Sergei Pugachev was once dubbed ‘Putin’s banker’. Today he is considered a ‘traitor’ and is exiled in France.
The Countess & The Russian Billionaire, a documentary about Pugachev and his wife Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, was first shown on BBC Two and is now available on Netflix. It gives details on their marriage and fallout.
The 48-year-old Countess Alexandra appeared on ITV’s Lorraine today (March 14), where she called both President of Russia Vladimir Putin and her ex-husband ‘narcissists’, adding that they’re capable of ‘self-destructive things’. But who is Countess Alexandra and what is the documentary The Countess & The Russian Billionaire about?
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Here’s everything you need to know.
Who is Countess Alexandra Tolstoy?
Countess Alexandra is an aristocrat and comes from a long line of Russian nobility. The Countess gets her title from her great-great grandfather, her father's great-grandfather, Pavel Tolstoy-Miloslavsky. He was the chamberlain to the last emperor, Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, shortly after the First World War.
The Countess grew up in Oxfordshire before attending Edinburgh University to study Philosophy. She is the eldest of Anglo-Russian historian and writer Nikolai Tolstoy's four children.
She was married to billionaire financier Pugachev and they share three children together. The pair met while the Countess was teaching English in Moscow.
After the family arrived in the UK in 2011, Pugachev was accused of embezzling a fortune out of his finance house Mezhprombank. State creditors in Moscow pursued him in the British courts. He then fell out with Putin and fled the country to France - from where he was sentenced to two years by a High Court judge in 2016.
Today he remains in France and he has cut off the Countess and their children financially, she says. She claims the family were evicted from Pugachev's £12 million south London family mansion during the height of the pandemic, and the Russian government repossessed the property. The 48-year-old has since moved into another home in London with their children.
What is the Netflix documentary The Countess & The Russian Billionaire about?
According to Netflix ’s official synopsis the documentary follows the love story of Countess Alexandra and oligarch Sergei Pugachev, and the scandal that led to their fallout.
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