Britain’s richest Muslim is Alisher Usmanov who placed fifth position in The Sunday Times Rich List.
Usmanov, 63, has a fortune of £11.791bn. He grew rich through steel and iron ore mining and has numerous assets including shares in Spotify and a 30 per cent stake in Arsenal football club.
An Uzbek-born Russian, Usmanov owns the Kommersant Publishing Houses. He is a co‑owner of Russia’s second-largest mobile telephone operator, MegaFon, and co-owner of the Mail.ru group, the largest internet company in the Russian-speaking world.
Usmanov was born in the provincial town of Chust but spent his childhood in the capital Tashkent where his father was a state prosecutor. Planning to pursue a career as a diplomat, he later moved to Moscow and joined Moscow State Institute of International Relations from which he graduated in 1976 with a degree in international law.
After graduating, Usmanov returned to Tashkent where he was appointed director of the Foreign Economic Association of the Soviet Peace Committee.
He was arrested and convicted on fraud charges in August 1980 and imprisoned for six years of an eight-year sentence. This conviction was vacated in July 2000 by the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan, when it ruled that “the original conviction was unjust, no crime was ever committed, and that the evidence was fabricated.”
Usmanov owns the Grade I listed Tudor mansion Sutton Place set in 300 acres in Surrey, which he bought for £10 million in 2004. In 2008 Usmanov bought Beechwood House, a Grade II listed Regency property in 11 acres of grounds in the London suburb of Highgate from the Qatari sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani for £48 million.
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