[1] Lebedev is the former sole owner of Sintez Group, a privately held energy, oil and gas and property development company.

[6] In the 1990s, following Perestroika, Lebedev co-founded Sintez International, a Soviet American joint venture, which traded in commodities and industrial supplies.

Forbes further states, "He sunk wells where there were none and struck black gold," pointing out his "entrepreneurial experience" accumulated in "tumultuous times in Russia.

[8] In Western Siberia, Sintez built an oil production plant, called Negusneft, developed its infrastructure, and undertook industrial trading and exports.

RWE was accused of having backed out of the deal to purchase TGK-2 at short notice and without valid justification, thereby driving Sintez to the brink of ruin.

There seemed to be numerous discrepancies: For example, according to press reports, there was only one bidder at the auction, although there had previously been talk in the media of weighty interested parties.

[17][18] According to media reports, Großmann is said to have pushed the transaction personally and even called in former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to influence the ultimately failed deal through Russian politics.

[9] In 2008, he joined forces with director Valery Todorovsky to co-produce Hipsters (film) (in Russian, Stilyagi) a romantic comedy set in 1950s Moscow, and Russia's first post-Soviet musical.

A media article states that, "unlike other oligarchs, his companies survived the change from the Yeltsin era to the new Russia under Vladimir Putin without major setbacks."

[9] In 2013, Lebedev earned a PhD by Belgorad State Technological University in colloidal chemistry (the topic of PhD dissertation: Kolloidno-elektrokhimicheskiye aspekty zashchity ot korrozii konstruktsionnykh staley oborudovaniya yadernykh energeticheskikh ustanovok (Colloidal and electrochemical aspects of anticorrosion protection of structural steel in nuclear power plants equipment).