Translated material
How difficult it is to be a billionaire
The potassium tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlev, who turned the business in Russia after a dispute with Igor Sechin, had problems in the West
The president and owner of the Monaco club Dmitry Rybolovlev (in the center of the picture) watches the training of his wards before an important match, February 2016. Photo: asmonaco.com
The news that the Russian billionaire fell into disgrace in the principality of Monaco made a lot of noise last week. According to Le Journal Du Dimanche, without calling the source of information, Dmitry Rybolovlev was declared persona non grata at the court of Prince Albert II. The businessman was at the center of anti -corruption investigation with the participation of high -ranking police officials and judges in Monaco.
However, at the beginning of this week, Monaco's Ambassador to Russia Mireille Pettiy denied the information that Rybolovlev ordered an entrance to the palace. And Albert himself said that the future of the principality, in view of the "case of Rybolovlev", does not threaten anything and that he "completely trusts the police and justice."
How, however, until recently, Alber's friend and the favorite of local fans became a character of criminal reports overnight?
Vivat, Dimitri!
On May 31, 2013, the Circus “Shapito” in the principality of Monaco was full of excited football fans. They waved red and white scarves with the symbols of the local football club, sang a club anthem in chorus and chanted two slogans-“Daghe munegu!” and "Dimitri!" The first translated from the local dialect meant “Come on, Monaco!”, In the second case, the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev was meant, who entered the stage with his lawyer and at the same time as a translator, spectacular brown -haired Tatyana Bershed.
A year and a half before, in December 2011, Rybolovlev, who was rich on potassium fertilizers, acquired 66.67% of FC Monaco from the princely family of Grimaldi. It is believed that the transaction amount was only € 1, but the billionaire promised Grimaldi to invest at least € 100 million in the club over the next four years. By the time the Shapito scene, the promise was already overfulfilled - and thanks to the transfers of expensive FC Monaco players, he rose in the ranking of French football clubs from the bottom of the second league in the first. On this occasion, the fans triumphed then, and Prince Monaco Albert II gave a souvenir to Rybolovlev - a square football.
Prince Monaco Albert II and a billionaire fisherman are both passionate football fans. Photo: ftbl.ru
In total, Rybolovlev invested more than € 300 million in the Monak football club. He subsequently moved away from the purchase of stars in the manner of early Roman Abramovich in Chelsea and relied on talented youth. The team performed more and more successfully, and its players began to line up lines from agents of other teams.
In May of this year, Monaco for the first time in 17 years became the champion of France. In the video posted in the club channel on YouTube, Rybolovlev and Albert II throw each other in arms on the rostrum of the stadium in the final of the decisive match. “A feeling of deep satisfaction and happiness,” the billionaire says in Russian in Russian. “We went to this result for so long!”
But in September, Le Monde published the correspondence of the birch with the Justice Minister of the Principality Philip Narmino, who was resting in the villa at Rybolovlev, and wondered if this behavior of the Minister of Influence was. On the same day, Narmino resigned, and a week later he was detained. He was released on the same day, but the Prosecutor's Office of Monaco announced the investigation of anti -corruption against unnamed suspects.
The current troubles of the billionaire, as his representative Sergei Chernitsyn says, associates with an attempt to “expose-publicly and in court-the biggest fraud ever known in the market of works of art.” We are talking about the criminal case against his art dealer Iva Buvier, opened in 2015. Rybolovlev, whose fortune in 2017, Forbes estimated at $ 7.3 billion, believes that when forming an art collection, Buvier, due to high commissions, deceived him almost a billion dollars. So the price of the question is noticeable for both sides of this case.
The billionaire himself, in an official statement for the press, called "Mediavers" around his name "Pure Fiction". “I refute unreasonable rumors and false allegations regarding my obligations as the head of the Monaco football club,” his comment says.
Syringes, beer, voucher
30 years ago, a third-third-year student of the Perm Medical University Dmitry Rybolovlev hardly thought that he would have to defiantly shun the ruler of Monaco and regret the picasso bought executive. He just just married a classmate Elena Chiparkova. Soon they had a daughter Katya. Dmitry, for nothing that the son of a professor of the same institute, immediately began to work in his specialty-first a nurse in cardiological resuscitation, then-a nurse, and there, a intern in the cardiological resuscitation of the 2nd city clinical hospital. In 1990, he graduated from an institute with a red diploma, for which he was supposed to pay 10 rubles for a standard salary of 120.
Well, how could you not go to business? Especially if in the sixth grade I read the entire trilogy of Theodore Dreiser “Financier”, “Titan” and “Stoic”, and then watched the film “Wall Street” with Michael Douglas (Fishernev told about this in an interview with Forbes in 2008).
At the beginning of the 2000s, Dmitry Rybolovlev quickly turned from a millionaire into a billionaire, and was also forced to sell his Russian assets as quickly. Photo: Forpes.ru
Then just Rybolovlev Sr. decided to monetize his doctoral dissertation on magnetotherapy. Father and son opened the small enterprise "Magnetik" and began to treat Permyakov with magnets. But the 25-year-old Dmitry lasted at the director's post in the family business for only a couple of months and in the spring of 1992 he went to Broker courses in Moscow. And upon returning to Perm, he earned his first million - “brought a beer wagon from Moscow to Perm and sold,” as Forbes told the former release of Uralkali Alexander Yatskov, who worked in the Rybolovlev team.
