"He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated."
I've been told that Arab sheiks in Saudi Arabia and the UAE laugh at the claims of Gates or Bezos or Slim being the richest person in the world. Same would happen with the Russian plutocrats, and whomever controls Chinese companies at the moment. There are other strange arrangements like Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA (which is supposedly a nonprofit but Kamprad is effectively a dictator and uses company funds for whatever he wants).
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3035734/ikea-is-a-nonprofit-and...
but I was referring to hereditary mineral rights, which is really more about political power and the (very expensive) maintenance of an oppressive regime. those mineral rights eventually convert into oil on tanker ships but it's really incredibly precarious and a single political shift (internal revolution, invading army, etc.) makes it all vanish in a heartbeat.
the amount of oil-on-ships wealth that an Arab tyrant has on hand at any given time is relatively modest. most of the wealth is future claims to continue selling that oil, and that's not a very liquid form of wealth at all.
Though that's much of Venezuela's present problem.
Also the U.S. and Canada. Fracking, deep water, tar sands.
Can you post a source? The link you posted only talks about IKEA.
Here are some attempt at explanations:
https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-the-Arab-sheikhs-among-the-m...
The Forbes methodology rules ranks individuals rather than large, multi generational families who share fortunes.
A WikiLeaks document mentions lots of behind-the-scenes ways that the arab royals siphon money. So I guess it's impossible for Forbes or anyone to know their true net worth:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/28/wikileaks-saudi-roy...
Two other families nearby hit the ~$2B range but you'll never hear about it unless you're floating on a boat when their name comes up.
Also its easy to bequeath your descendants wealth easily that way.
Some have laughed right back:
Anyway..... abstractions sometimes fray at the extreme ends. The concept of property doesn't quite apply to Putin.
Years ago, I had a conversation urban planner mate about some building that couldn't be changed (preservation) or used (building codes & safety). I argued that this makes it public property Him -'You can't just take property off someone'. Me - 'We already have, haven't we?' He couldn't get his head around my meaning.
Around here (Ireland) landowners often "own" roads that border their land. This ownership amounts to a responsibility for cutting hedges and paying taxes on it. They don't (I think) have any rights to it that others don't.
Ownership is a set of rules about what an owner can do with something. If you own an apple, but aren't allowed to eat it, gift it, etc. do you really own it?
Does the King of Saudi Arabia (another candidate for wealthiest man) "own" everything in the country? I think he has the legal right to do anything with any thing. Does he own all "public" assets controlled by the crown, like Saudi Aramco (valued somewhere between $1trn and $10trn)? If not where's this distinction?
The only right left is to not let someone else have it I guess ?
That is an interesting point, but in terms of the Russian Oligarchs I think part of the distinction is they are (and have been) attempting to export that wealth and diversify it so that if they do lose power they will still be insanely wealthy. Maybe not 200bn wealthy but still massively wealthy. That is why the Magnitsky act is so important [1], because it makes it harder for them to move their money out of Russia. Granted a lot of wealth is coupled with control over natural resources and industry, but the more I read the more I realize Russian (like probably chinese and US as well) money is everywhere and much harder to track. The Saudis I'm sure do the same things in terms of investment, but whether they do so with as much secrecy and in avoidance of sanctions I'm not sure.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/21/politics/russian-adoptions-mag...
I don't see how that's an actual distinction because the same thing applies just as well to the house of Saud and Saudi Arabia in general. Do you honestly think the house of Saud didn't put a bit of wealth aside for the unlikely event they might be removed from power?
For whatever reason, it's become acceptable to just assume that certain countries are "ultra corrupt" while others are supposedly "corruption free". In reality, none of this applies because, in reality, the practices of corruption just differ from country to country depending on the local laws.
Corruption always finds a loophole and in many places established forms of corruption are not even recognized as such. Case in point: Germany
How many people would think Germany is a country ripe with corruption? The super punctual, super correct, super bureaucratic Germans could never be corrupt, right?
Well, Germany was among the last countries who ratified the UN convention against corruption, as a matter of fact, it was the last EU country to ratify it. It took German parliament 11 years [0] to ratify that UN convention against a lot of opposition. High profile German politicians publicly complained that if the UN convention was ratified it would be impossible for them to keep working like they've been working.
That's quite long and vehement opposition against something that would usually just be regarded as the sensible thing to do, I'll leave the reasons for that strong opposition up to your imagination.
[0] https://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/11_years_afte...
But... I don't agree with your leanings. All countries are corrupt to some degree, but degrees do vary. I think it dangerously lends to extremism, thinking of issues of corruption in either-or terms or some close proxy.
Like many other German corruption scandals, these were never properly investigated/charged. With time people simply forget about this kind of stuff, but it happened and it very likely still happens because getting caught before didn't have any real consequences for them, so why would they stop?
> All countries are corrupt to some degree, but degrees do vary.
Indeed, but the practices of corruption also vary, often dictated by culture, so how does one really "measure corruption" in such a way that it's actually comparable? Imho that's quite a difficult, if not impossible, task because it involves a lot of subjective value judgments.
By that definition, Putin does own the entirety of Russia, "private" enterprises included.
> That all changed in July 2003, when Putin arrested Russia’s biggest oligarch and richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin grabbed Khodorkovsky off his private jet, took him back to Moscow, put him on trial, and allowed television cameras to film Khodorkovsky sitting in a cage right in the middle of the courtroom. That image was extremely powerful, because none of the other oligarchs wanted to be in the same position. After Khodorkovsky’s conviction, the other oligarchs went to Putin and asked him what they needed to do to avoid sitting in the same cage as Khodorkovsky. From what followed, it appeared that Putin’s answer was, “Fifty percent.” He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated.
What does he mean "appeared that Putin's answer was"?
Well, clearly, he wasn't in the room for the meetings and it's not like there are published minutes, so the answer must be inferred from external evidence. So the claim is that the visible behavior f actors and flows of business suggest that Putin has been granted control, if not on-paper ownership, of half the business of the various Russian oligarchs as payoff for not destroying them each individually.
Did Putin become drastically richer in the following years while the oligarchs became poorer? In what way?
Nobody has managed to prove Putin is sitting on the claimed wealth and Putin / his circle has denied it. I seriously doubt anyone is going to step forward with the evidence necessary to prove it, for obvious reasons.
Ah, found it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/europe/russia-dmitr...
The video, with English subtitles, as almost 24M views: