Abramovich is notoriously coy, and has talked only in the vaguest terms
about the source of his wealth.
about the source of his wealth.
Abramovich [Britain's richest man, Roman Abramovich, the 22nd richest man in the world] is the protege of Boris Berezovsky, a maths professor turned car dealership tycoon, who helped him secure a hold over Sibneft in 1995 - until Berezovsky fled to Britain in 2000. Russia's richest oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a majority shareholder in Yukos oil, struck a merger deal with Abramovich last year - although it is now in the hands of lawyers after Khodorkovsky was jailed pending trial on fraud and tax evasion charges.
Sharing the same social circle is Ralif Safin, who controls a $300m stake in Russian energy giant Lukoil and who last summer was linked to a bid to buy Manchester United. Oleg Deripaska, Abramovich's shareholding partner in RusAl, is said to be worth $820m, while Mikhail Fridman, another of Abramovich's competitors, has recently made himself even richer by selling 50% of Tyumen Oil to BP for $3.72bn. But how did Abramovich make so much money in such a short amount of time? How did one man come to control a reported $5.3bn stake in Sibneft, a state energy provider that only 10 years ago was bequeathed to Russia's citizens, predominantly the tens of thousands of Soviet oil workers and managers who built the industry?
Adrian Levy_Cathy Scott-Clark/GuradianUK May.08.04
What these men have done to Russia, and the Russian people, they will do to America, and England.
