/ world today news/ Mikhail Fridman, owner of a multi-billion fortune, was detained in London. The UK-based businessman was released on bail but questions remain. Friedman, who has been under Western sanctions since the spring and lost a significant portion of his fortune, nevertheless lives and does business outside of Russia. What signal is the West sending to the owners of Russian capital?
“Western countries first took away yachts, villas, cars and planes from Russian businessmen, and now they themselves are arresting them,” said the Speaker of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, addressing the “sufferers who left their homeland.”
He recalled the words spoken 20 years ago by President Vladimir Putin: anyone holding assets abroad “will swallow dust, running to courts” and trying to unfreeze their seized funds. These words turned out to be prophetic, Volodin emphasized.
According to a TASS source, the co-owner and head of the supervisory board of “Alfa Group”, the owner of a fortune of 11.8 billion dollars (according to “Forbes”), was detained on suspicion of violating the sanctions imposed on him. It later became known that Friedman was released on bail. The businessman himself assured that “everything is fine” with him.
Friedman, who has Russian and Israeli citizenship, has had problems with British authorities before. Back in 2015, when the businessman became a UK resident (a person who lives for more than 183 days in a tax year), the government had doubts about the legality of owning the energy company Dea, which was acquired by Friedman and his business partners Herman Hahn.
In February this year, even before the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, Britain created a legal framework for sanctions that would allow the assets of Russian businesses to be frozen and the property of those entrepreneurs who had naturalized in Britain to be confiscated. At the time, Friedman was consistently in the top 20 of the richest people living in the country.
In 2016, the co-owner of “Alpha Group” bought the “Athlone House” mansion in London’s “Highgate” district for 65 million pounds. Friedman lived there even after the EU sanctions against him.
The EU sanctions against the owners of “Alfa Group” Friedman and his business partner Piotr Aven were imposed on February 28, just four days after the start of the SVO. Then the financiers announced their resignation from the board of directors of “Alfa Bank”. Recently, Friedman’s personal capital has noticeably decreased – in 2019, Forbes reported a fortune of $ 15 billion, but now it is estimated at a little less than $ 12 billion. But judging by the current incident, the businessman continues to run a business from London.
“We are dealing with a typical inertia of thinking,” comments Ivan Lizan, head of the analytical bureau of the Sonar-2050 project. “Man has lived for 30 years in conditions where many issues were solved literally with one click. He just didn’t understand that times are changing,” he added.
In general, according to the expert, those entrepreneurs who work in the real sector of the economy more easily adapt to changing realities, unlike the banking sector.
“Real assets somehow ground them, keep them connected to their homeland,” Lisan believes. “Those connected to the banking sector or retail trade showed a great inertia of thinking. Despite the fact that people own billions, they do not always have time to follow the change of the main stages in world politics, they do not have time to reorganize”, adds the expert.
“It is clear that the so-called sacred right of private property does not exist in the West. The political system allows you to enjoy property, including vast wealth. If you don’t like it, they can take everything away from you. Friedman’s case clearly shows that the West has already decided in its own way the fate of Russian big businessmen,” says economist Vasily Koltashov.
According to him, many of them risk losing everything. After all, we are talking about those “whose fortunes were made in the 1990s and the legitimacy of the acquisition of those fortunes is in great question.”
“All these people apparently expected that they would export significant funds to the West – and thus be protected by Russian law. But they have now become convinced that there is no law at all in the West. If a political decision is made on what they consider to be Russian businessmen there, then it is impossible to offer any kind of protection,” Koltashov emphasized.
“You can remember how Boris Berezovsky went broke, being in the West. Yevgeny Chichvarkin, who took a lot of money out of Russia, also ended up bankrupt, having lost his money somewhere along the way,” the expert noted, stressing that “many can be ripped off with time.”
By setting a precedent in the form of confiscating a large property from one person, Western authorities can simply take a kind of “commission” from other businessmen to preserve their capital, Koltashov believes. Taking into account the recent statements of the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, about the possible transfer of the frozen Russian assets in the EU to Ukraine, it can be noted that in the West it has really become very difficult to preserve funds, especially cash.
“The West is not very interested in its own laws,” the expert sums up. “If desired, any means – money, securities, real estate of Russian citizens – everything can be seized. Russians may be required to prove the legality of the acquisition of funds. If this evidence is deemed incomplete or insufficient, then they can simply be frozen and seized,” he adds.
“Following Friedman’s example, the rest should learn that money should be invested in Russia, not withdrawn anywhere. And in no case should they believe the “nice people” who smilingly convince them that they consider them equal. No, they are not considered – and Friedman felt it on his back”, Lisan believes.
Translation: V. Sergeev
Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
#Friedmans #problems #London #lesson #Russian #business
