No-ligarchy: The Tragicomic Collapse of Russia's
Former Masters
By Mark Ames ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] )
When the eXile launched in February 1997, Russia's
oligarchy ruled over the economy, the president, and
the mass media. They owned everything, and they
flaunted it loudly.
At the time, it made us furious. Low pay and excess
amounts of free powdered uranium only heightened the
sense of outrage, that we now see was aimed not so
much at the oligarchs as at the Western cabal that
marketed them. If you opposed their mission in Russia,
you were a revanchist, you "just didn't get it," or
worse, you were a Communist. Thanks to a seamless,
venal link between the interests of the Russian
oligarchs, the Clinton Administra-tion, international
lending institutions and finance, the neo-liberal
punditry that propagandized on its behalf, and
finally, at the bottom of this grotesque
career-advancing chain, the hagfish of humanity -- the
Western press corps -- the oligarchs not only got away
with theft, they were considered heroes of Progress.
Only now, in the increasingly bland, dry,
bureaucratic-fascism of the Putin era, do we realize
how much we miss the Russian Oligarchy, some of the
most colorful, most amoral characters ever assembled.
What happened to them? While many praise Putin's
successful bitch-slapping of the oligarch class, few
actually stop to wonder where they are -- which is too
bad, because this story has all the juicy, depressing
humor of an E! biop on the cast of Diff'rent Strokes,
only on a grander scale.
Russia's oligarchy was created in late 1995 in the
so-called "loans-for-shares" scheme, in which a small
group of well-connected and mostly-balding
ex-Communist youth leaguers, brilliant goons and
two-bit shysters were handed the Soviet Union's crown
jewels in return for cash "loans" -- dirty cash which
had largely been stolen the previous few years by the
same newly-appointed oligarchs -- in auctions that
were laughably rigged. The noble purpose of all of
this theft and corruption was to help bankroll Boris
Yeltsin's successful re-election campaign in 1996 --
and therefore, ensure the triumph of the forces of
good over Communist evil. In March of that year, the
most savage and successful of the bunch -- the
so-called "Semibankirschina" or "Seven Bankers" (a
misnomer, since by all accounts the number included
anywhere from nine to about 15 key oligarchs) -- met
with Yeltsin to officially throw their weight behind
the Godfather who made them in the first place.
It his hard to imagine today that just six or seven
years ago, perfectly reasonable, successful,
well-educated Americans and Brits proudly appeared on
television or argued in print that this gang of some
of the most vicious thieves the world has ever known
should be considered the modern-day equivalent of
capitalist ubermenschen along the lines of Andrew
Carnegie, with a hefty dose of American Protestant
Horatio Algers self-made mythos thrown into the mix.
They argued that the creation of the oligarchy was
"necessary" for the transition from communism to
capitalism, that there was "no other way to do it,"
even though the world abounds with all kinds of
counter-examples, from the authoritarian gradualism of
the Chinese to the more humane approach taken by the
Hungarians and Poles. In fact the whole idea of
"necessary stages" itself comes from bogus
Marxian-Hegelian teleology, but try telling that to a
Michael McFaul or a Charles Blitzer, and the next
thing you know you're the Communist revanchist!
The fact is that thanks largely to the oligarchs, who
by their own account controlled over half of Russia's
economy, Russia saw its GDP plunge by some 60% in the
1990s, while its population suffered one of the most
appalling declines, even by wartime genocide
standards.
Today, the oligarchy -- the so-called Rockafellers of
Russia -- are a just an embarrassing 90s-retro memory,
like Love Parades and, well, 70s retro. But unlike
those miserable fads, we miss them. The age of
ferocious, colorful oligarchs is over, replaced by an
era of dull, obsequious bureaucrats and affected
patriotism. Gone are newscasts showing General
Prosecutors on TV banging whores; instead, we get
Putin meeting another official who explains how
production at a milk factory was increased.
So what happened to them? In this issue, the eXile
opens up the Where Are They Now? file on Russia's
nearly-extinct oligarchy.
