Platon Lebedev is director of Group MENATEP, a holding company with diversified assets of $20 billion, primarily in oil and gas, mineral fertilizers, telecommunications and information technologies, and banking and financial services. Group MENATEP is the controlling shareholder of Yukos Oil Company.

Mr. Lebedev was one of the founders of Bank MENATEP (Moscow), acting as President of the Bank between 1991-1995. In 1996, he became Deputy Chairman of the Executive Committee of Yukos, Russia's second largest oil company, and served as Deputy Chairman of its Executive Committee and President of Yukos Refining and Marketing from 1997 to 1999.

From 1981 to 1989 Mr. Lebedev worked as Head of the Economic & Planning Department of V/O Zarubezhgeologia, the legal entity under the Ministry of Geology responsible for trade in geological resources. Mr. Lebedev graduated in 1981 from Russia's Plekhanov Academy of National Economy with a degree in Industrial Economics.

He is married with three children.

July 2, 2005 marked the anniversary of Platon Lebedev's incarceration.