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Officially at least - there is a chance that Putin is actually the richest person in the world: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-browde

by m12k 9y ago

Officially at least - there is a chance that Putin is actually the richest person in the world: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-browders-testimony-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee/534864/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-br... "He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated."

adventured 9y ago
That would be unofficially. Nobody has managed to prove Putin is sitting on the claimed wealth and Putin / his circle has denied it. I seriously doubt anyone is going to step forward with the evidence necessary to prove it, for obvious reasons.
- MisterBastahrd 9y ago
  Putin doesn't need to be personally wealthy. He's got the largesse of the Russian government at his disposal and a populace which has been conditioned for generations to support the person in power.
- e40 9y ago
  What is known publicly is certainly an indication that he is criminally wealthy. I can't find the reference right now, but there's a Russian bureaucrat close to Putin that makes a small salary, yet he has a large villa in Italy and many other properties, totally many millions of <insert currency> of net worth. There was even a Russian citizen that was documenting and publishing the info and using drones to video him at his Italian villa. I wish I could find that link, it was fascinating. Ah, found it: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/europe/russia-dmitri-medvedev-aleksei-navalny.html?mcubz=1&_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/europe/russia-dmitr... The video, with English subtitles, as almost 24M views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g
GFischer 9y ago
There's a LOT of people that are richer than Gates or Bezos, but many don't have their fortunes personally tied or traceable to them. I've been told that Arab sheiks in Saudi Arabia and the UAE laugh at the claims of Gates or Bezos or Slim being the richest person in the world. Same would happen with the Russian plutocrats, and whomever controls Chinese companies at the moment. There are other strange arrangements like Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA (which is supposedly a nonprofit but Kamprad is effectively a dictator and uses company funds for whatever he wants). https://www.fastcodesign.com/3035734/ikea-is-a-nonprofit-and-yes-thats-every-bit-as-fishy-as-it-sounds https://www.fastcodesign.com/3035734/ikea-is-a-nonprofit-and...
- metaphorm 9y ago
  asset liquidity matters though, right? amazon or msft stock are highly liquid. stolen renaissance paintings, giant palaces in the middle of a desert wasteland, and hereditary claims to mineral rights are not very liquid assets.
  - TremendousJudge 9y ago
    oil is an extremely liquid asset. and not just literally
    - metaphorm 9y ago
      when pumped out of the ground and put into the holding tank of a giant ocean-going ship it sure is. but I was referring to hereditary mineral rights, which is really more about political power and the (very expensive) maintenance of an oppressive regime. those mineral rights eventually convert into oil on tanker ships but it's really incredibly precarious and a single political shift (internal revolution, invading army, etc.) makes it all vanish in a heartbeat. the amount of oil-on-ships wealth that an Arab tyrant has on hand at any given time is relatively modest. most of the wealth is future claims to continue selling that oil, and that's not a very liquid form of wealth at all.
    - bousaid 9y ago
      No good is a liquid asset. You realize it takes weeks to get from crude oil to something you can pump into your car (including shipping time), right?
sparkling 9y ago
The article and specifically this statement consists of unverifiable myths and speculation. Or, as people like to call it today, "fake news".
dalbasal 9y ago
This kind of thing is a reminder that money, wealth, ownership and related concepts, aren't really real. They're cultural constructs, abstractions, rules.... Anyway..... abstractions sometimes fray at the extreme ends. The concept of property doesn't quite apply to Putin. Years ago, I had a conversation urban planner mate about some building that couldn't be changed (preservation) or used (building codes & safety). I argued that this makes it public property Him -'You can't just take property off someone'. Me - 'We already have, haven't we?' He couldn't get his head around my meaning. Around here (Ireland) landowners often "own" roads that border their land. This ownership amounts to a responsibility for cutting hedges and paying taxes on it. They don't (I think) have any rights to it that others don't. Ownership is a set of rules about what an owner can do with something. If you own an apple, but aren't allowed to eat it, gift it, etc. do you really own it? Does the King of Saudi Arabia (another candidate for wealthiest man) "own" everything in the country? I think he has the legal right to do anything with any thing. Does he own all "public" assets controlled by the crown, like Saudi Aramco (valued somewhere between $1trn and $10trn)? If not where's this distinction?
