With palaces, planes, and yachts – He is universally regarded as one of the richest men on earth.
Putin’s surge to power – and incomprehensible wealth – began in the early 1990s in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse.
He started his career in politics as an advisor to the mayor of St. Petersburg, before moving to Moscow and taking a job in the Kremlin where he rose through the ranks under the wing of President Boris Yeltsin, whom he replaced as President in 2000.
Russia was mired in economic turmoil after the Soviet Union fell and the government was in desperate need of money. Putin, who had a prominent position in the infamous KGB state security service before his move into politics, was involved in arranging the privatization of state-owned assets.
Under Yeltsin, Putin and a host of economic advisers sold off these assets to a small group of businessmen for a fraction of their actual value and subsequently awarded them state contracts, creating a class of Russian oligarchs whose wealth skyrocketed while normal Russian citizens struggled by.
Putin and his cronies not only received kickbacks from these sales, but effectively curated a Godfather-like arrangement with the oligarchs – riches in exchange for loyalty, and ultimately, subordination.
Russia’s oligarchs quickly came to dominate key sectors of the economy such as oil and gas, mining and telecommunications, with lucrative returns.
But they know they owed their fortune to Putin, who has long maintained absolute power in Russia. As such, Putin is free to take and use what he likes, from whom he likes, and uses them as proxies to conceal his own personal wealth via a complex web of shell companies, offshore banks and secretive transactions.
But several estimates have valued his vast fortune as high as £200 billion or more.
