4 ms·

His assets are not mainly in Russia. He has been sluicing wealth out for decades. Imagine if his assets outside Russia could be identified. Trump's fascination

• ben_w 5y ago
  A trillion dollars is roughly two years of the entire Russian national exports, and I don’t think he has the capacity to pocket 10% of the total exports every year for the last twenty. The corruption needed to enable that level of loss would imply other people having the opportunity, and I expect competition between different corrupt officials would limit any one person. Perhaps I’m wrong — I’m not knowledgeable, this is just based on what feels like a plausible upper level to me.
  • ncmncm 5y ago
    Four oligarchs died under suspicious circumstances in the last, what, a week? Who gets their assets? FSB will gather them up. Nobody can be sure of the numbers. Most of us can't count that high in one lifetime.
    • ben_w 5y ago
      > Nobody can be sure of the numbers. Naturally, but the other estimates I’ve seen — even recently — put him between 70 and 274 billion. A quarter to a 14th of what you’re suggesting. While anything over about 2 billion is uncountable in a human lifetime, the lower number does not feel entirely unbelievable, in the way a trillion does.