1. Boris Berezovsky.
Status: EXILED.
Boris Berezovsky was the most colorful, most balding
and most Jewish (from a caricatured anti-Semite's
point of view) of the oligarchs, and he played his
roll better than anyone. Berezovsky got his oligarch's
start in the late perestroika years when his
automobile distribution firm, LogoVaz, allegedly
schemed to purchase Ladas at low "export" prices and
sold them back in the Soviet market at higher
"domestic" prices, reaping a huge profit from the
difference, simply by convincing the right people to
look the other way. In time, LogoVaz became the chief
distributor of AvtoVaz cars, and it wasn't because
their prices beat the competition's.
As if this price scam wasn't enough, Russian
prosecutors in 2002 alleged that Berezovsky simply
started stealing cars off the lot -- thousands of them
-- and selling the "free" cars again at "domestic"
prices.
After surviving a car bomb assassination attempt in
1994 -- in which his driver's head was sent shooting
off into the bushes -- Berezovsky invested his
windfall into prize Russian assets and political
power, going overnight from a bloodstained car
distributor to Davos-feted media and oil magnate and
kingmaker, thanks to the famous gifts he reportedly
lavished on the Yeltsin family. Among Berezovsky's
holdings were Sibneft, Aeroflot, and ORT television,
in many ways the most lucrative prize of all since
Berezovsky used the state channel to promote his
interests. Recently-murdered Forbes editor Paul
Khlebnikov, claimed Berezovsky stole ORT by ordering
the hit on Vladislav Listyev, ORT's popular journalist
and general director, after which Berezovsky took
control. (Inci-dentally, Khlebnikov's Russian
publisher, Valery Streletsky, claimed that he was
working on a book investigating Listyev's murder this
year when he was gunned down in front of Forbes'
Moscow office.)
In 1999, Berezovsky was one of the key backers of
Putin's run for the presidency against the Yuri
Luzhkov/Yevgeny Pri-makov faction, his sworn enemies.
Several reports claim that Berezovsky engineered the
Second Chechen War in order to increase Putin's
popularity from around 2% in August, 1999, to his
crushing parliamentary victory and assumption of total
power just four months later. Around that time,
Berezovsky famously claimed, "I could have got a
monkey elected president." Unfortunately for
Berezovsky, he never saw Planet of the Apes -- and
therefore didn't anticipate that his monkey would
eventually cage the humans.
Which Putin did, after ORT's critical coverage of
Putin's handling of the Kursk submarine disaster in
the summer of 2000. Before the end of the year,
Berezovsky barely escaped Butyrskaya jail and
snagglepussed out to London in permanent eXile, while
two of his less-fortunate associates at Aeroflot,
where he allegedly devised a scheme to embezzle all of
the Russian airliner's foreign earnings, are still
rotting behind Russian bars.
Best Quote:Sometimes you are Boris Yefimovich,
sometimes you are Boris Abramovich, and sometimes you
try to be Boris Nikolayevich." Berezovsky to
then-Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, reminding
Nemtsov that he too is Jewish and will never be
president of Russia. For this, Berezovsky was accused
of anti-Semitism.
Transformation: Re-discovered his Jewish roots in the
West after having previously converted to Orthodox
Christianity in order to "get ahead" in Russia. Also,
after having made a monkey president, manipulated the
media and allegedly nudged the start of the Second
Chechen War, Berezovsky is now one of Russia's premier
crusaders for democracy, free speech, and peace in
Chechnya.
Accused: Outstanding warrants for his arrest for
embezzling hundreds of millions from Aeroflot and up
to $2 billion from AvtoVaz. Also claims that he funds
Chechen separatists.
Wealth bombed by: 80%. From $3 billion in 1997 to $620
million today, or just number 47 on the Forbes' top
100 for Russian.
