Russia's richest businessmen are increasingly frantic that President Vladimir Putin's policies in Ukraine will lead to crippling sanctions and are too scared of reprisal to say so publicly, billionaires and analysts said. Mrs. Bobby told me last evening that they were pulling their money out of Russia. This is the closest I could find.
If Putin doesn't move to end the war in Ukraine in the wake of last week's downing of a Malaysia Air jet in rebel-held territory, he risks becoming an international outcast like Belarus's Aleksandr Lukashenko, whom the U.S. famously labeled Europe's last dictator, one Russian billionaire said on condition of anonymity. What's happening is bad for business and bad for Russia, he said.
"The economic and business elite is just in horror," said Igor Bunin, who heads the Center for Political Technology in Moscow. Nobody will speak out because of the implicit threat of retribution, Bunin said by phone yesterday. "Any sign of rebellion and they'll be brought to their knees."
Does The Bear have an IRS? Oh, I guess the KGB/FSS/FIS would suffice.
The U.S. has already imposed penalties on state-run companies and members of Putin's inner circle. The latest sanctions, announced a day before the Malaysia Air attack, barred OAO Novatek, a gas producer partly owned by Timchenko, from using U.S. debt markets for new financing with maturities longer than 90 days. Novatek's London shares fell 8 percent over two days, cutting its market value by almost $3 billion.
Just a little ripple in the stock market, no big deal.
Amid market turmoil provoked by the Ukraine conflict, the 19 richest Russians lost $14.5 billion since the start of the year, compared to an increase in wealth of $56.5 billion for the richest 64 Americans, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
In round, fat numbers, each Rooshian billionaire lost a billion, while each Capitalist/Socialist/Marxist American made a billion. Evocative comparison, don't you think?