- Joined
- Oct 30, 2014
- Messages
- 36,768
- Points
- 113
Vladmir Putin could be worth an estimated $200 billion dollars, much of which is drawn from Russia’s oligarchs. That’s according to fund manager Bill Browder, whose fund Hermitage Capital had as much as $4.5 billion invested in the country at one point.
Putin’s 2003 arrest of the richest man in Russia, Michael Khodorkovsky (which included a televised trial with Khodorkovsky in a cage) prompted approximately twenty oligarchs in the country to plead with Putin, asking what they could do to avoid that fate, Browder explained.
“His response was: ‘50%'” Browder said. “Not 50% to the Russian government, not 50% to the presidential administration of Russia. 50% to Vladmir Putin. And at that moment in time, Putin effectively became the richest man in the world. I estimate his net worth to be $200 billion.”
Putin’s wealth, very much intertwined with the oligarchs, is invested throughout the world.
“None of the money is in his own name,” Browder said. “The money is held by what I call ‘oligarch trustees,’ people who are trusted friends of his who hold the money on his behalf. They’re holding the money in the west, in hedge funds, in private equity funds, in real estate, in football teams and other things like that.”
“A lot of the money sloshing around in real estate and in the world of finance belongs to Vladmir Putin and his oligarch trustees,” Browder added.
Sanctions on oligarchs are effective
It is this very dynamic that has prompted the United States to impose sanctions on individuals in Russia after Browder’s lawyer died in prison and again after Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
“The most important sanctions on Russia from an effectiveness standpoint are the individual sanctions,” Browder explained. “The reason for that is because in Russia, unlike other countries, all the money is held by a very few number of people. So if you sanction those people and their wealth, that gets you to the decision makers.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fund...s-putins-net-worth-200-billion-105932448.html
