Russian-born technology businessman Misha Malyshev and his wife have contributed $150,000 to help build five schools in Mali, Malawi and Nicaragua with international non-profit buildOn.
Malyshev, who is the chief executive officer of US-based science and technology-driven global quantitative trading firm Teza, has donated the money with the aim of helping to provide more than 500 children in rural villages with clean, safe places to learn.
But Malyshev, who is said to have a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Princeton University, has a controversial business past.
In 2009, hedge fund firm Citadel Investment Group LLC took Malyshev to court for allegedly breaking a contractual promise not to compete with the company. Citadel also accused him of stealing the company’s computer code that controls its trading decisions.
Malyshev headed up Citadel’s high-frequency trading business, in which traders use computer technology to make rapid decisions so as to capitalise on market volatility.
And in the seven years that Malyshev worked for Citadel, the business unit he led posted record profits.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Malyshev testified in court in 2009 that the Citadel unit posted returns of $892 million in 2007, up from $75 million in 2005 and about $3 million in 2004.
As part of the court case against Malyshev, Citadel wanted him to pay a $15 million penalty, reportedly just 10% of the $150 million he earned with Citadel in 2008.
But a US judge struck down Citadel’s request for a $15 million penalty and instead ordered Malyshev to pay $1.1 million to charities for violating a previous court ruling to preserve documents in a lawsuit.
The judge fined him for disobeying an order to ‘preserve potential evidence’, as Malyshev claimed he had ‘unintentionally’ erased Citadel files on his computers and testified that the only files deleted were pornography.
When Malyshev was planning to start Teva in 2009 he also teamed up with Sergey Aleynikov, a computer programmer who in 2010 was convicted of stealing code from Goldman Sachs. However, in February 2012, Aleynikov’s conviction was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Despite its past challenges, Teza is still in operation in 2013 and Malyshev is donating money again, albeit out of what appears to be goodwill this time.
“Access to a quality education is vital toward ensuring a productive and meaningful life,” Malyshev has said in a statement.
“My wife and I believe in buildOn’s mission and we are delighted to be able to continue our partnership with them,” Malyshev added.
A buildOn statement says that in addition to the couple’s continued support of education in developing countries, they also support education efforts in Chicago through buildOn’s Afterschool Service Program.
The statement says that in December 2012, the couple led Teza’s support of buildOn’s ‘Breaking the Cycle Campaign’.
Through a $100,000 matching gift grant from Teza, the campaign is said to have raised $235,000 to support buildOn’s ‘Afterschool Service Programs’ in under-resourced Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high schools, and to build three schools in Malawi.
“At buildOn, we believe that talent and intelligence are distributed equally to children across the planet. Unfortunately, opportunity is not,” said Jim Ziolkowski, chief executive officer and founder of buildOn.
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