Author: Hoho
Source: Business People (ID: biz-leaders)
Before the flame of the Winter Olympics was completely extinguished, Putin ignited the flames of war in Ukraine. The 70-year-old Russian president is domineering and tough. However, the European and American powers have not been intimidated, and recently launched crazy sanctions against Russia, even Chekhov and cats have not spared.
As the leader of one side of the conflict, Putin does not openly play as much as Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, but there are not many stories of the strongman.
Putin's foundation must start with the three rich russians. The three rich men were Gusinsky, Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky. In their early glory days, they certainly did not think about how they would get entangled with Putin, a small civil servant who passed by in the Kremlin. This complex grudge will surprise them.
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In his early years, Gusinsky survived in a theater.
There, he had seen all kinds of big people and learned the rubbing of personal connections. Gusinski, who became rich by colluding with a state-owned factory to produce copper bracelets, hoped to accumulate more contacts to expand his business. Once, Gusinski was arrested by the KGB while conducting hard currency transactions, and he used it to establish contacts with officials of the agency. Since then, the astute businessman has gradually penetrated the way to cooperate with officials — low-level officials pay bribes directly, and high-level officials provide everything they need for promotion.
Vladimir Gusinsky
Later, with the help of the then-Mayor of Moscow, Luzhkov, Gusinsky took over the old moscow trade in discounts. The two sides reached an agreement that Luzhkov would provide Gusinsky with an old house free of charge, which would be partially returned to the government after rebuilding the house to solve the housing problems in Moscow at that time. With this project, he made tens of millions of dollars.
Under Luzhkov's patronage, Gusinsky founded the Most Group Bank, which in the early 90s snared the city's main accounts, a privileged status that enabled Guzynski to deal with municipal funds and make considerable profits for himself, paying only a small part of the city.
Gusinsky was the same age as Putin, who at this time found a job in the foreign affairs department of Leningrad University and then served as an assistant to the speaker of the Leningrad City Council, seeking an official position. And Gusinsky has become a well-known rich man.
Tycoons like Gusinski who steal state property are not alone. Mikhail Khodorkovsky is deputy secretary of the Youth League Committee of the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology. At that time, enterprises and research institutions had large non-cash subsidies for production, but these non-cash and cash could not be mixed, and non-cash was not valuable. The shrewd Khodorkovsky took advantage of the privilege of being a regimental cadre to withdraw cash "legally" by setting up regiment-owned enterprises. In addition, he used his connections to obtain special licenses issued by banks to exchange non-cash for cash currency, and some for hard currency, which he then sold with computers.
Berezovs was the force behind putting Putin into politics, and his history of his fortune is similar to that of Gusinsky and Khodorkovsky. Originally working at a prestigious research institute, Berezovsky took advantage of the opportunity to develop automotive design systems for the Watts Automotive Plant, establishing contacts with Fiat's supervisors and experts, as well as Fiat's supplier, Rogge Systems AG. In 1989, Berezovsky founded the Rogoise company.
Berezovsky, a Russian billionaire in exile in Britain
The company became the secret stronghold of his fortune. Berezovsky persuaded the car factory to sell tens of thousands of cars to Rogwaz, a huge deal with an unknown trick, berezovsky paid the watts cars in rubles, and the super inflation in Russia was already on the string. In 1993, the wholesale price of the basic Nihkoli sedan was 1.9 million rubles, or about $3,321. The retail price of The Logoise over the same period was $4590, and the net profit per vehicle was $1269. Through the deal, Berezovsky made a net profit of $105 million.
The three rich men used the drill camp to obtain huge wealth and develop their respective business empires. Their tentacles gradually involve Russia's oil, aviation, banking, media and other industries, the rich side.
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In the nineties, Putin lost his job as president of the Leningrad City Council. He had to come to Moscow in search of a job offer. Borsakov, who had the same experience as Putin at the time, became first deputy prime minister. With his help, Putin was given the position of deputy director of the Presidential Affairs Administration, directly responsible for the Legal Department and property outside Russia. Five months later, Putin was promoted to deputy director of the president's office and director of the supervision bureau.
