"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."
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).
This is very true. For example I have some family friends that would easily crack into the low end of the Forbes billionaires list but they operate their business legally in the islands south of America (sorry for vagueness, it is intended). No one has ever come knocking from Forbes and they like it that way.
A family I grew up with has a net worth of ~$20B but it's layered through hundreds of LLC's. Easy to understand the truest wealth figures avoid publicity the most.
Two other families nearby hit the ~$2B range but you'll never hear about it unless you're floating on a boat when their name comes up.
Bulk of the worlds wealth is held by unknown(or at least non-famous) people. Anonymity and low key profile helps them escape being in spotlight. Being invisible to tax agencies, crime rings and mobs among masses is far more preferable than having a celebrity profile and a photo on forbes.
Also its easy to bequeath your descendants wealth easily that way.
The Forbes methodology rules ranks individuals rather than large, multi generational families who share fortunes.
A WikiLeaks document mentions lots of behind-the-scenes ways that the arab royals siphon money. So I guess it's impossible for Forbes or anyone to know their true net worth:
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.
Not really -- if you are in control of Oil wealth you are most likely part of a family that runs a country. Your fortune is dependent on staying in power and in favor of the patriarch. If there were to be a cultural revolution, uprising or falling out, you can't jump on your g6 and fly to whatever western country you pick and bring your oil with you like you can with stocks, bonds and other globally traded holdings.
If you are in control of Oil wealth because you are part of a family that runs a country, you most likely already own stocks, bonds and importantly real estate in a number of safe countries, so you can flee there when your dynasty is toppled.
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.
If it is, it has much more to do with the determined efforts of the world's oligarchs to hide their fortunes from public scrutiny than it does with Western "solipsism". An excellent example of this is the New York Times's investigation into the phenomenal wealth of the family of Chinese PM Wen Jiabao, which led the CCP to order the paper blocked in China.
You actually cannot take that content at all, since the leaders in "that part of the world" are so fearful of such coverage that they censor it entirely.
Didn't you know about the new warfare that western governments employ ? Create unrest in a country by printing fake news, thereby topple the government. Much cost effective than weapons with less world attention.
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?
>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.
> 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.
I don't see how that's an actual distinction because the same thing applies just as well to the house of Saud and Saudi Arabia in general. Do you honestly think the house of Saud didn't put a bit of wealth aside for the unlikely event they might be removed from power?
For whatever reason, it's become acceptable to just assume that certain countries are "ultra corrupt" while others are supposedly "corruption free". In reality, none of this applies because, in reality, the practices of corruption just differ from country to country depending on the local laws.
Corruption always finds a loophole and in many places established forms of corruption are not even recognized as such. Case in point: Germany
How many people would think Germany is a country ripe with corruption? The super punctual, super correct, super bureaucratic Germans could never be corrupt, right?
Well, Germany was among the last countries who ratified the UN convention against corruption, as a matter of fact, it was the last EU country to ratify it. It took German parliament 11 years [0] to ratify that UN convention against a lot of opposition. High profile German politicians publicly complained that if the UN convention was ratified it would be impossible for them to keep working like they've been working.
That's quite long and vehement opposition against something that would usually just be regarded as the sensible thing to do, I'll leave the reasons for that strong opposition up to your imagination.
For a case in point, there's a high profile (potentially involving the PM) investigation ongoing about a kickback paid by a German shipbuilder to Israeli Navy/Government buyers in order to secure an order for submarines.
But... I don't agree with your leanings. All countries are corrupt to some degree, but degrees do vary. I think it dangerously lends to extremism, thinking of issues of corruption in either-or terms or some close proxy.
Well, the best case in point in that regard is having a finance minister with a well-known past of money laundering (Schäuble) and a former, well renowned, Chancellor valuing his back-room dealings more than his duty to the country (Kohl's Ehrenwort).
Like many other German corruption scandals, these were never properly investigated/charged. With time people simply forget about this kind of stuff, but it happened and it very likely still happens because getting caught before didn't have any real consequences for them, so why would they stop?
> All countries are corrupt to some degree, but degrees do vary.
Indeed, but the practices of corruption also vary, often dictated by culture, so how does one really "measure corruption" in such a way that it's actually comparable? Imho that's quite a difficult, if not impossible, task because it involves a lot of subjective value judgments.
On that I agree completely. :) Lists, scores and rankings might be useful for generating political pressure but they’re measuring the unmeasurable, for practical scenarios. I also agree they are probably culturally biased, as I think you might be implying.
> 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"?
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."