For a quarter-century, Forbes has been investigating billionaire oligarchs, digging into their political connections, murky holdings and maze of offshore assets.
has been investigating billionaire oligarchs, digging into their political connections, murky holdings and maze of offshore assets. Here’s everything you need to know about the wealthy elite who have profited under Vladimir Putin ’s rule.
put the first four Russians on our World’s Billionaires list. These earliest oligarchs got rich during the chaotic privatization of the 1990s, acquiring state-owned assets for pennies on the dollar. After Vladimir Putin rose to power in 2000, he helped make a number of them richer and rewarded his closest cronies by turning them into billionaires. There are 83 Russians on this year’s Billionaires list; we consider 68 of them to be oligarchs. Another 18 oligarchs were billionaires before the war but have lost too much money since the invasion of Ukraine to qualify for our ranking. Two individuals whodo not consider to be oligarchs—Andrey Melnichenko and Oleg Tinkov—are included here because they have been sanctioned by the European Union or the United Kingdom. Thirty-four billionaires and billionaire drop-offs have been sanctioned by the U.S., the U.K. or the European Union: 11 after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the rest since the Ukraine invasion. The sanctions are taking a toll. The Russian stock market was shuttered for 17 days; it reopened on March 24, initially with severe trading limits. The economy is cratering. Yachts, jets and mansions have been frozen.estimates that these oligarchs—worth a collective $290 billion as of March 11—have lost $240 billion, nearly half of their prewar net worth, since January. Below is our guide to all those sanctioned so far, and a few who could be next.From penniless orphan to sports mogul to sanctioned outcast, Abramovich embodies the possibilities and pitfalls of Russian oligarchy. He hustled his way into business, catching a big break in 1995 when he partnered with auto oligarch Boris Berezovsky to take control of oil giant Sibneft at a big discount. When Berezovsky ran afoul of Putin in 2000, Abramovich snagged his mentor’s shares on the cheap before cashing out to Gazprom for $13.1 billion in 2005. He was governor, reportedly at Putin’s behest, of Russia’s Far East Chukotka region from 2000 to 2008. In the West, he was known for living large, spending big on his beloved Chelsea PremierLeague soccer team and giving more than $500 million to Jewish causes. He spent much of his time outside Russia and obtained passports from both Israel and Portugal. Abramovich, who facilitated early talks between Russia and Ukraine, was possibly poisoned while in Kyiv recently. At least four of his assets, including Chelsea, a Gulfstream G650 jet and a 15-bedroom London mansion worth $140 million, have been frozen. His two yachts, worth $900 million, are docked out of reach in Turkey.was a gift from Abramovich; two of his jets were detained by the U.K. in March. Shvidler isn’t a Russian citizen; he was born in the Soviet Union and has British and U.S. passports.A Ukraine native who grew up in Lviv, Fridman and his college buddies German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev started commodities trader Alfa-Eco in 1989; it grew into the Alfa Consortium and Alfa-Bank. Thanks to Kremlin connections—one of his employees later served as Putin’s chief political advisor—he acquired additional assets in telecom, banking and oil. Fridman’s properties in London—including the $100 million Victorian-era Athlone House estate, which has five acres of landscaped gardens designed in the style of Versailles—have been frozen by the U.K.Khan, who has Israeli citizenship, helmed TNK-BP, a joint venture with British oil firm BP, from 2003 until its sale to state-owned Rosneft in 2013. Khan’s properties in Great Britain, including two apartments worth $35 million and a house in London’s Belgravia neighborhood, have been frozen.Fridman’s other longtime partner resigned from Luxembourg-based investment firm LetterOne’s board on March 7, along with Khan. His two yachts—Putin’s former minister of foreign economic relations was president of Russia’s largest privately held bank, Alfa-Bank, from 1994 to 2011. Three of his homes—including an 18-room estate in Surrey and a $4.4 million villa in Italy—have been seized or frozen. He and Fridman vow to contest the EU sanctions; he stepped down from LetterOne’s board on March 3.The son of a Soviet physicist, Melnichenko dropped out of college when the Soviet Union fell in 1991 to start a chain of currency exchange booths. Two years later, he founded MDM Bank, which became one of Russia's most successful private banks. He later expanded into fertilizer and coal. His two yachts—including the world’s largest sail-assisted yacht,reporting, Melnichenko is not an oligarch because he built an independent fortune without ties to the Russian government under either Boris Yeltsin or Vladimir Putin. He has been included here because he has been sanctioned. In a statement, a spokesperson for Melnichenko called the EU sanctions “absurd and nonsensical,” adding that they will be disputed.Head of Russian steel giant Severstal, Mordashov bought his first factory on the cheap in 1992 at age 27 through Russia’s voucher privatization. His yacht,and a $115 million villa in northern Sardinia were both frozen by Italian police, but his other yacht—the 465-foot—was last spotted in