Russia's President Vladimir Putin toasts
during a ceremony of receiving diplomatic credentials from foreign ambassadors
at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, May 28, 2015.
Former Kremlin banker: Putin 'is the richest person in the world until he leaves power'
The man who used to be the
"Kremlin's banker" says that as long the Russian president Vladimir
Putin remains in power, he's the richest person in the world.
“Everything that belongs
to the territory of the Russian Federation Putin considers to be his," Sergei Pugachev told The
Guardian's Luke Harding. "Everything – Gazprom, Rosneft, private
companies. Any attempt to calculate it won’t succeed.
"He’s the richest
person in the world until he leaves power.”
Although Putin's exact
wealth is unclear, hedge fund manager Bill Browder previously estimated it at
$200 billion during an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria.
(As a reference point,
that would make Putin 2.5 times as rich as Bill Gates, who is considered to be
the world's richest man.)
"After 14 years in
power of Russia, and the amount of money that the country has made, and the
amount of money that hasn't been spent on schools and roads and hospitals and
so on — all that money is in property, Swiss bank accounts, shares, [and] hedge
funds managed for Putin and his cronies."
The "first eight or
10 years about reign over Russia was about stealing as much money that he
could," Browder added.
Pugachev said Putin's
immense wealth is not an accident.
"Putin wanted get
rich, too. He was a pragmatic person," he added. "We talked about
this. He didn’t want to leave office poor."
Back during Putin's first
two terms, Pugachev was a big player in Moscow. He founded Mezhpromback
(International Industrial Bank) in Moscow in 1992, and soon known as the
"Kremlin's banker." He even claims to have been one-third of
threesome that put Putin into power.
However, relations between
Putin and Pugachev soured in 2010, and he ultimately fled to London in 2011.
Putin and Pugachev, photo
dated July 28, 2000.
The fact that, as per
Pugachev, Putin considers everything in Russia "to be his" might seem
shocking, but it's important to note that the concept of property rights in
Putin's Russia is rather different from that of the West.
"A prominent
businessman ... said that Mr. Putin had eroded the very notion of property
rights in Russia, even for those who displayed fealty. He said that Mr. Putin
himself had described private ownership of strategic industries with the Russia
word to roost.
"‘A chicken can
exercise ownership of eggs, and it can get fed while it’s sitting on the egg,’
he said, ‘but it’s not really their egg,’” according to the New York Times.
Souece.
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