Net Worth: $1.5 billion (June 2008)

Age: 40 years old

Marital status: Married, has a son

Last year: $893million

Industry: Food industry

Yury Kosyuk is an honest man. Who can prove it? Anybody. For example, himself. In his interview to Korrespondent, the businessman said: “I did not steal anything from anybody, I did not privatize anything for free”.

Kosyuk began to carry on business as early as 1991, while he was a student at the Kyiv Institute of Food Technologies. He worked as a broker on a commodity exchange. The money he earned, he invested in a meat processing business. He did not manage to develop this business and had to sell it. In 1995, managers of a number of food enterprises offered Kosyuk to create a firm on the basis of ten state enterprises. As a result, grain elevators, production of formula feed, sugar and alcoholprocessing plants formed a single chain.

Up to 1999, the company annually sold 400 thousand tons of grain, whereas a part of the crop was exported to Turkmenistan, on account of paying for gas, which also brought Kosyuk quite a good income.  In 2001 Kosyuk purchased a few poultry factories. at present his enterprise Nasha Ryaba is a leader in chicken production, other leading enterprises that belong to Kosyuk, produce goose liver, beef meat and ready-to-cook foods. Asked “Does he sometimes have the desire to take a rest from business?” Kosyuk said: “My job brings me only positive emotions, I am hung up on it”.