Vladivostok, Russia on April 7. He transferred ownership of key assets, including shares of leisure company TUI and mining outfit Nordgold, to his wife on the same day he was sanctioned by the EU. Mordashov toldChairman of agro-industrial firm Rusagro, a big manufacturer of pork and sugar, he spent eight years in Russia’s Federation Council, the upper house of the country’s parliament.With his partner Alexander Skorobogatko, he once controlled one of the biggest ports on the Black Sea. In 2013 the pair, along with Arkady Rotenberg, won a contract to modernize Sheremetyevo, Moscow’s 62-year-old state-owned airport. Like many oligarchs, Ponomarenko has disputed his inclusion on the EU sanctions list.Pumpyansky owned metals plants in the mineral-rich Ural region in the 1990s before taking over a pipe factory in 1998 that would become TMK, Russia’s largest pipe maker and a supplier to oil giant Gazprom, in 2000. His superyacht,A longtime partner of Leonid Mikhelson, who controls gas giant Novatek , Simanovsky has been deputy chairman of the budget and tax committee of the Duma, Russia’s parliament, since 2003.Tinkov went from selling beer and dumplings to taking his digital bank, Tinkoff, public in London at $3.2 billion in 2013. Before he was sanctioned, Tinkov was arrested in London in February 2020 on a U.S. federal tax evasion charge; he pleaded guilty and paid $509 million to settle last October. He was worth more than $5 billion before the attack on Ukraine. According toreporting, Tinkov is not an oligarch because he built an independent fortune without ties to the Russian government under either Boris Yeltsin or Vladimir Putin. He has been included here because he has been sanctioned.The Uzbekistan-born Usmanov made his first fortune manufacturing plastic bags in the late 1980s. He later bought up shares in a metals firm that eventually morphed into iron ore and steel giant Metalloinvest. In 2009, while chairing an investment subsidiary of state-owned Gazprom, Usmanov invested in Facebook and other tech startups alongside Yuri Milner, who is now a prominent Silicon Valley VC. His nearly $600 million, 512-foot yacht,is stuck in the German port of Hamburg due to sanctions. In a statement, Usmanov called the sanctions “unfair” and pledged to “use all legal means to protect honor and reputation.”An oil baron who privatized state-owned drilling operations in the ’90s to create Surgutneftegas, Bogdanov was made a “Hero of Labor of the Russian Federation” by Putin in 2016 “for special labor service for the country and people.”Deripaska merged his Siberian Aluminum with the aluminum assets of Roman Abramovich’s Millhouse Capital to form Rusal in 2000. His ex-wife was Boris Yeltsin’s step-granddaughter, and he holds a diplomatic passport. The U.S. Treasury hit both him and Rusal with sanctions in 2018. The measures against Rusal were lifted that December after Deripaska reduced his ownership to below 50%. He sued in American courts to challenge the sanctions in March 2019; in June 2021, a District Court judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed his lawsuit. Deripaska owns nearly $1.4 billion of overseas properties, including a $21 million mansion in D.C. and a house in London’s Belgravia Square;Gutseriev, whose Safmar Group has financial, media and industrial interests in both Russia and Belarus, was sanctioned by the EU for being a “longtime friend” of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. His two jets flew from Moscow to Dubai and Istanbul, respectively, on March 19 and 20.A member of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Kerimov made a fresh fortune betting on Russian gold producer Polyus in 2008 after losing his first billions in the 2008 financial crisis. Authorities in France, where he owns four villas worth a combined $280 million, investigated him in 2019 on charges of tax fraud. Kerimov denied wrongdoing, and a court dismissed the case in 2020.Russia’s de facto second man has been described by the United States government as Putin’s “close advisor” and “personal banker.” He is the biggest shareholder in the sanctioned Rossiya Bank and, through his holding company, National Media Group, he keeps a tight grip on the news Russians are permitted to hear and see. He and Putin own homes in the same exclusive Ozero dacha cooperative—and, according to Panama Papers disclosures, Kovalchuk owns the ski resort that hosted the wedding of Putin’s daughter in 2013.Putin’s former judo sparring partner won billions in state contracts over the years for building everything from infrastructure for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics to a 2018 bridge linking newly annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland. In 2019, he sold his construction group, SGM, to a Gazprom subsidiary for $1 billion and transferred his shares of Mostotrest to a joint venture with a state-owned bank. He owns lots of real estate abroad, including villas in Sardinia and a luxury hotel in Rome. All were frozen by Italian authorities in September 2014; Rotenberg sued the European Union and won a partial reversal of the measures in 2016.Arkady Rotenberg’s younger brother and business partner; Boris and his wife, Karina, own three villas on the French Riviera and three homes, worth $4 million, in Atlanta.Alisher Usmanov’s partner has been a member of the Duma since 1999. The U.S. Treasury accused him of “longstanding ties to Russian organized criminal groups,” which he has denied.At the end of the Soviet