Silver Lining Factor: Splits his time between London
and his $30 million home in Cote d'Antibes in the
south of France. Sent bottle of 50-year-old cognac to
eXile columnist Edward Limonov after he was released
from jail in July, 2003.
2. Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Status: JAILED.
We all know what happened to Khodorkovsky, so there is
no need to recount it. Two years ago he was the
world's darling. Now he's picking lice from his head.
Best Quote: "I don"t have to go to the president
anymore to ask whether there will be a redistribution
of property...I go to the Prime Minister." March 27,
2003.
Transformation: From world's favorite Russian
businessman to oppressed dissident to Moscow Times
page 7 Finance News in brief material.
Personal wealth bombed: From $15 billion to low
single-digits of billions, and falling.
Silver lining: At least no one's pretending that
Russia is transforming into an EU country ever since
his arrest and the outright theft of Yukos' assets for
Putin cronies.
3. Anatoly Chubais.
Status: SURVIVOR
It was Chubais who, as privatization chief and deputy
prime minister in charge of the economy, created the
oligarchy. As the locus point between American aid and
Clinton politics, international lending institutions,
neo-liberal polemics, and, by virtue of his
almost-Western-European ability to speak English and
choose the right suits, he also became the darling of
the Anglo-American press corps.
When the oligarchy began to split into factions after
Yeltsin's successful re-election, Chubais headed the
so-called St. Petersburg group (not to be confused
with President Putin's new "St. Petersburg -- Chekist"
faction) of radical reformers, which eventually backed
Oxeminbank chief and current Independent Media sugar
daddy Vladimir Potanin.
While it is clear that the loans-for-shares scheme
that Chubais oversaw amounted to little more than mass
theft in exchange for political power, no one has ever
proven exactly how he benefited. Rumors abound about
Chubais' secret holdings. Then, in the summer of 1997,
it was revealed that oligarch Alexander Smolensky gave
Chubais an "interest-free loan" worth $3 million,
right around the time that Chubais arranged a rigged
auction for Russia's second largest banking network,
AgroPromBank, which went to, you guessed it, Alexander
Smolensky.
Chubais' star fell further after he was implicated in
another kickback scandal, this one for a fake book
publishing advance from a company tied to oligarch
Vladimir Potanin's Onexim-bank...just around the time
that Oneximbank won a controversial auction for
Svyazinvest.
A few months after getting fired from the government
for this kickback scandal, Chubais was named chairman
of the board of Unified Energy, Russia's power
generating monopoly. Despite frequent calls for his
head, Putin has kept him there, perhaps keeping him
warm for the next time he needs to make a purge of the
oligarchy.
Clinton's top economic advisor and current Harvard
president Lawrence Summers had called Chubais "my dear
friend" and labeled him part of a Yeltsin "dream
team." In an ironic twist, over the past few years
Chubais came under scathing criticism from Western
investors who stood to lose plenty from his plan to
"break up" the Unified Energy monopoly. Ironic,
because when millions of Russians lost their
livelihood during Chubais' privatizations, Western
investors assured them that it was a "necessary"
phase.
Best Quote: "My ikh kinuli." ("We swindled them.")
Chubais on how he managed to squeeze $40 billion in
funds from the IMF and other international lending
organizations, all of which "disappeared."
Transformation: From neo-liberal to neo-nationalist.
In late 1999, Chubais vigorously supported the Second
Chechen War and labeled critic Grigory Yavlinsky a
"traitor."
Accused: This past summer a criminal case was briefly
opened against Chubais for allegedly defrauding the
state of tax revenues as head of Unified Energy. The
case was hushed in exchange for Chubais siding with
Putin against Yukos. Sergei Ste-pashin, head of the
Accounting Chamber, is an old Chubais ally and crony.
Personal fortune bombed by: Unknown. He's still in
good favor with Putin. Little is known about Chubais'
wealth, except that he has always worn nice suits, he
swindled the West out of tens of billions of dollars,
and he got an interest-free loan from Smolensky.
