FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE - III



















ABRAMOVICH MUST KEEP HIS CROWN BUT IS RELEGATED IN OLIGARCH LEAGUE

Roman Abramovich has lost a title that he would rather have kept and kept one that he wanted to lose after a day that illuminated the rules of life in President Putin’s Russia.

The Chelsea owner was overtaken as Russia’s richest man by an aluminium magnate whose estimated fortune of $21.2 billion (£10.8 billion) is said to make him $200 million richer than Mr Abramovich, whose football club is second in the English Barclaycard remier-ship. In another reversal, Mr Putin compelled Mr Abramovich to remain in office as governor of a far-flung region in the Arctic Circle two months after he tried to resign.

Mr Putin plainly means to keep a grip on the oligarchs as next year’s presidential elections approach. Despite Mr Abramovich’s billions, he has to display loyalty to Mr Putin. Mr Putin’s power-play also illustrates the uneasy relationship between the Kremlin and the business elite whose wealth is resented by ordinary Russians, who believe that much of it was stolen in privatisation deals in the 1990s. The Kremlin said that Mr Putin valued Mr Abramovich’s work as Governor in impoverished Chukotka.

Mr Abramovich’s huge investments to improve living standards in Chukotka are often cited as an example to others in showing loyalty to the Kremlin.

The jailing of Mikhail Khod-orkovsky, who was the richest...
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foto: alexander rodchenko (link)