy Al. Right: Artist Mark Bradford.


[x]
Left: Collector Dasha Zukhova with photographer Rachel Chandler. Right: LAXART director Lauri Firstenberg.

[x]
Left: Artist Ryan Trecartin. Right: Collectors Liz Swig and Richard Chang.

[x]
Left: Dealers Sarah Watson and Brent Sikkema. Right: Artist Walead Beshty.


Left: The Debbie Harry cake. Right: Tate Modern curator Jessica Morgan with dealer Tim Blum.

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Shalva Chigirinsky
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/28/18

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Shalva Chigirinsky is a Jewish Russian businessman operating in real estate and oil sectors.

Early life and education

Shalva Chigirinsky was born in 1950 in Kutaisi. He graduated from the Moscow Medical Academy.[1]

Career

In 1987, he emigrated to Spain and later to Germany, where in 1989, he became a co-founder of the real estate development company STT Group.[1] In 1990s in became a major shareholder of Sibir Energy, a London-listed Russian oil company. In 2009, the company sued Chigirinsky for at least US$325 million for a failed bid to sell his real estate assets to the company.[2] He faces several other lawsuits in different jurisdictions.[3] His stake in the company was taken over by Sberbank, pledged as loan collateral.[4] There is an investigation concerning alleged tax evasion by Chigirinsky.[2]

Personal life

Chigirinsky is divorced and has six children.[1] He and the mother of four of his children, Tatiana Panchenkova, divorced in 2009. She testified in a Connecticut court that he beat her for more than ten years.[5]

References

1. "Shalva Chigirinsky". Forbes. 2008-03-05. Retrieved 2009-09-13.
2. Katya Golubkova (2009-07-17). "Moscow eyes bigger Sibir stake amid shareholder probe". Reuters. Retrieved 2009-09-13.
3. Dmitry Sergeev (2009-08-24). "Russia's VTB says wins lawsuit against Chigirinsky". Reuters. Retrieved 2009-09-13.
4. Dmitry Sergeev (2009-08-24). "Sibir Energy secures $200 mln loan from Sberbank". Reuters. Retrieved 2009-09-13.
5. "Russian oligarch's ex-wife tells Connecticut court he 'brutally beat her for more than a decade and caused her to suffer a miscarriage'". Daily Mail. London.

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Russian oligarch's ex-wife tells Connecticut court he 'brutally beat her for more than a decade and caused her to suffer a miscarriage'
by Lydia Warren
PUBLISHED: 12:24 EDT, 6 February 2013 | UPDATED: 13:17 EDT, 6 February 2013

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Oil magnate Shalva Chigirinsky, 62, and the mother of his four children, Tatiana Panchenkova, 48, divorced in 2009

She was 'hospitalised many times after beatings' and eventually decided to sue him after 'he threatened to kill her at their daughter's birthday party'

Chigirinsky made his billions in oil but was rocked during 2008 downturn

The ex-wife of a billionaire Russian oligarch has testified that he brutally beat her for more than ten years - once even causing her to suffer a miscarriage.

Shalva Chigirinsky, 62, grinned as his ex-wife Tatiana Panchenkova, 48, told a Connecticut court how he threw her out of their Moscow home while she was pregnant with their first child in 2001.

'I don't understand what's so funny here,' snapped Panchenkova, who was married to the real-estate and oil magnate until 2009. Both now live in Greenwich, Connecticut.

She described 10 alleged beatings, including one that caused her to suffer a miscarriage.

'I suffered as a mother, I suffered as a woman,' Panchenkova said. 'I was hospitalised on a number of occasions. I was threatened that I’d be destroyed, killed, taken out if I contacted the police.

Panchenkova, who has four children with Chigirinsky, said that on one occasion she woke to find him trying to suffocate her with a pillow, the New York Post reported.'

She said that the following day he told his lawyer that he wanted to kill his wife, 'but didn't know how to dispose of the body'.

Panchenkova said that the abuse continued even after they divorced and she eventually decided to sue her former husband after an outburst their daughter's 11th birthday party last year.


'Abused': Tatiana Panchenkova, pictured right with Marina Mecik, told a Connecticut court about 10 alleged instances of physical abuse at the hands of her ex-husband

'In the presence of the children he said he was going to kill me,' she said. 'Called me garbage, a b****. He said he would create a miserable life for me every day.'

The testimony was part of her attempt to force her ex-husband to set aside $2.5 million for any damages she wins when the suit goes to trial, the Post reported.