In Moscow, Rybolovlev acquired not only a beer wagon and a brokerage certificate, but also a computer program for maintaining a register of shareholders. The voucher privatization began, and the register holders were in great. For this service, Rybolovlev received from each enterprise $ 20 thousand per year - and valuable insider information in addition: who buys which enterprises. Among the clients of the “financial house”, Rybolovlev was “Uralkali” - the basis of his future well -being.
30th anniversary in jail
In early 1994, the young financier convinced the directors of the 17 largest enterprises in the region, including Uralkali, Sylvinite and Avisma, to establish a loan FD bank-and headed it himself. He began to buy up the minority packages of shares of the best Perm enterprises to enter the councils of directors and it is better to focus on the companies that are happening inside. So Rybolovlev owns the papers of the same “Uralkali” - a company that developed one of the largest potassium salts in the world. In 1995, he collected enough shares of Uralkali to head the board of directors.
Now it was possible to get out of the guardianship of the international potassium company (ICD), created as a single export channel for potassium giants from the Perm region and Belaruskali. Rybolovlev had suspicions that the ICC was discriminated with Uralkali, and he wanted to transfer export flows to the American trader Transammonia. But instead, in May 1996 he went to prison for 11 months.
He was arrested the day after the shareholders of Uralkali voted to refuse the services of the ICK. Fisheries celebrated his 30th anniversary in the investigative insulator. He was accused of organizing the murder of the general director of Neftekhimik JSC Evgeny Panteleimonov, whom he himself appointed.
Rybolovlev owned 40% of the shares of Neftekhimika, he was the chairman of the board of directors of the enterprise. But he did not fully control the situation at the enterprise - in the Neftekhimik trading house, the founder of which was Rybolovlev, representatives of local bandits were sitting. At the initiative of Panteleimonov, bandits ceased to ship the products. Rybolovlev sent his family to Switzerland, acquired a body armor and offered Panteleimonov a guard. He, for his misfortune, refused - and was shot on the threshold of his own apartment.
Rybolovlev sent his family to Switzerland, acquired a body armor and offered Panteleimonov a guard. He refused - and was shot
The organizer of the murder Oleg Lomakin, nicknamed Prokop, was detained - and in response to the promise of investigators to re -qualify the charge to an easier article, said that Panteleimonova “ordered” Rybolovlev.
In addition to the testimony of Prokop-Lomakin, the investigation on Rybolovlev had nothing. As a result, he refused them and sat down for 15 years. And Rybolovlev was released on bail. At the end of 1997, he was justified by a court decision. “Illusions after what happened became much less ... I used to just do business and did not try to integrate into this system. But after everything that happened to me, I tried to fix this mistake. Now I am sure that large business cannot exist outside the state, ”he said in an interview with the Perm weekly New Companion.
From millions to billions
Here, of course, it was important to understand in time who specifically personifies the state. After leaving the custody, Rybolovlev said that he would support Gennady Igumnov, which was operating at that time in the 2000 elections in the election. The daughter of Igumnova, Elena Arzumanova, was the chairman of the board at the Bank of Rybolovlev “Credit FD”. But in 2000, at the Igumnov meeting with a narrow circle of the Perm elite, the future billionaire unexpectedly for the governor said: "Yes, Gennady Vyacheslavovich, we must leave." And then he financed the election company at that time at that meeting Yuri Trutnev, the popular mayor of Perm.
The Governor's elections Trutnev won in the first round. As it turned out later, the victory opened the road to the Perm mayor to federal politics. We went to the mountain and the affairs of Rybolovlev.
Over the next 6 years, Rybolovlev increased a share in Uralkali to 80%, bought Sylvinite - another large potassium enterprise, which until 1983 was part of the future Uralkali - and began to control the production of potassium fertilizers in Russia.
Even the famous accident in Berezniki, when a failure was formed in the city on the site of a flooded mine, did not affect his business career. On the contrary, it made it possible to show excellent intuition. The accident occurred in October 2006, just at a time when Uralkali planned to conduct an IPO in London. Shortly before the appointed date, Rybolovlev canceled the placement of shares: he considered too low prices that were loomed in the market. And here is an accident, because of which the company has to leave the flooded mine, throwing all the equipment there. “Imagine the situation: I agreed, I took the money with a discount, and a week later he floods the mine,” Rybolovlev reasoned in an interview with Forbes, noting his timely departure from the exchange. “I myself would never have believed that the owner knew nothing.” Fraud on an especially large scale, undermining the investment image of the Russian Federation. It would be just a nightmare! "
But in the fall of 2007, Uralkali attracted more than $ 1 billion on the stock exchange and has gone much since then. If in 2000 the capitalization of the company was $ 15 million, then in 2008, at the peak in front of the global financial crisis, $ 20 billion. Just at that time, Rybolovlev acquired from Donald Trump the Maison de L`amitie mansion in the Palm Beach region in Florida for $ 98.5 million. He could afford.
