Billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich visited Chabad’s new charity center in Moscow.
It has been known for some time that the notoriously media-shy Abramovich was a major donor to the Chabad-controlled Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, but generally he has avoided such public displays of his stewardship.
Abramovich, described on an FJC Web site as a “key patron of this center,†toured the newly opened Shaarei Tsedek charity facility Tuesday alongside a chief rabbi of Russia, Berel Lazar, and FJC board chairman Alexander Boroda.
The 41-year-old Jewish businessman and owner of Chelsea Football Club has a personal fortune estimated at approximately $20 billion, much of which he carved out of the rush to privatization in the early 1990s that left the vast majority of Soviet state holdings in the hands of Kremlin-linked businessmen.
Abramovich reportedly met with recipients of the center’s charitable facilities. No independent media were invited to the event.
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