Alexander Antonovich Mashkevich is a businessman and investor. He has major holdings and close political relationships in Kazakhstan. He holds both Kazakh and Israeli citizenship; according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he usually travels on his Israeli passport and "rarely spends more than a week each month in Kazakhstan."
Biography
Mashkevich was born in Frunze, Kyrgyz SSR, Soviet Union, in 1954. His father Anton, a doctor born in Lithuania, and his mother, Rakhel Yoffe, a lawyer born in Vitebsk, were evacuated to Kyrgyzstan in 1941. His family background is Lithuanian Jewish. He is a graduate of Kyrgyz State University where he studied philology. Mashkevich started out an academic career but became a businessman during perestroika. Mashkevich, Patokh Chodiev, and Alijan Ibragimov form "the Trio," a group of Kazakh businessmen who became billionaires. The Trio gained control of the recently privatized chromium, alumina, and gas operations in Kazakhstan. With his partners Chodiev and Ibragimov, Mashkevich helped to develop these assets, and is a major shareholder in Eurasian National Resources Corporation, now one of the world's leading natural resources groups. ENRC, based in London, operates a number of metals assets in Kazakhstan and Africa, having acquired numerous mining operations in Eastern Europe and Africa. In 2009, ENRC generated a $1,462 million profit on sales of $3.8 billion. ENRC was floated on the London Stock Exchange in December 2007, with a market capitalisation on Admission of approximately £6.8 billion. In 2013, ENRC was privatized to form Eurasian Resources Group. Mashkevich served as president of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress until 2011. The EAJC is one of the five regional branches of World Jewish Congress. In this capacity, he has visited a number of synagogues around the world and met with many prominent individuals. In 2002, Mashkevich had a private meeting with then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. In apparent consultation with Israeli Defense MinisterBinyamin Ben-Eliezer, he asked his personal friend Kazakh PresidentNursultan Nazarbayev to intervene with Iran concerning Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah. Also, while in Israel, Mashkevich "several times rather closely cooperated" with Kazakh Ambassador, now Deputy Foreign Minister, Kairat Abdurakhmanov. Mashkevich is one of the owners of Alferon Management. Based in London, Alferon Management has acquired mining operations in different places: Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Kosovo, Russia, and other countries. In 2010 he was on the Forbeslist of billionaires at #287. In 2017, he was on the list at #1098, with a worth of $1.9 billion. On April 6, 2011, Mashkevitch announced his intention to found a Jewish version of Al-Jazeera that would "represent Israel on an international level, with real information.
