BUSINESSPEOPLE from Azerbaijan

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Azerbaijani Businesspeople of all time. This list of famous Azerbaijani Businesspeople is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Vagit Alekperov (1950 - )

With an HPI of 55.04, Vagit Alekperov is the most famous Azerbaijani Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 28 different languages on wikipedia.

Vagit Yusufovich Alekperov (Azerbaijani: Vahid Yusuf oğlu Ələkbərov, Russian: Вагит Юсуфович Алекперов; born 1 September 1950) is a Russian–Azerbaijani businessman. He was the President of the oil company Lukoil from 1993 until 2022. As of 16 April 2021, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index by Bloomberg L.P., Alekperov has an estimated net worth of US$19.6 billion, making him the ninety-fourth wealthiest person in the world and the fifth in Russia. Alekperov previously owned a 36.8% stake in football club Spartak Moscow. Fellow former Spartak owner Leonid Fedun is Akelperov's close associate. Alekperov also owned superyacht builder Heesen Yachts until 2022. As part of the international governmental responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have imposed sanctions against Alekperov.

2. Isabel dos Santos (1973 - )

With an HPI of 43.23, Isabel dos Santos is the 2nd most famous Azerbaijani Businessperson.  Her biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Isabel dos Santos ([izɐˈβɛl duʃ ˈsɐ̃tuʃ]; born 20 April 1973) is an Angolan businesswoman, the eldest child of Angola's former President José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country as a dictator from 1979 to 2017. As early as 2013 Forbes described how dos Santos acquired her wealth by taking stakes in companies doing business in Angola, suggesting that her wealth came almost entirely from her family's power and connections. Since 2018, the Angolan government has been trying to prosecute Isabel dos Santos for corruption that may have led to Angola's ongoing recession. On 30 December 2019, the Luanda Provincial Court ordered the freezing of dos Santos's Angolan bank accounts and the seizure of her stake in local companies, including Unitel (Angola) and Banco de Fomento Angola. Two weeks later, the Angolan Government announced it had prepared the legal battle to confiscate dos Santos's assets in Portugal, a process that is operative in the form of letters rogatory sent to Portugal to stop the transfer of funds from Portuguese Commercial Bank to a Russian bank. As of January 2020, she was under investigation in Portugal and has since taken on the United Arab Emirates as her official country of residence. In December 2021, the US State Department barred Dos Santos and her immediate family from entering the United States, citing "significant corruption by misappropriating public funds for her personal benefit". Once considered Africa's richest woman according to Forbes magazine, with a net worth exceeding US$2 billion, she was dropped from the magazine's list in January 2021 after the freezing of her assets in Angola, Portugal and the Netherlands. In 2021 a French court ruled that she was liable to pay $340 million to the Portuguese company PT Ventures.On 18 November 2022, Interpol issued a warrant for her arrest. In December 2023 her assets were frozen following a hearing at the High Court in London.