The oligarchs scrambled for resources, and Putin rose to prominence, opening a new chapter in the history of Russian capitalism. In July 1998, Putin became director of the Federal Security Service and met President Boris Yeltsin. In his memoirs, Yeltsin praised Putin's report as a model and the ease with which he could meet any challenge. Putin acted cautiously, obsessively observing how politics works, how resolutions are made, and learning who has to say what to say and who can't.
In the same year, the Asian financial crisis broke out. In August, the ruble's collapse took place at what Gusinski thought was the worst moment, and he was in trouble. Khodorkovsky was also unable to pay his loans, and in order to free his oil company, Yukos, from the entanglement of Western creditors and minority shareholders as soon as possible, he drew up a detailed plan to transfer funds to offshore companies. In this complex process of capital transfer, the assets of Yukos and his subsidiaries are traceless, making it impossible for others to discover where he hid them. His moves have led many rich people to follow suit, leading to a capital outflow from Russia.
The devastated Russian economy is also eroding Yeltsin's power, and Yeltsin's energy declined after his illness, and whose power he lost became the most concerned question.
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Oligarchs are very concerned about who the future president is, and they fear that the wealth and property they have won will be taken away.
Moscow Mayor Luzhkov is expected to run for president, but his Moscow model is not popular with oligarchs. Those around Yeltsin had made it clear that Luzhkov would not be Yeltsin's successor. In the rain overnight, the Prosecutor General's Office issued an arrest warrant for Berezovsky accusing him of improperly using funds for the sale of Russian airline tickets abroad. This dealt him a heavy blow in terms of power. Yeltsin's approval ratings were also declining, and people turned to support Luzhkov, who fired the prime minister and appointed Putin as prime minister.
The struggle for the highest power in Russia is intensifying. As the new prime minister, Putin has become one of the new stars. Luzhkov, on the other hand, was subjected to frenzied denigration by the television station behind Berezovsky's command, and his support fell sharply. At the same time, the billionaire actively organized a new parliamentary party to support Putin, and he successfully played the role of a "king pusher".
Yeltsin's illness worsened, and eventually he handed over supreme power in Russia to Putin. When Putin was asked by television about the future of these oligarchs, Putin said that if you asked about "those who melt or help melt power and money — there will be no such a class of oligarchs." Putin clearly understands the harm that the oligarchic capitalist economy poses to Russia. Berezovsky still had expectations for the new president.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, left, meets with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on December 27, 1999.
Putin is expected to solve institutional problems from the root, establish a competition mechanism, and be market-oriented and take the law as the criterion. But instead of attacking the system, Putin began attacking Gusinsky. Eventually, Gusinski was arrested on suspicion of being involved in an old privatization case involving a St. Petersburg television company, "Russian Images." Later, in an interview after his release, he said the Kremlin had divided the tycoons into "friends" and "enemies," and that he belonged to the enemy. Gusinsky's bad luck did not end, and Putin's appointed information minister told him that if he sold the company to Gazprom, he could be freed. In the end, Gusinsky surrendered everything and fled to Israel.
Berezovsky was not spared. Putin and Berezovsky have a disagreement over Chechnya, and Putin demanded that Berezovsky cut off all contact with chechen terrorists. But he told the new Russian president that Chechnya's problems should not be resolved by force. This buried the hidden danger of a rupture between the two sides. Later, in a power reshuffle led by Putin, he prepared to manage the existing 89 regional governors with seven new unelected government officials. Five of the seven nominees were former KGB personnel or military personnel. Putin also sought legal grounds for him to fire government officials. Berezovsky regarded this as an "act of dictatorship."
Berezovsky appealed to Putin that the Russian Federation should be loose and even transformed into a more autonomous, independent regional union. But Putin didn't listen at all. He wrote a long, personal letter to Putin, but never heard back. After Berezovsky sent an open letter expressing humiliation, Putin became angry. In his view, the oligarchs and the television stations they control are destroying the entire country.