- agumonkey 9y ago
  > If you own an apple, but aren't allowed to eat it, gift it, etc. do you really own it? The only right left is to not let someone else have it I guess ?
- okreallywtf 9y ago
  >Does the King of Saudi Arabia (another candidate for wealthiest man) "own" everything in the country? I think he has the legal right to do anything with any thing. Does he own all "public" assets controlled by the crown, like Saudi Aramco (valued somewhere between $1trn and $10trn)? If not where's this distinction? That is an interesting point, but in terms of the Russian Oligarchs I think part of the distinction is they are (and have been) attempting to export that wealth and diversify it so that if they do lose power they will still be insanely wealthy. Maybe not 200bn wealthy but still massively wealthy. That is why the Magnitsky act is so important [1], because it makes it harder for them to move their money out of Russia. Granted a lot of wealth is coupled with control over natural resources and industry, but the more I read the more I realize Russian (like probably chinese and US as well) money is everywhere and much harder to track. The Saudis I'm sure do the same things in terms of investment, but whether they do so with as much secrecy and in avoidance of sanctions I'm not sure. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/21/politics/russian-adoptions-magnitsky-act/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/21/politics/russian-adoptions-mag...
0xbear 9y ago
I don't believe it. Is he rich? Without a doubt. Is he "richest in the world"? Not a chance. Three letter agencies from all over the world would be all over such juicy evidence given his lack of compliance with the wishes of their governments.
- qaq 9y ago
  To understand the scale of corruption a fairly senior but fairly far from the top police official had on the order of 500 mil USD confiscated.
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    Citation needed. And besides, even if true, police officials are temporary. Putin is _permanent_.
    - qaq 9y ago
      If you can read russian the name of the guys was Захарченко 120 mil cash 400 mil in swiss bank https://iz.ru/news/632412 https://iz.ru/news/632412 http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1660682/ http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1660682/ and he is literally nobody in the russian corruption hierarchy
      - 0xbear 9y ago
        That's what you get for stealing from Putin. What you've failed to explain is why would Putin essentially steal from himself. He's more or less the Tzar, and he can take whatever he wants whenever he wants. I doubt he even remembers what money looks like.
        qaq 9y ago
        That is a fairly simplistic viewpoint reality is a bit more complicated. Also to understand the psychology you would have to grow up in Soviet Union or something similarly f@#ed up.
Veratyr 9y ago
Full context: > That all changed in July 2003, when Putin arrested Russia’s biggest oligarch and richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin grabbed Khodorkovsky off his private jet, took him back to Moscow, put him on trial, and allowed television cameras to film Khodorkovsky sitting in a cage right in the middle of the courtroom. That image was extremely powerful, because none of the other oligarchs wanted to be in the same position. After Khodorkovsky’s conviction, the other oligarchs went to Putin and asked him what they needed to do to avoid sitting in the same cage as Khodorkovsky. From what followed, it appeared that Putin’s answer was, “Fifty percent.” He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated. What does he mean "appeared that Putin's answer was"?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > What does he mean "appeared that Putin's answer was"? Well, clearly, he wasn't in the room for the meetings and it's not like there are published minutes, so the answer must be inferred from external evidence. So the claim is that the visible behavior f actors and flows of business suggest that Putin has been granted control, if not on-paper ownership, of half the business of the various Russian oligarchs as payoff for not destroying them each individually.
  - Veratyr 9y ago
    That's the implication but what exactly did he observe that led him to say that? It's an awfully big claim and very little is given to back it up. It may not be possible to show us all his tax returns or bank statements but there should certainly be more than that it "appeared" to be Putin's answer. Did Putin become drastically richer in the following years while the oligarchs became poorer? In what way?

by m12k 9y ago

adventured 9y ago

That would be unofficially. Nobody has managed to prove Putin is sitting on the claimed wealth and Putin / his circle has denied it. I seriously doubt anyone is going to step forward with the evidence necessary to prove it, for obvious reasons.

