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Is Putin the richest man in the world? Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management says yes.
CNN’s FAREED ZAKARIA GPS features an interview with Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, formerly Russia's largest foreign investor, and a once supporter of President Putin. He also describes the dynamics between power and wealth in Russia, claiming that during “the first eight or 10 years of Putin's reign over Russia, it was about stealing as much money as he could. And some people, including myself, believe that he's the richest man in the world, or one of the richest men in the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth that was stolen from Russia.”
On Putin’s networth: “I believe that it's $200 billion. 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, bank - Swiss bank accounts, shares, hedge funds, managed for Putin and his cronies.”
On Putin and his cronies: “These guys killed Sergei Magnitsky, my lawyer, for money. They all got rich, they all got bank accounts and villas and cars. Why should we allow them to come to America, travel to America, keep their accounts here, spend that money?”
On his relationship with Putin: “So he became a business partner and then my - all of my activism became very inconvenient. At that point, I was not going after his enemies, I was going after his own financial interests. And so when I arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport in November in 2005, after living there for 10 years, I was stopped at the VIP lounge. I was taken down to the detention center of the airport. I was kept there for 15 hours, deported and declared a threat to national security. What I didn't realize then, and it's become absolutely plain and obvious to me now, based on my experience, is that Putin wasn't above it all, Putin was intimately involved in it all, and it wasn't like he was restraining the oligarchs - he was the biggest oligarch. And everything that he's done since then has come to prove that."
On Putin’s networth: “I believe that it's $200 billion. 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, bank - Swiss bank accounts, shares, hedge funds, managed for Putin and his cronies.”
On Putin and his cronies: “These guys killed Sergei Magnitsky, my lawyer, for money. They all got rich, they all got bank accounts and villas and cars. Why should we allow them to come to America, travel to America, keep their accounts here, spend that money?”
On his relationship with Putin: “So he became a business partner and then my - all of my activism became very inconvenient. At that point, I was not going after his enemies, I was going after his own financial interests. And so when I arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport in November in 2005, after living there for 10 years, I was stopped at the VIP lounge. I was taken down to the detention center of the airport. I was kept there for 15 hours, deported and declared a threat to national security. What I didn't realize then, and it's become absolutely plain and obvious to me now, based on my experience, is that Putin wasn't above it all, Putin was intimately involved in it all, and it wasn't like he was restraining the oligarchs - he was the biggest oligarch. And everything that he's done since then has come to prove that."
Putin has been robbing his people in order to enrich himself, and anyone who opposes that robbing (or Putin, in general) are immediately dealt with USSR-style.
