Ihor Surkis

Surkis Igor Mikhailovich is a Ukrainian businessman, oligarch and politician, the brother of the famous oligarch Grigory Surkis, the owner of the Dynamo football club and shares in 1+1 Media.

Biography

Surkis Igor Mikhailovich was born on November 22, 1958 in Kiev.

Family

Igor's father was a military doctor. His mother worked in trade. There is also an older brother Grigory , an entrepreneur and head of the FFU, with whom Igor conducts business.

He is married to Olga Romanova. He has two daughters: Marina (born in 1985), who lives in London, and Yana (born in 2001).

Education

The oligarch received his higher education at the Kiev Institute of National Economy, from which he graduated in 1981.

Career

At the beginning of his career, Igor worked for about 7 years in the management of Kyivzhilremstroymontazh - he headed the repair and construction department.

In 1988, he became deputy head of housing of the Shevchenko district executive committee of Kyiv, and a year later he took the post of head of the department of the Ministry of Housing and Communal Services.

From 1990 to 1998 he headed the company "Dynamo-Atlantic". After that, he took the post of first vice-president of FC Dynamo (Kyiv), and 4 years later he became the honorary president of the club. At the end of 2008, he became a member of the FIFA Football Committee.

Igor Surkis at present

Igor Surkis today remains the president of the football club "Dynamo". He, along with his brother, is included in the rating of the richest Ukrainians.

Recently, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Rinat Akhmetov's presidency at Shakhtar, Igor Surkis told how he met his colleague.

"I met Rinat when he was eighteen years old. It was at someone's birthday party in Kiev. Our paths did not cross. When my brother and I met him in Monaco, Grigory Mikhailovich persuaded him to take Shakhtar. The Donetsk club was a fighting team with traditions. My brother and I believed that Shakhtar should not go into oblivion," Surkis said.

In October 2021, it became known that the court did not see a connection between Surkis' Dynamo Kyiv and Privat Koomat section).

In January 2021, Igor Surkis announced that he was ready to sell FC Dynamo in the future.

Dirt

Disqualification of the team due to bribery

After the game of the team "Dynamo" (Kyiv) with the team "Panathinaikos" in September 1995, the UEFA referee Antonio Lopez Nieto told the press that the owner of the Kiev football club Igor Surkis and the Secretary General Vasyl Babiychuk offered him a bribe.

According to the referee, the managers of the Dynamo team gave him two mink coats and another $ 30,000.

In response to this statement, Surkis told reporters his version of the incident, namely thБt babiychuk called him before the match and said that the referees from Spain wanted to buy mink products from him. On the phone, the owner of Dynamo (Kyiv) replied that his company does not make fur coats, but he made inquiries with friends. That evening, foreign guests went to choose the goods. According to Surkis, Mr. Nieto, after much deliberation, took two fur coats, and the side arbitrators bought a hat. It all cost them $30,000. When they found out the cost of the fur products they had taken, they abruptly refused to buy.

As a result of the conflict, the UEFA Disciplinary Commission decided to annul the results of the match and disqualify the Kyiv team from participating in the Champions League. In addition, Dynamo was deprived of the right to participate in UEFA matches for 3 years. Surkis and Babiychuk themselves were disqualified forever.

In 2017, the managers of the famous Kiev club again became participants in the scandal. This time, the incident concerned the fact that the sole owners of the FC were suspected of tax evasion on a particularly large scale. Such accusations were made to businessmen by the UEFA management, threatening to exclude the Dynamo team from the championship if this information was confirmed.

Anniversary ridicule

In November 2018, Igor Surkis celebrated his 60th birthday. Some Internet users made joke assumptions about what the head of FC Dynamo (Kyiv) could receive as a gift.

Thus, according to journalist Dmytro Klymenko, the president of Shakhtar Donetsk, Rinat Akhmetov, could give his colleague a branded jacket of his club, since Surkis has been wearing an old jacket with the label of the Donetsk team for more than 14 years, which the same Akhmetov gave him in 2004.

Raul Riancho, who was once an assistant coach of the Ukrainian national team and after his departure expressed a desire to work with Putin, could present Surkis with a postcard with a photo of his Russian "idol".

Fans and correspondents have long noticed that Surkis almost always smokes cigars. Therefore, we decided that a great gift for the owner of Dynamo would be smoking mixtures that would add colors to the gray everyday life of the general manager of the fading FC.

Jokers also remembered about Mykola Nesenyuk, who was responsible for communication with the media in Dynamo Kyiv, who could give his boss a self-teacher of the Ukrainian language, since he openly expressed a negative attitude to the fact that some Dynamo players on camera speak Russian.

Accusations of the club's problems

At the beginning of 2019, fans of FC Dynamo openly stated that Igor Surkis is absolutely not engaged in the club, as a result of which his work has to be done by them.

According to them, the relatively low attendance of fans for the Dynamo team suggests that the capital club is in a sad state. And all because Surkis, as the sole owner of the company, spares money for marketing, and also does not make any efforts to develop the fan club.

The only active support of Dynamo is fans from the ultras sector, who regularly visit orphanages, go to fan tournaments, draw graffiti around the city, etc.

"We have been trying for a long time to understand why this is happening, and the only logical explanation for this is the unhealthy desire of the Surkis to single-handedly own the club," Dynamo fans said.

Intention to sue Poroshenko

In May 2019, millionaire Ihor Kolomoisky told correspondents that immediately after the appointment of a new head of state, Igor Surkis intends to sue the then former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in the English court.

According to the oligarch, his business partner will sue Poroshenko for PrivatBank, which he previously took into his own hands.

"This is a whole detective story," Kolomoisky said, saying that Surkis was preparing a lawsuit for the former head of state in the court of England.

Wealth and sources of income

Igor Surkis is one of the richest residents of Ukraine. Owns 25% of the shares of the TV channel "TET" (part of the holding of Igor Kolomoisky "1 + 1 media"), as well as several radio stations. It controls the financial and industrial concern "Slavutych", the insurance company "Alcona", CJSC "Kyiv-Code", the investment fund and other enterprises.

He is the president of Dynamo Kyiv, but the football club brings only losses, which in 2005 amounted to almost 30 million hryvnias.

In 2011, Focus magazine estimated the brothers' fortune at $653.5 million. In the same year, Forbes included businessmen in the top of the richest residents of Ukraine, estimating the capital of each at $ 103 million. In May 2019, the value of Igor Surkis' assets amounted to $ 76 million according to Forbes magazine.

The Surkis brothers in 2021 entered the ranking of the 100 richest Ukrainians at number 41 with a fortune of $ 260 million.