Incredibly enough, he didn't show up on Forbes' 100
list. On the other hand, he was named this year by a
Price-WaterhouseCoopers and Financial Times survey as
the world's 54th most respected business leader. Would
you like to know more?
Silver lining: Chubais has gotten incredibly fat, and
is now forced to diet. Waiting for the ax to fall has
not been good for his complexion either.
4. Alexander Smolensky.
Status: EXILED.
Another balding member of The Tribe, Alexander
Smo-lensky, ran the largest private banking system in
Russia prior to the 1998 default, thanks to Chubais'
rigged auction in his favor. After the '98 default
cost Russians and Westerners, including the Moscow
Times, billions, Smolensky openly and defiantly
sneered at the countless suckers whom he deemed
foolish enough to park their savings in his bank.
Smolensky got his start in the Brezhnev era working as
a dacha materials black marketer. He was sentenced in
1981 to two years in prison for embezzlement and
reports on him at the time warned that Smolensky had a
"tendency for swindling people." Under Yeltsin, he
parlayed his profits into a small, dicey bank,
Stolichny, and at one point in the mid-90s he fled
Russia fearing for his life and freedom... until
Chubais called him back to the motherland to annoint
him as one of the Semibankirshina.
Today he lives in Vienna in a Tony Montana-esque
guarded compound.
The prodigal son: whereas Smolensky pere was happy to
deal in dacha wood, Smolensky fils blew the trust fund
on the Eurotrash TVR car.
His 24-year-old Salnikovian boy, Nikolai Smolensky, is
a typical prodigal son. Niko made a $25 million vanity
purchase of boutique Eurotrash British carmaker, TVR,
which, under his watch, is going bust as fast as you
can say "fill 'er up." Already it went from
profitability to posting a $1.5 million loss, and has
over $5 million in Eurotrash TVR cars sitting unsold.
Best Quote: Said that foreign creditors who loaned his
bank $1 billion deserved "dead donkey ears" because he
would never pay them back.
Transformation: From Russian Jew to Russian Austrian.
Accused: Of so much embezzlement no one knows where to
start.
Personal fortune bombed by: about 80%, from over $1
billion in 1998 to $230 million today.
Silver lining: When Stolichny collapsed, Independent
Media lost $200,000 in accounts there, a hard lesson
they had to pay for believing their own lies about the
viability of the oligarch economy.
5. Vitaly Malkin.
Status: RETIRED IN DISGRACE
Melkin: didn_t steal all of eXile_s funds
Malkin rivaled Smolensky and Berezovsky for sheer
balding Jewishness. As head of Bank Rossisskii Kredit,
the third largest bank until the crisis of 1998,
Malkin was big-time enough to be an official member of
the Semibankirshina, which meant formal invitations to
Yeltsin tithing pleas.
After the collapse of Bank Rossisskii Kredit, Malkin
first reportedly fled to Israel, then later returned
to Moscow, where he quietly worked in the banking
sector and government sphere. Although BRK
disappeared, oddly enough on its same properties a new
bank, Impex, appeared, leaving creditors with nothing
to liquidate.
Little was heard of Malkin until 2002, when he was
named as a key figure in a Soviet-era Angolan debt
scandal in which then Prime Minister Mikhail "Two
Percent" Kasyanov reportedly profited.
In 2002, many Russian papers, including kompromat.ru,
reported that Malkin opened up his own "zakriti klub,"
essentially a large, grotesquely decked-out
casino-club. One of the rooms is apparently called the
"Hell Hall," and on its walls are large murals
depicting the oligarchs paying for their various sins
in Hell. No one knows what the "Paradise Hall" was
supposed to depict.
Malkin was a member of the Russian Jewish Congress.
Best Quote: "60% of Russian capital belongs to Jewish
business." Speaking on Israel TV's Second Channel,
October 3rd, 1996.
Transformation: From oligarch to nightclub owner.
Accused: Of arranging a Soviet-era Angolan debt
swindle.