She filed the civil-court complaint in October, saying she suffered 'a decade of brutal and barbaric physical, psychological and emotional abuse perpetrated' by Chigirinsky.

Georgian-born Chigirinsky was once one of Russia's richest men, with an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion in 2007, according to Forbes.


Wealthy: Panchenkova, who lives in this $10 million home in Greenwich, divorced the oil magnate in 2009

He studied medicine in Moscow before starting a real estate business in the 1980s. He went on to make his billions in oil and real estate businesses - but was rocked by the 2008 financial meltdown.

It is not his first brush with the courts.

After falling in trouble with his creditors, in December 2011, a Moscow district court ordered Russia's federal tax agency to collect approximately 15 million rubles ($475,000) in tax arrears from him.

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Judge ends Russian oligarch’s bitter custody battle with bizarre ruling
by Lorena Mongelli
New York Post
August 19, 2016 | 1:50am

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Tatiana Panchenkov and former husband Shalva Chigirinsky
Douglas Healey (2)

The nasty, years-long child custody battle between a Russian oligarch and his ex-wife came to an end Thursday — as a Connecticut judge bizarrely ordered the warring parents to come to future court appearances bearing photos of their kids.

Oil and real-estate tycoon Shalva Chigirinsky and Tatiana Panchenkova have been too interested in bickering with each other rather than worrying about the well-being of their four children, Stamford Superior Court Judge Thomas Colin said.

“The parents are unfortunately occupied by their dislike and distaste of each other,” the judge said.

On Wednesday, he said that the kids — 8-year-old twins and daughters ages 15 and 9 — are “somewhere on their [parents’] mind but not at the top of that list.”

Colin ordered the parents to prominently display two family photos in the courtroom at subsequent family court hearings.

During a two-day hearing, the judge noted the kids have lived under a shroud of “distrust, hatred, anger and a lust for revenge” thanks to their parents’ four-year custody fight, marred by wild allegations of sex abuse and arrests. “It is a scary place for them,” Colin said.

As part of the joint-custody settlement that was reached, Chigirinsky can see his kids on alternating weekends and Wednesdays after school.

The billionaire must replace his Russian nanny with one who speaks English and have nanny cams installed in his Greenwich home.

He’ll also undergo “reunification therapy” with his 9-year-old daughter, whom he’s been charged with abusing. That case is still pending.

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Shalva Chigirinsky is not a pedophile, but can still become bankrupt
The court in the United States closed the scandalous case of Shalva Chigirinsky. Now the businessman will focus on the lawsuits to Viktor Rashnikov in Cyprus. If he loses them, then the scandalous businessman will face bankruptcy.
The Moscow Post
06.02.2017

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Court of the US state of Connecticut closed the criminal case against Russian businessman Shalva Chigirinsky. Businessman accused of committing "illegal acts" in relation to a 16yo person with possible bodily harm. The prosecution withdrew the accusation.

While the US Supreme Court considered this serious accusation, Shalva Chigirinsky was busy in court, too, but only in Cyprus. Apparently, the courts on two fronts were too much for the businessman, since he lost the last round of the Cyprus lawsuit. It should be noted that Shalva Chigirinsky asked the Cypriot court to arrest the property for a total amount of USD 90 million belonging to the head of Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works Viktor Rashnikov and his partner Nader Nader. It is about selling a stake in Chigirinsky's Russia Tower in the "Moscow City": the businessman argues that the transaction was carried out at a lower price.

First, the requirement was satisfied, however, the respondent party was not called to the court: this practice is common in Cyprus. But when Rashnikov's side presented their evidence, it was found out that the previous decision to arrest the head of MMK's assets was made on the basis of distorted information. Experts believe that the businessman in dire need of funds, and is just trying to "tear off money" from Rashnikov and Nader, using all available methods. But to defend his innocence in a US court and try to win back a large sum, for the Cypriot court it was not easy.

In January this year the Court of Limassol considered that the demand of Shalva Chigirinsky had no ground and, moreover, an application for seizure of property contained a lot of errors. The arrest of Rashnikov's assets was removed. Persons familiar with the situation believe that Chigirinsky intends to focus on "squeezing" of money from the head of MMK. But first it was necessary to cover the high-profile case on charges of illegal sexual acts against a minor.