The confrontation between the two sides soon ended with Putin's victory. Under pressure, Berezovsky transferred his share of Russian public television to his partner in the Siberian oil company, Roman Abramovich, a new generation of young oligarchs willing to work with the Kremlin. Putin left Berezovsky's last words: "You are one of the people who elected me president. How can you complain? Berezovsky was speechless.
After Putin forced Gusinsky and Berezovsky to leave Russia, he reached a consensus with the remaining oligarchs: if you don't interfere in the Kremlin's internal affairs, then you can preserve the wealth you made from the 1990s.
shop
Mikhail Khodorkovsky was one of the many oligarchs who survived and developed best. Global oil prices remain high, Yukos Oil makes a lot of money, and Khodorkovsky and his core partners receive billions of dollars in dividends. In 2002, Khodorkovsky disclosed yukos's ownership structure for the first time. Because he realized that if he followed more open and honest Western rules, his wealth would multiply.
Good times don't always come. One day in 2003, during a periodic meeting with Putin in the Kremlin, Khodorkovsky unexpectedly complained about the long period of corruption in the government. Putin responded in a threatening tone: "Yukos has so many oil reserves, how does it get these energy?" Soon after, Khodorkovsky became a threatening target of the Kremlin political movement. Seven months later, he was arrested and taken to Moscow, where he was imprisoned on charges of fraud and tax evasion. On December 30, 2010, he was sentenced to prison until 2017.
On December 28, 2010, Khodorkovsky, the former richest man in Russia, left, and his business partner, Liebedev, appeared in court again.
Putin has placed his trusted former security services or colleagues in his hometown of St. Petersburg into key ministries. Not only that, but many people have been appointed as directors of state-owned enterprises, such as Igor Sechin, a colleague of his St. Petersburg, who became chairman of Rosneft in 2004; Victor Ivanov, who served in the KGB department in Leningrad and later as chairman of Aeroflot; and Medvedev, known as Anthonyrpto Putin's old colleague in St. Petersburg and later chairman of the State Gas Corporation. With these old colleagues and friends, Putin has built a vast political and business structure with self-centered, crisscrossed spider webs.
The only tycoons who "survived" were those like Abramovich who worked with Putin. In the early days, Abramovich started from scratch and had no strong political connections until he established contact with Berezovsky. But with Putin in power, nimble Abramovich found a way to survive. In 2005, Abramovich sold a 72 percent stake in Siberian Oil to Gazprom for $13.1 billion. Later he became a member of the State Duma and the governor of the remote Chukotka Autonomous Region, investing his money in the local economy. In 2003, Abu bought Chelsea in the Premier League for £150 million. The following year he became the richest man on Britain's Forbes Rich List.
Abramovich
Years later, Abu paid the price for his close ties with the Kremlin – after the russo-Ukrainian war broke out, the British government announced sanctions against him, and the super-rich man's assets in Britain were frozen.
The film "Russian Tycoon", based on the history of Berezovsky's origins, has this poem:
You will breed a whole bunch of wolves on Earth
And teach them to swing their tails
You will pay the price later
You'll understand, later
Only under loyalty can there be "freedom." Loyalty comes first. Because of the loyalty of his colleagues, Putin can grasp the economic lifeline of Russia in his hands and give him the confidence to compete with any country; because of loyalty, Putin cannot tolerate Ukraine's "betrayal"; but also because of loyalty, the Russian economic system, industrial entrepreneurship lack vitality, under the sanctions of European and American powers, can only rely on the energy industry to support.
Resources:
1. Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in New Russia, David Horman
2. Putin: The Logic of Power, Huber Sepper
3. Documentary "Interview with Putin", directed by Oliver Stone
4. Putin Politics: Democracy and Power in Russia, Li Honggu
5. Power and the Iron Fist: A Biography of Putin, Angus Roxborough
*Title image purchased from Visual China