Personal fortune bombed by: Unknown. Put it this way,
he went from being an oligarch to a club director.
Silver lining: Because the eXile predicted the banking
collapse in August, 1998, we only lost a few hundred
dollars in our BRK account.
6. Vladimir Gusinksy.
Status: EXILED
>From gypsy cab driver to theater hustler to head of
NTV and Most Bank, Vladimir Gusinsky was considered,
for a time, to be the "intellectual's oligarch." Until
1996, that is, when NTV shifted from maverick
journalism to becoming a Kremlin mouthpiece in
exchange for getting valuable broadcasting licenses,
essentially killing Russia's brief experiment with one
of the freest presses in modern times.
In 1999, Gusinsky, an old ally of Moscow Mayor Yuri
Luzhkov, threw his propagandistic weight behind the
losing Luzhkov-Primakov bloc, and got crushed. In
early 2000, Gazprom suddenly "discovered" massive
debts that NTV "owed" it, giving Putin his first taste
of media-stomping blood. Gusinsky, then head of the
Russian Jewish Congress, was briefly jailed and then
eXiled.
Gusinsky argued on the world stage that the
government's case against him was an attack on free
speech and classic Russian anti-Semitism, making him
the first of many futile oligarch-dissidents. Thanks
to massive "donations" he gave to scores of American
and Western foundations, congressmen and lobbyists,
Gusinsky was actually believed.
In fact, Putin's jailing of Gusinsky was little more
than a Mafia hit -- had Gusinsky's bloc won, his
opponents, Jewish and otherwise, would have suffered
the same fate.
Former Moscow Times economics columnist Peter Ekman
argued repeatedly at the time that the Kremlin's case
against NTV was grounded entirely in rational
economics rather than an attack on free speech. He
also accused the eXile of being a Nazi newspaper
because of our "Nazi Uniform of the Week" feature.
Gusinsky was jailed again in Spain and in Greece, and
currently lives in Israel. Ekman lost his job with the
Moscow Times and is currently teaching traffic school
classes in Wichita, Kansas.
Best Quote: "I want to thank everyone, all
journalists, both Russian and foreign -- thank you
all." June, 2000, upon being released from Butyrskaya
Prison.
Transformation: From leader of World Jewish Congress
to almost total confinement to world's only Jewish
state.
Personal Wealth bombed by: 24%. $400 million in 1997
to $310 million in 2004.
Silver lining: We don't have to watch Yevgeny Kiselyov
on television giving long three-minute questions
littered with participles, conjunctions, dangling
clauses and snorts through his mustache.
7. Vladimir Vinogradov:
Status: RETIRED IN DISGRACE, HEALTH FAILING
In 1997, Vinogradov was one of the Semibankirshina
thanks to his slickly marketed Inkombank, which not
only financed Yelstin's re-election, but also had a
big hand in pumping up the GKO and real estate market
bubbles. Vinogradov was not only a goy, but he lacked
a trademark bald spot, which may have marked him for
early doom among oligarchs, though not exile or jail.
Before the 1998 collapse, Inkombank was Russia's fifth
largest with assets of $2.5 billion. After losing all
of its billions, including those of Western lenders,
Inkombank was accused of deep involvement in the Bank
of New York money laundering scandal. Inkombank in
turn admitted that it had regularly bribed New York
Banking Department officials via offshore schemes.
Eventually the matter was dropped because it was too
embarrassing for both sides.
Sources told the eXile that ever since his bank
collapsed, Vinogradov's health has deteriorated
sharply due to chronic kidney failure. He tried
unsuccessfully a few other ventures, particularly in
the small-end banking sector, which apparently met
with similar success as Inkombank. The late 1998
Inkombank that is. He lives in Moscow and leaves a
"skromnii" life.
Best Quote: "In the past five years Mr. Vinogradov has
been implicated in massive world-wide financial
frauds, currency market manipulations, financing of
narcotics trafficking, laundering of illicit proceeds,
contract murder and other Russian mob-related
activities." Emanuel E. Zeltser, American Russian Law
Institute, speaking before a Congressional
sub-committee, September, 1999.