It is possible that it was completed by agreement of the former spouses. The scandal initially looked like an attempt of Shalva Chigirinsky and his ex-wife Tatiana Panchenkova, who divorced in 2009, to divide the family assets upon divorce. The case featured two older daughters of the former spouses. It is curious as to why the prosecutor's office, on finding Chigirinsky not guilty, at the same time withdrew the charge in respect of Panchenkova? The woman was accused of committing acts "entailed the risk of harm to minors and their moral decay." The prosecution believes that Tatiana Panchenkova deliberately manipulated daughters, with the aim to stir up hatred for their father.

But on the same day when the prosecution against Chigirinsky was withdrawn, the prosecution against Panchenkova also ended. Persons familiar with the situation reminded that the former spouses had been dividing their assets for eight years after the divorce. During it, both parties showered each other with mutual recriminations. In particular, Chigirinsky accused Panchenkova of stealing jewels worth $100 million, and the ex-wife tried to prove in a Moscow court that she never recieved 354 million rubles promised her at the divorce. The same sources make the assumption that the former spouses decided to conclude a peace treaty, in a sense. What were the conditions, if the assumption is correct, we can only guess. But it is believed that the businessman had to abandon the judicial war on two fronts because he started to lose one.

"Robin Hood" saves himself

If the famous Robin Hood took away valuables from the rich and gave to the poor, than Shalva Chigirinsky as the evil tongues say, is making every effort to take away quite a fortune from the rich for his own self. Not that back in time, Shalva Chigirinsky and Victor Rashnikov on parity started to build an ambitious project, Russia Tower, a Moscow skyscraper, which was to become the capital's tallest building. However Chigirinsky faced serious financial problems. The businessman sold the property and moved to the United States. He could not for a long time sell his share in the Tower, as nobody wanted to buy it because the skyscraper, then as now, existed only on paper.

Finally, the share of Chigirinsky was bought by Viktor Rashnikov. Experts say that the seller for a not very liquid asset received the highest possible price. But the seller claimed that the head of MMK actually paid very little. For the sake of extortion of money from Nader and Rashnikov, Shalva Chigirinsky as the evil tongues say, even reconciled with his younger brother, Alexander Chigirinsky, if money can be regarded as the goal of reconciliation.

The problem is that Chigirinsky Jr is also unlucky in the courts.

The Chigirinsky brothers against Rashnikov

Last fall Chigirinsky brothers, who had not contacted each other for a long time before, suddenly hit Rashnikov with lawsuits. But if the claim of Chigirinsky Sr. concerned the Moscow-City Russia skyscraper which was never built, his younger brother was planning to cash in on a ready object. Initially, Evolution skyscraper in Moscow-City were to be built by Snegiri belonging to Alexander Chigirinsky and Inteko belonging to the wife of former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, Elena Baturina. However, in 2010 the businesswoman decided to leave the project.

In the same year Baturina sold 50 per cent stake in the project to Viktor Rashnikov for 37 million dollars. For the construction of Evolution, the MMK owner took out a loan, the project was finished and sold. According to rumors, the price amounted to a billion dollars. Net profit amounted to 267 million dollars, of which 50% came to the accounts of the Chigirinsky's entities, while the other half was transferred to City Palace, which Rashnikov and Chigirinsky Jr. owned jointly.

Representative of Rashnikov, Snapbox Holdings, appealed to the Russian arbitration, but the case was lost. Surprisingly, the Cyprus court, which Rashnikov addressed with the same demands, immediately arrested Rashnikov's assets worth $170 million as the claim security. However, Chigirinsky Jr. filed a lawsuit, too. He argues that during the deal with Inteko, the price of 37 million dollars, was strongly undervalued and demanded US $127 million.

However, in the autumn of last year, Alexander Chigirinsky withdrew his claims. Those familiar with the situation say that the claim was withdrawn because of its apparent unreasonableness.
But actually it changes nothing: Chigirinsky Sr. was "plucked" by the former wife, and the last asset that remained from the former business empire of brothers is Snegiri, which is now owned by Chigirinsky Jr., may soon go to the new owner.Aand after all the debts of the company all this time only grew: the parent company of Snegiri registered in Cyprus, ceased to disclose its accounts after 2013. Even then, the debt burden of the asset was estimated at $470 million.

However, the brothers' plans to capitalize on Viktor Rashnikov failed. One barely escaped 30 years in prison on charges of "sexual activities" in relation to a minor, the other is about to lose his last asset. It is possible that Shalva Chigirinsky will make a last attempt "to live beautifully" at the expense of the head of MMK. However, this option may also fail miserably.