[4][5][6] After his parents were married in 1951 at Novosibirsk where his father was a senior lieutenant in the Soviet Army, they moved to Riga.

[4][5] However, he was raised by his stepfather Georgy (Russian: Георгий) whom the young Kargin considered his real father.

[6] He worked at Komutator in Riga for two months as a loader but he did not enjoy physical labor so he enrolled at university to study journalism.

[7] In 1991, he became the first to create a currency exchange corporation in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

[10] Ksenia Sobchak interviewed Kargins in Riga about the time that she and Oksana Robski [ru] released the perfume Married to a Millionaire (Russian: «Zамуж за миллионера»).