Broke Oligarch
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-03-17/broke-russian-oligarch-fridman-says-sanctioned-billionaires-can-t-sway-putinFridman, 57, was born and raised in the Soviet Union in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. He was a first-wave oligarch, making a fortune in banking and energy before Putin’s rise to power. His parents are Ukrainian citizens who until recently lived part of the year in an apartment in Lviv.
Fridman was worth about $14 billion before the war, according to Bloomberg. He’s now worth about $10 billion on paper and is in the strange position of being an oligarch with essentially no cash. When the U.K. followed the EU and sanctioned Fridman on March 15, his last working bank card in the U.K. was frozen. He tells me he now must apply for a license to spend money, and the British government will determine if any request is “reasonable.” It appears that this will mean an allowance of roughly £2,500 a month. He’s exasperated, but careful not to compare his woes with those of Ukrainians suffering from the war. “My problems are really nothing compared with their problems,” he says.
Even though the U.S. has not sanctioned Fridman, the EU and U.K. measures led his accounts to be frozen; the day after Brussels announced sanctions, he found his bank card didn’t work. Now he’s trying to figure out how to pay for small things such as a house cleaner. “Maybe I should clean the house myself,” he says with a nervous chuckle. “That’s fine. I used to live in a small dormitory room with four men when I was a student, but after 35 years it’s unexpected.”
Fridman says he has two months to challenge the EU’s sanctions. Fridman holds an Israeli passport, but when I ask whether he might move to Israel, he waves off the idea. He doesn’t own a home there and doesn’t have access to money to buy one. “I’m a prisoner here,” he says.
Just before we met, he says, he got a call from a Ukrainian friend who was helping relatives flee Kharkiv. Fridman says he offered his parents’ two-bedroom apartment in Lviv, which has so far avoided direct Russian hits. He says the flat is now a temporary home for 15 refugees.
A few days after our meeting, the U.K. sanctioned Fridman, and this time he calls me, with no obvious reason except to say that things are getting worse. He sounds at a loss. “I don’t know how to live,” he tells me. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
To be a billionaire and not own Bitcoin is pure stupidity. Firstly, so what if it's risky, you're a billionaire you can afford large drawdowns. Secondly, you're a Russian billionaire, Russia has been targeted with sanctions for years now (including individuals), you really should of been prepared for this. Surely, he would at least have some gold jewellery floating about that he can off load.
Story sounds like bullshit to me.