era, Timchenko ran a state-owned oil exporting company and became one of its largest shareholders when it was later privatized. He befriended Putin in the 1990s in Saint Petersburg when he and the Rotenberg brothers started a judo club called Yavara-Neva. Today, Timchenko holds stakes in gas company Novatek and petrochemicals producer Sibur; he is also chair of the Russian national hockey league, KHL.The Ukraine-born aluminum baron has done deals with oligarchs including Oleg Deripaska and Mikhail Fridman . Vekselberg’s $90 million superyacht,Alisher Usmanov had already nabbed a mining fortune in Russia—and was eyeing American tech companies—when he sat down withfor tea and pastries at his 30-acre compound in the Moscow suburbs in early 2010. An early Facebook investor, Usmanov praised the U.S. as “technological country number one.” But the majority owner of Metalloinvest was careful to make his allegiances clear. You can easily find several photos of the prime minister among the chandeliers and Italian marble at Metalloinvest’s Moscow headquarters. “I am proud that I know Putin, and the fact that everybody does not like him is not Putin’s problem,” says Usmanov. He stretches for a historical comparison: “I don’t think the world loved Truman after Nagasaki.”After Russia’s financial collapse in 1998, Abramov bought up steel companies and coal mines at bargain-basement prices. Today he’s chairman of the board of Evraz, Russia’s largest steel producer.A former Caspian Sea oil rig worker and deputy minister of oil and gas in the last Soviet government, Alekperov founded Lukoil in 1991 as a state-owned enterprise. He took it private two years later. It now produces 2% of the world’s oil. Seen as comparatively independent, Alekperov remains unsanctioned, likely because he is viewed by the West as a counterweight to state-owned Rosneft’s sanctioned boss, Igor Sechin.A scrap metal trader in the early 1990s, Altushkin is the founder and largest shareholder of the Russian Copper Company, the country’s third-largest copper producer. He’s a key supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church; Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship in 2017.The former communist committee leader got his start at Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s investment company, Menatep. After Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2003, Guriev bought out his former boss’ stake in fertilizer manufacturer PhosAgro. His son, Andrei A. Guriev, is PhosAgro’s CEO and was sanctioned by the EU on March 9.Lisin cut his teeth in Russia’s brutal aluminum wars of the 1990s. He managed factories for Trans-World Group, a collection of commodities traders with stakes in aluminum smelters. Trans-World was later investigated for bank fraud by Russian authorities. In 1995, Lisin himself was reportedly interviewed by Russian police in connection with the death of a local politician; he denied wrongdoing. Today he chairs NLMK Group, a big manufacturer of steel products.Since 1994, Litvinenko has been rector of Saint Petersburg Mining University, where Putin wrote a 1997 dissertation on the city’s mineral resources. He owns more than one-fifth of PhosAgro, which he was given for his political support and lobbying, sources tellThe Uzbekistan-born Makhmudov is the main owner of metals conglomerate UGMK, which controls 300 mining companies scattered across Russia. In 2003, Makhmudov and his former business partner Oleg Deripaska were accused in American courts of leading a “massive racketeering scheme.” They denied it, and the lawsuit was eventually dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. UGMK spent $100 million building the Shayba ice arena for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, which it gave to the Russian government after the games.The founder and chairman of natural-gas producer Novatek and a 36% shareholder in petrochemical company Sibur, Mikhelson bought some of his Sibur shares from Kirill Shamalov, Putin’s former son-in-law. Sanctioned oligarch Gennady Timchenko is his partner in both companies.A former Soviet bureaucrat, he served briefly as Boris Yeltsin’s deputy prime minister in 1996 and 1997 and helped oversee the privatization of various state-run enterprises. Potanin spent $2.5 billion developing a ski resort, snowboard park and freestyle skiing center for the 2014 Olympics. He runs Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest nickel producer. Following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, he stepped down from the board of the Guggenheim Museum foundation, on which he served for two decades.Built his fortune investing in newly privatized shares in the 1990s. He sold his stake in Uralkali, Russia’s largest producer of potassium fertilizer, for $5.3 billion in 2010. He has spent roughly $1 billion on property in Europe, including $400 million for La Belle Époque, a Monaco penthouse in which he lives. He also owns Skorpios, a Greek island, and soccer team AS Monaco.Editor’s note, February 20, 2026: This article was updated to reflect that the ultimate ownership of the Ocean Victory yacht is currently unclear. Forbes had attributed it to Viktor Rashnikov, based on primary sources and corporate records from Cyprus from 2012 and 2013 indicating that Rashnikov was the yacht’s ultimate owner.This Russia-Born Billionaire Owns One Of The World's Largest Game Developers. Amid The Ukraine War, He Navigates A Company In Turmoil
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