Yuri Sagaydak

Yuri Petrovich Sagaydak [JuriSagaidak] is a Russian lawyer. He is also a journalist at Komsomolskaya Pravda and TASS. Sagaydak produced the Russian movie Countdown (Russian title: "Lichniynomer") in 2004. By the decision of the Shanghai International Film Festival jury in November 2005, this film was declared best foreign feature film, for which the producer and screenwriter Yuri Sagaidak was awarded a special festival cup.

He also served as the Deputy Director of Renaissance Capital until 2006 and founded SP-Consulting.

Biography

Yuri Sagaidak was born in 1950 in Alma-Ata (today Almaty), completed his secondary-school education in 1968, and graduated in 1972 from the FSB Academy (known until 1982 as The Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB). He was acting as a journalist for the TASS News Agency and the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in Indonesia and then in the United Kingdom. According to the decision of the editorial board of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on 29 December 1987, Yuri Sagaidak was recognised as the best reporter of 1987. In 1989, he was deported from the United Kingdom. According to a local publication, Sagaydak was issued a temporary residence permit to live in Lithuania.

Yuri Sagaidak founded a limited company Consulit in Lithuania in 2011, which had a staff of five people. J. Sagaydak remained the Director and sole shareholder of “Consulit” until February 2015. He later worked in Austria. In 2004, Sagaidak produced a move LichniyNomer (Личныйномер)with an English title “Countdown”. The story takes the viewer deep into the bowels of Russian internal affairs and politics, and was well-received in cinemas. The story revolved around a group of individuals who had to work together to foil the attempts of a terrorist organization that was preparing to carry out an attack on Rome.

Yuri Sagaydak was deputy general director of Renaissance Capital Investment Management Ltd. until 2006.

In February 2018, Valentine Low, a British journalist at The Times, described the circumstances around Sagaydak's expulsion from London in 1989 in the article "My friend Yuri... the Communist spy[15]". This publication by Valentine Low contrasts markedly with his previous publication in the midst of those events. In May 1989 he commented on the espionage charges as follows: "If that's true, then he deserves an Oscar". V. Low expressed himself in an article "My freind Yuri, spy or scapegoat?" (The Evening Standard).

Sagaydak is married with five children. His wife, Vera Aleksandrovna Sagaydak is CEO of the Vienna based Astreya Consulting, she lives permanently in Austria.

Career

• 1972 – graduated from The Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB
• September 14, 1988 – publication of an interview with Paul McCartney
• Until 1989 – worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MID RF)
• 1999-2006 – Deputy Director of Renaissance Capital, responsible for security
• Yuri Petrovich Sagaydak – Producer of the film Countdown[19]
• 2006 – Founder of LLP SP-Consulting, a company providing legal services