Background and career
Farkhad Teimurovich Akhmedov (Azerbaijani: Fərhad Teymur oğlu Əhmədov, Russian: Фархад Теймурович Ахмедов; born 15 September 1955) is an Azerbaijani-Russian businessman and a former politician in Russia, departing his role in 2009. He is a former representative in the Federation Council of the Russian Federation.
Akhmedov was born in Baku, ASSR. He was raised in Goychay located in the central region of Azerbaijan, where his father worked. He graduated from high school there in 1971. Akhmedov left Azerbaijan in 1971, at the age of 15, and moved to Moscow. In Moscow, he entered Vocational Technical School No. 85 (assembling fitter) before being drafted for military service, serving from 1975 to 1977 in the Navy as a senior sergeant and platoon commander. At the end of his service, on the recommendations of his naval commanders, he submitted an application for admission to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) but was turned down, because of his father's conviction. In 1978, Akhmedov entered the Moscow Veterinary Academy named after K.I. Skryabin, graduating on an extramural basis in 1983 with a degree in Technology and Merchandising Process of Fur Products.
From 1986 to 1994, Akhmedov lived in London, initially engaging in the sale of furs in international markets. Later, he founded and headed the Tansley Trading company specialising in the supply of equipment for the oil and gas industry of the USSR and also traded in oil and oil products.
In 1995, Akhmedov concentrated on business in Russia. He bought a minority stake in Northgas from Bechtel, an American construction company. He headed the Board of Directors of the FARCO Securities investment company (1995 - 1998) and entered the Board of Directors of Northgas Closed Joint Stock Company (1994-2001). He headed the Board of Directors of Northgas, CJSC in 2002. Under his leadership the company moved into long term profitability. In 2005, threatened with the loss of his license to produce gas by the Russian state, Akhmedov agreed to give Gazprom 51% of his shares, in return for not pursuing any claims against Akhmedov. In 2012, Akhmedov sold his 49% stake in Northgas to Novatek for $1.375 billion. Earlier that year, Akhmedov had threatened to sue Gazprom in the London Court of International Arbitration for failing to abide by the 2005 settlement agreement signed by Akhmedov and the then-CEO of Gazprom, now Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, by increasing tariffs on gas production and reducing the quotas which Northgas was permitted to produce.
At the turn of the 1990s, he took part in international negotiations on the development of deep-water oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea basin. Using previously established contacts, he helped to attract American oil companies, Amoco Eurasia Petroleum Corporation and McDermott International to the project. He was involved in an agreement signed in Baku on 20 September 1994 between the newly independent Azerbaijan and an international consortium of oil companies on the development of Caspian energy resources. According to Akhmedov's memoirs, these negotiations, which began before the collapse of the USSR, presented political, organisational and technical challenges. The team which helped bring them to a successful conclusion included Natik Aliyev and Khoshbakht Yusifzade who later became Heads of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan. Since 2009, he has been the Chairman of the Board of Directors and a shareholder of AZNAR, a natural juice and agriculture company based in Azerbaijan, named after his father, Teymur Akhmedov.
In 2004, Akhmedov was appointed a representative of the Administration of the Krasnodar Territory in the Federation Council of the Russian Federation (until 2007). He was the first, and remains the only ethnic Azerbaijani to have sat in the upper chamber of the legislative authority of the Russian Federation. From 2007 to 2009, he was a representative of the Assembly of Deputies of the Nenets Autonomous Area in the Federation Council. In the period 2007 - 2010, Akhmedov was in the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). He has a personal blog on the Echo of Moscow portal, a liberal news source in Russia that has fallen afoul of Russia's censorship of coverage of the war in Ukraine. According to Akhmedov, he has been involved in negotiations to resolve international disputes between Russia and Turkey. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu described Akhmedov as a diplomatic go-between "who has worked closely with Putin and knows Putin well." In January 2018, Akhmedov was included in the so-called "Kremlin report" - a US Treasury document submitted to the US Congress in accordance with the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
