Alfred Koch

Alfred Reingoldovich Kokh (Koch) (Russian: Альфред Рейнгольдович Кох, German: Alfred Reingoldowitsch Koch, born February 28, 1961) is a Russian writer, mathematician-economist and businessman of German origin.

He served as a deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin and was an ally of economic reformer Anatoly Chubais, a chief architect of Russia's privatization. On September 12, 1996, Kokh was appointed head of Russia's State Property Committee, acting as Russia's privatization chief. He left the position on August 13, 1997, after the privatization auctions (loans-for-shares).

In June 2000, Alfred Kokh became head of Gazprom-Media, a subsidiary media holding of Gazprom (now a subsidiary holding of Gazprombank), and oversaw the gas giant's controversial takeover of NTV, an independent television company owned by Vladimir Gusinsky. He was succeeded by Boris Jordan in October 2001. He also served as head of the 2003 election campaign staff for the Union of Right Forces, a pro-business, democratic party of young reformers including Yegor Gaidar, Boris Nemtsov and Irina Khakamada, the first woman to run for the Russian presidency.

He wrote the 2006 Russian best-seller, A Crate of Vodka (Ящик водки), a dialogue with journalist Igor Svinarenko about the twenty-year period that covered the last Soviet generation and the first, truly free Russian generation (1982, the death of Leonid Brezhnev, to 2001, when 9/11 put an end to liberal politics). The English translation will appear in spring 2009.

In 2008, he financed a scholarly point-by-point refutation of Holocaust denial materials. Denial of the Denial (Отрицание отрицания), with Pavel Polian, is the first book on the subject published in Russia.

Kokh is a frequent commentator in Medved, a glossy Russian men's magazine, writing about history and travel.

Alfred Kokh is a Candidate of Economic Science from the St. Petersburg Mathematics and Economics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He funds an annual Russian prize in mathematics; he was a sponsor of the new monument in Moscow to Tsar Alexander II, the leader who emancipated the serfs and reformed the Russian army.

Out of fear of persecution by the Russian authorities he fled to Germany.