Konstantin Malofeev, Marshall Capital Partners

With his monk-like visage - dark hair, slightly shaggy beard - Konstantin Malofeev could be a dead ringer from Father Zosima from The Brothers Karamazov.

That is, if it were not for the designer clothes and luxuriously appointed Moscow office.

But as rare Tsarist maps and religious icons gleam down from the wall behind him, the enigmatic Mr Malofeev seems to have no trouble balancing his apparently conflicting personas. He founded Russia's largest privately run Orthodox charity and is an advocate for the country's 128,000 orphans as well as a confidant of Father Tikhon Shevkunov, a monk with close links to Vladimir Putin, Russia's president.

But as the millionaire founder of private equity firm Marshall Capital Partners, Mr Malofeev also has a reputation as a ruthless businessman who has been accused of defrauding state-owned lender VTB of $200m. Though he has never been convicted of wrongdoing, he remains a witness in a Russian federal investigation.

Separately, Mr Malofeyev has been accused of mismanaging the money of French insurer Axa, once a lead investor in Marshall. Axa withdrew its complaints after it was paid an undisclosed sum for its shares.

One former business associate describes Mr Malofeev as "a modern-day Rasputin", another as a cunning businessman "who can sell sand to someone inside the Sahara". Both asked not to be named.

Mr Malofeev denies any wrongdoing. In a conversation that bounces from biography to business to religion, he shows off both his knowledge of history and his charm.

Where critics take issue with his financial success and business tactics, Mr Malofeev does not see a problem. "Both poverty and wealth come from God," he says. Besides, he continues, the laws on earth and those in heaven do not always overlap. "You can follow all the laws on earth, be the most law-abiding citizen and end up in hell because you have vices . . . Conversely take [Oskar] Schindler's list. Schindler broke all the existing laws in Hitler's Germany - he broke the criminal laws that were against Jews. But did he act with his conscience? He did."

Mr Malofeev is one of several prominent Orthodox business and political leaders who are enjoying increasing influence in the second Putin era, as conservative and Orthodox beliefs gain greater influence over legislation. A key figure in this circle is Vladimir Yakunin, the head of Russian Railways and a close ally of Mr Putin since the president was mayor of St Petersburg in the 1990s. Another is Alexander Provotorov, who is poised to become head of Russia's fourth mobile operator, due to be created later this year. A third is Igor Shchegolev, a top aide to Mr Putin in the Kremlin.

Mr Malofeev, however, rejects the idea that a religious clique exists within the elite. "There is no Orthodox club where we all get together." But he admits that no wealthy Russian businessman has succeeded without the help of personal connections.

The depth of Mr Malofeev's political influence came to the fore last year when The League for Internet Safety, his new non-profit organisation, successfully lobbied for the creation of an internet blacklist, whereby the government bans websites deemed harmful to children.

Some associates of Mr Malofeev believe this type of influence is what has helped him survive the controversies and the fraud investigation unscathed. Others believe that he spun a myth of his own influence and connections, allowing for his meteoric rise in the business world despite no direct links to Mr Putin.

"He's 39 years old and 10 years ago he was no one," says one colleague. "You can come up with your own judgment."

Born in the Moscow suburb of Pushchino in the officially atheist Soviet Union, Mr Malofeev says he found God - and his business acumen - during his childhood, most of which was spent bedridden from a serious illness, at times in a children's hospital. "We would lie in bed 20 boys in a row, 20 girls in a row. You lie next to these people 24 hours a day . . . It was a school of life."

He became involved in religion through literature and began going to his local church in Pushchino, where he still attends weekly liturgy.

Mr Malofeev went on to study law at Moscow State University. After working as a lawyer, he soon switched to banking at Renaissance Capital after realising this would allow him to make "more than four times the money".

After a decade in banking, he founded Marshall Capital Partners in 2005. But a deal with a baby food company called Nutritek soon started to raise questions about the fund.

According to testimony by VTB in London's High Court, Mr Malofeev helped a recently created company to secure a $230m loan but was both the buyer and the seller in the deal - a claim Mr Malofeev denies. One year later, the new owner of Nutritek fell behind on its payments and VTB says it learnt that the baby-food company's assets had been grossly overestimated and were worth just $35m, or nearly $200m less than originally estimated.

The revelation started a string of difficulties. Shortly after VTB took Mr Malofeev and others to court, Axa began complaining to Russian authorities that the money it had invested in the fund had not gone to the intended investment but to Mr Malofeev's acquisition of a 10 per cent stake in Rostelecom, Russia's state telecoms group.

The scandals culminated last November when Russian authorities raided Mr Malofeev's home and offices in connection with the VTB fraud case. Yet in the nine months since then, the controversies appear to have settled down. A London court in February threw out VTB's lawsuit against Mr Malofeev, arguing that the case should be heard in Russia, not the UK.

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Meanwhile, Axa and the US fund Paul Capital were both bought out of Marshall Capital by a Russian fund called Aton, after which they withdrew their complaints against Mr Malofeev.

Though Mr Malofeev remains a witness in the fraud investigation, his business prospects are on the rise. His 10 per cent stake in Rostelecom - acquired when his friend Mr Shchegolev was Russia's telecoms minister - is set to go up in value ahead of an expected merger with another mobile operator, and the company's planned privatisation by the Russian state in 2016.

. . .

Mr Malofeev says he is now trying to devote less time to business and more to public service. This summer he flew to Sydney to give a speech at an international family values conference about Orthodox Russia's duty to unshackle the west from liberalism.

"Like the [western] Christians that helped us to overcome communism 30 years ago, now it is our turn to give back to you and help you with family and Christianity."

While Mr Malofeev's faith has earned him the nickname "the Orthodox businessman", it is not necessarily one he lives up to. "In a monastery you can live according to the laws of morality but in the real world you run up against that law," he explains. "I absolutely consider myself Orthodox and try to be a good Christian. But I of course also believe that a person working in business cannot say that he does not sin doing business. In my opinion that is practically impossible."

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