Transformation: From "scary" to "skromnii."
Personal fortune bombed by: He ain't even on the
Russia 100 anymore.
Silver lining: The collapse of Inkombank allowed the
most interesting details about his frightening rise to
power to emerge.
8. Viktor Chernomyrdin.
Status: INTERNAL EXILE
Chernomyrdin aims at a baby freshwater seal. He was
known to "hunt" for bear cubs that were tied and
bound.
In 1997, while Chernomyrdin was prime minister, a
French newspaper claimed to have discovered that he
owned 2% of Gazprom stock, making him worth roughly
two to seven billion dollars or more. When Izvestiya
reprinted that, its editor was sacked, presaging
Putin's recent sacking of Izvestia editor Raf Shakirov
by a good seven years. A symbol of smug Red Director
venality in the Yeltsin era, Chernomyrdin was the
classic cuss-happy, dirty-joke-telling, hard-driving
bureaucrat who made a lot of people feel comfortable,
knowing that at least all the money wasn't going to
bald, sweaty Jews like Berezovsky.
The CIA passed information in 1995 to then-vice
president Al Gore that Chernomyrdin was "highly
corrupt," accusing him of widespread bribery and theft
of possible "billions," while Yuri Skokov, former head
of Yeltsin's presidential security, called
Chernomyrdin "the chief mafiosi of the country."
In early 1998, Chernomyrdin's disastrous five-year
stint was abruptly cut short when Yeltsin fired him in
favor of whippersnapper Sergei Kiriyenko. Chernomyrdin
almost made a comeback after the bank default in
August 1998...but then, miraculously, he was shut down
by the left-leaning Duma in favor of the almost-Putin,
Yevgeny Primakov.
In 2001, Chernomyrdin was eXiled to Ukraine when he
was named by Putin as Russia's ambassador. He remains
in Kiev today, tasked with trying to rig Ukrainian
politics to make sure that it doesn't become
Westernized and wealthy, but rather remains a cesspool
bad enough to make Russians proud of their own
country.
Chernomyrdin's crony at Gazprom, Rem Viakhyrev, was
forced to step aside for Putin's chekists in 2001.
Oddly enough, ever since Miller took over Gazprom, he
ran it a lot like Viakhyrev: make a lot of noise about
privatizing, transparency and freeing up share prices
for Westerners while stealing billions for themselves
in shady schemes.
Best Quote: "We wanted things to get better, but they
turned out the same as always." 1998. On why Russia
never improved under his watch.
Transformation: From tan president-in-waiting to
obedient servant-in-exile.
Personal wealth bomb by: If he hasn't been forced to
give back his Gazprom shares that he allegedly owns,
he can afford a lot of salo in Kiev.
9. Vladimir Potanin.
Status: PRESERVED FOR FUTURE PURGE
When the oligarchs resumed their intra-war in late
1996, Anatoly Chubais wisely chose to side with the
goy, Oneximbank's Vladimir Potanin. Chubais installed
Potanin as deputy minister in charge of the economy in
the interim period in 1996 when Chubais was out of the
White House; when Potanin returned to the "private
sector" to reap the spoils that he arranged while
minister, Chubais returned to the ministerial fold and
proceeded to help Potanin become what Washington Post
opinion page editor Fred Hiatt would admiringly call a
"baby billionaire."
After the financial collapse in 1998, Potanin lost
Oneximbank (or rather, those who did business with
Onexim lost their money, and Potanin transferred all
of his assets into his new bank) as well as his oil
company, Sidanco, which was later stripped by TNK.
Ironically, Sidanco was part-"owned" by British
Petroleum, which now "owns" half of TNK. Uh-huh.