MisterBastahrd 9y ago
Putin doesn't need to be personally wealthy. He's got the largesse of the Russian government at his disposal and a populace which has been conditioned for generations to support the person in power.
e40 9y ago
What is known publicly is certainly an indication that he is criminally wealthy. I can't find the reference right now, but there's a Russian bureaucrat close to Putin that makes a small salary, yet he has a large villa in Italy and many other properties, totally many millions of <insert currency> of net worth. There was even a Russian citizen that was documenting and publishing the info and using drones to video him at his Italian villa. I wish I could find that link, it was fascinating. Ah, found it: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/europe/russia-dmitri-medvedev-aleksei-navalny.html?mcubz=1&_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/europe/russia-dmitr... The video, with English subtitles, as almost 24M views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g

GFischer 9y ago

There's a LOT of people that are richer than Gates or Bezos, but many don't have their fortunes personally tied or traceable to them. I've been told that Arab sheiks in Saudi Arabia and the UAE laugh at the claims of Gates or Bezos or Slim being the richest person in the world. Same would happen with the Russian plutocrats, and whomever controls Chinese companies at the moment. There are other strange arrangements like Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA (which is supposedly a nonprofit but Kamprad is effectively a dictator and uses company funds for whatever he wants). https://www.fastcodesign.com/3035734/ikea-is-a-nonprofit-and-yes-thats-every-bit-as-fishy-as-it-sounds https://www.fastcodesign.com/3035734/ikea-is-a-nonprofit-and...

metaphorm 9y ago
asset liquidity matters though, right? amazon or msft stock are highly liquid. stolen renaissance paintings, giant palaces in the middle of a desert wasteland, and hereditary claims to mineral rights are not very liquid assets.
- TremendousJudge 9y ago
  oil is an extremely liquid asset. and not just literally
  - metaphorm 9y ago
    when pumped out of the ground and put into the holding tank of a giant ocean-going ship it sure is. but I was referring to hereditary mineral rights, which is really more about political power and the (very expensive) maintenance of an oppressive regime. those mineral rights eventually convert into oil on tanker ships but it's really incredibly precarious and a single political shift (internal revolution, invading army, etc.) makes it all vanish in a heartbeat. the amount of oil-on-ships wealth that an Arab tyrant has on hand at any given time is relatively modest. most of the wealth is future claims to continue selling that oil, and that's not a very liquid form of wealth at all.
  - bousaid 9y ago
    No good is a liquid asset. You realize it takes weeks to get from crude oil to something you can pump into your car (including shipping time), right?

sparkling 9y ago

The article and specifically this statement consists of unverifiable myths and speculation. Or, as people like to call it today, "fake news".

dalbasal 9y ago

This kind of thing is a reminder that money, wealth, ownership and related concepts, aren't really real. They're cultural constructs, abstractions, rules.... Anyway..... abstractions sometimes fray at the extreme ends. The concept of property doesn't quite apply to Putin. Years ago, I had a conversation urban planner mate about some building that couldn't be changed (preservation) or used (building codes & safety). I argued that this makes it public property Him -'You can't just take property off someone'. Me - 'We already have, haven't we?' He couldn't get his head around my meaning. Around here (Ireland) landowners often "own" roads that border their land. This ownership amounts to a responsibility for cutting hedges and paying taxes on it. They don't (I think) have any rights to it that others don't. Ownership is a set of rules about what an owner can do with something. If you own an apple, but aren't allowed to eat it, gift it, etc. do you really own it? Does the King of Saudi Arabia (another candidate for wealthiest man) "own" everything in the country? I think he has the legal right to do anything with any thing. Does he own all "public" assets controlled by the crown, like Saudi Aramco (valued somewhere between $1trn and $10trn)? If not where's this distinction?