Dear divorce
While the world came to his senses after the financial crisis, new problems fell on Rybolovlev. In December 2008, the wife Elena filed for a divorce in the Swiss court, since, according to her, she was "fed up with Dmitry's throat for other women."
In the newly published book by French journalist Renault Revo, Le Misterieux Mr Ryboloblev (“mysterious Mr. Rybolovlev”), the materials of the claim by Elena Rybolovleva are quoted. Of these, you can learn, for example, how she received from the anonym “Photos of her husband in a gallant society” when she was pregnant with her youngest daughter. To avoid a miscarriage after such a blow, she had to lie in the Swiss hospital for five months in preservation. Subsequently, Rybolovlev, as follows from the lawsuit of Elena, settled one of his mistresses in Curshell at the same hotel and at the same time when he stayed there with his family. Or suddenly she discovered in an extract on her credit card a waste on women's clothing Prada, which she did not know anything about. And having already filed for divorce, Elena was detained in Cyprus on charges of theft of Graff rings worth $ 25 million, which she once received as a gift from her husband. (Rybolovlev’s lawyers, however, insisted that this ring was bought for investment purposes and was owned by the Cyprus Trust Cyprus Trust, and not Elena).
As compensation for her suffering, Elena Rybolovleva demanded half of his condition from his former spouse. When in 2014 the Geneva court satisfied her claims and ordered Rybolovlev to fulfill the lawsuit, this amount amounted to $ 4.5 billion. Billionaire challenged the decision. Later, the second instance reduced the amount of payment in favor of the fisherman to $ 604 million. According to the court, Rybolovleva also received two houses in Switzerland.
The eldest daughter Ekaterina Rybolovleva with her father. Photo: forum.na-svyazi.ru
Leaving from Russia
But all these were still flowers compared to the risk of losing all the condition. In the fall of 2008, as Vedomosti wrote, Igor Sechin, who at that time oversaw the prey of natural resources as the first deputy prime minister, convened a meeting in the government. The construction of the railway was discussed bypassing the Verkhnekamski potassium field, which was developed by Uralkali. After the failure in Berezniki, the railway was damaged there. The company financed the construction of a bypass branch, but it was required to build another 53 km. Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin complained that he did not have enough money for this. Sichin proposed to participate at the meeting the owner of Uralkali Dmitry Rybolovlev to participate in financing - he did not agree. After some time, Sichin ordered to start checking the causes of the accident on the Uralkali mine, as a result of which companies could show fines for 85 billion rubles (at that time - more than $ 2 billion) for the flooded salts in the flooded mine.
Sechin invited Rybolovlev to participate in financing - he did not agree. Sechin ordered to start checking the causes of the accident on the Uralkali mine mine
As a result, no claims were submitted. But the audit became one of the reasons that Rybolovlev sold the company in June 2010 to Suleiman Kerimov, Alexander Nesis and Filaret Galchev, respectively (to date, control over Uralkaliy went to the owner of Uralhim Dmitry Mazepin). And in general, he stopped doing any business in Russia. The last asset that belonged to him here-the Moscow Commercial and Elite Complex "Vozdvizhenka Center", better known as Voentorg-was sold this summer of the Chinese investment company Fosun Group for more than 10 billion rubles.
Questions in the USA
It would seem that now the time has come to exhale and enjoy life in numerous houses bought by Rybolovlev in the name of Ekaterina’s eldest daughter, from the same former Villa Trump in Miami to the islands of Scorpios and Sparty, who once belonged to Onassis.
But skeletons from the past do not allow to relax. In March of this year, The Charlotte Observer wrote that Rybolovlev and Trump aircraft landed twice and were at the same time at the same Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The newspaper also suggested that the purchase of Trump’s Rybolovlev’s house for $ 98.5 million during the financial crisis was a bribery form, since the villa was originally bought by an American billionaire for $ 41 million. True, the same publication noted that the starting price of the sale was $ 125 million - that is, Rybolovlev managed to get a good job.
*The house in Florida, who first belonged to the American billionaire Trump, and then the Russian billionaire Rybolovlev. *Photo: mosposelok.ru
Its representative Sergei Chernitsyn said that Rybolovlev and Trump had never met personally, and the simultaneous appearance of their aircraft at the airport is a simple coincidence. The White House also denied any connections between billionaires.
The special commission of the FBI is investigating the connections between Trump and Russia during the election campaign in the United States. To Rybolovlev with questions about this has not yet been addressed.
The purchase of Trump's fishing house for $ 98.5 million during the financial crisis, the newspaper considered a bribery form
Now there was a corruption scandal in Monaco, during which Prince Albert II hastened to distance himself from the Russian friend-billionaire. However, according to the source surrounded by a billionaire, this story is not critical for Rybolovlev. He may well sell FC Monaco players, and what remains on the club’s balance sheet is to sell Grimaldi’s house, who has not invested anything in his football team since 2011. There were in his life, as you can see, adventures and more serious. And political scandals are eventually forgotten.