Potanin's comeback from the grave was remarkable and
unexpected. Thanks largely to his Norilsk Nickel
"investment," in which he commandeered tens of
billions worth of metals reserves in return for a
couple hundred million in an auction in which his only
competitor was a firm "headed" by Rashid Ismatulin, a
drunkard who lived with his mother in the village of
Alabushevo.
As commodity prices soared, Potanin managed to recoup
other "investments" in the metals and industrial
sector, allowing him to return to oligarch status
under Putin. Other profits were washed through the
media sector. Prof-Media, Potanin's empire, bought a
45% stake in Independent Media, parent company of the
Moscow Times.
Potanin was accused of harboring similar putschish
ambitions as Khodorkovsky by the siloviki, so in June
of 2003, just before the crackdown against Yukos,
Potanin gave a famous groveling speech before the
United Russia party in which he confessed his
counter-Putin sins. Thus far, he has been spared,
though changes have taken place in Prof-Media's
management. This past spring, the heat was on so hard
that Potanin fled the country for nearly two months.
Best Quote: "Mr. Khodor-kovsky's sins are political,
they are not economic...Business, by definition,
cannot be in opposition to the authorities."
Transformation: From "baby billionaire" to repentant
has-been and back to billionaire oligarch, and then
penitent billionaire oligarch.
Personal fortune bombed: upwards. Today he's worth
$5.5 billion, five times more than in 1998.
Silver lining: Club Stone's, opened as a pafosny
playground for Potanin's Interos empire boasting a $7
million interior including real gold toilet seats,
sucked so badly it closed. Now, as it reopens, it has
to pass out flyers to attract people.
10, 11. Mikhail Friedman and Pyotr Aven.
Status: SITTIN' PERTY.
Friedman: a picture of health, financially.
Best Quote: "I"m a supporter of Pinochet, not as a
person but as a politician who produced results for
his country." Pyotr Aven, 1999.
Transformation: None necessary. In 1992, Putin took a
trip on Pyotr Aven's yacht in the Cote d'Azur. Would
you like to know more?
Personal fortune bombed by: Ask Sir John Brown that
question.
Silver lining: Ames' ex-girlfriend's father no longer
runs TNK.
12. Maxim Boiko.
Status: CONFINED TO WHEELCHAIR
Maxim Boiko: smiling no more.
In the first eXile article covering the oligarchs,
"Baldfellas," written by former co-editor Matt Taibbi
and published in September 1997, Boiko was listed as
one of the new key players and a crony of Anatoly
Chubais. Boiko had just been appointed new head of
privatization, where he would oversee the
controversial auction of Svyazinvest, an auction that
was praised by American journalists as "fair" and
"transparent," but which turned out to be what George
Soros called his worst investment ever -- even though
the rigged auction favored his team!
Boiko was fired a few months later for his involvement
in the same book advance kickback scheme that Chubais
was nailed for. Incidentally, before getting fired,
Boiko named German Gref head of the St. Petersburg
Property Committee, thus setting the Grefter's career
in motion.
Yastrzhembsky and Boiko's ex Nastya just got hitched.
And this is where the story gets darkly funny. Like
most Russian oligarchs, Boiko made the South of France
his home-away-from-home. Shortly after the crash in
1998, Boiko, according to an eXile source, was
partying in the Cote d'Azur with friends, getting
drunk and stoned out of his mind, when a party-pooping
French neighbor called the gendarme on the unruly
Russian savages. Boiko and his pal were sitting on the
ledge of their multi-story villa overlooking the
Mediterranean when the police suddenly banged on the
door, and Boiko, paranoid from all the skunk and
whiskey, jumped off the roof...and broke his back.
Today he is in a wheelchair, paralyzed.
Best Quote: "Privatization should be honest, effective
and open." August, 1997.
Transformation: From hyper-active young reformer to
poster child for temperance.
Personal Wealth bombed by: Is he even worth the tires
on his wheelchair anymore?
Silver lining: Boiko's famous babe-girlfriend dumped
him after he went Christopher Reeves on her, and
recently married Kremlin press tsar Sergei
Yastrzhembsky.
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Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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