Hunt the Banker: Read the first extract from Alexander Lebedev’s book

I was born on 16 December 1959 in Moscow, in the maternity hospital on Proletarskaya Street. My colleagues – and about 15 from our course went into intelligence – were getting paid four times my salary, and in the evenings on the bus driving us back from First Directorate headquarters in Yasenevo, they would pat me condescendingly on the shoulder and say, ‘Never mind, old man, it’ll work out in the end!’ Oddly enough, translation matters too, even if it is uncreative. open image in gallery The presidents of Russia and the Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Leonid Kuchma, with Lebedev at Hotel More, Crimea, 2004 ‘You know, Yevgeny Maximovich,’ I said. They keep looking for ‘Communist Party gold’ and ‘KGB money’ How this shell was transformed in the course of two years into one of the leading banks of the Russian Federation remains a mystery to many people. open image in gallery Someone who is today an oligarch, and whom I often met at that time in the venerable reception room on Nametkin Street, commented as I was leaving, ‘Our financial Mozart!’ Part two next Sunday Alexander Lebedev is the father of Evgeny Lebedev, a shareholder in The Independent.