agumonkey 9y ago
> If you own an apple, but aren't allowed to eat it, gift it, etc. do you really own it? The only right left is to not let someone else have it I guess ?
okreallywtf 9y ago
>Does the King of Saudi Arabia (another candidate for wealthiest man) "own" everything in the country? I think he has the legal right to do anything with any thing. Does he own all "public" assets controlled by the crown, like Saudi Aramco (valued somewhere between $1trn and $10trn)? If not where's this distinction? That is an interesting point, but in terms of the Russian Oligarchs I think part of the distinction is they are (and have been) attempting to export that wealth and diversify it so that if they do lose power they will still be insanely wealthy. Maybe not 200bn wealthy but still massively wealthy. That is why the Magnitsky act is so important [1], because it makes it harder for them to move their money out of Russia. Granted a lot of wealth is coupled with control over natural resources and industry, but the more I read the more I realize Russian (like probably chinese and US as well) money is everywhere and much harder to track. The Saudis I'm sure do the same things in terms of investment, but whether they do so with as much secrecy and in avoidance of sanctions I'm not sure. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/21/politics/russian-adoptions-magnitsky-act/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/21/politics/russian-adoptions-mag...

0xbear 9y ago

I don't believe it. Is he rich? Without a doubt. Is he "richest in the world"? Not a chance. Three letter agencies from all over the world would be all over such juicy evidence given his lack of compliance with the wishes of their governments.

qaq 9y ago
To understand the scale of corruption a fairly senior but fairly far from the top police official had on the order of 500 mil USD confiscated.
- 0xbear 9y ago
  Citation needed. And besides, even if true, police officials are temporary. Putin is _permanent_.
  - qaq 9y ago
    If you can read russian the name of the guys was Захарченко 120 mil cash 400 mil in swiss bank https://iz.ru/news/632412 https://iz.ru/news/632412 http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1660682/ http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1660682/ and he is literally nobody in the russian corruption hierarchy
    - 0xbear 9y ago
      That's what you get for stealing from Putin. What you've failed to explain is why would Putin essentially steal from himself. He's more or less the Tzar, and he can take whatever he wants whenever he wants. I doubt he even remembers what money looks like.
      - qaq 9y ago
        That is a fairly simplistic viewpoint reality is a bit more complicated. Also to understand the psychology you would have to grow up in Soviet Union or something similarly f@#ed up.

Veratyr 9y ago

Full context: > That all changed in July 2003, when Putin arrested Russia’s biggest oligarch and richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin grabbed Khodorkovsky off his private jet, took him back to Moscow, put him on trial, and allowed television cameras to film Khodorkovsky sitting in a cage right in the middle of the courtroom. That image was extremely powerful, because none of the other oligarchs wanted to be in the same position. After Khodorkovsky’s conviction, the other oligarchs went to Putin and asked him what they needed to do to avoid sitting in the same cage as Khodorkovsky. From what followed, it appeared that Putin’s answer was, “Fifty percent.” He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated. What does he mean "appeared that Putin's answer was"?

dragonwriter 9y ago
> What does he mean "appeared that Putin's answer was"? Well, clearly, he wasn't in the room for the meetings and it's not like there are published minutes, so the answer must be inferred from external evidence. So the claim is that the visible behavior f actors and flows of business suggest that Putin has been granted control, if not on-paper ownership, of half the business of the various Russian oligarchs as payoff for not destroying them each individually.
- Veratyr 9y ago
  That's the implication but what exactly did he observe that led him to say that? It's an awfully big claim and very little is given to back it up. It may not be possible to show us all his tax returns or bank statements but there should certainly be more than that it "appeared" to be Putin's answer. Did Putin become drastically richer in the following years while the oligarchs became poorer? In what way?