Mikhail Prokhorov sold off assets in Russia and became an Israeli
The ex-presidential candidate of Russia was the only one, unlike many other oligarchs, who managed to avoid Western sanctions. Now the billions earned will allow Mikhail Prokhorov to lead a normal life until the end of his years, pouring champagne in the company of young girls.
Against the backdrop of fresh reports of how European and American authorities are confiscating mansions and yachts from Russian oligarchs, Mikhail Prokhorov somehow faded into the shadows. The latest news about him came from Israel. The media reported that in April he flew there on a regular flight from Switzerland to get a passport. It probably didn’t take much work – according to Prokhorov’s grandmother, he was a purebred Jew. So the photographs of the Israeli passport of Mikhail Prokhorov, which have been distributed on the Internet, can hardly raise doubts about the authenticity. Meanwhile, the billionaire’s economic ties with Russia are torn one after another.
Red diploma career
Mikhail Prokhorov began to crawl away from the real sector of the economy at the end of the 2000s. Although it is known that it was the giants of the former Soviet industry, such as Norilsk Nickel, that ensured his fabulous fortune. However, he entered this sector from the side of finance.
In the 90s, Prokhorov was a hired top manager at ONEXIMbank. How a young man took such a high post, history is silent. Either the IFI diploma with honors played a role, or the connections of the father, who was in charge of the international affairs of the USSR State Committee for Transport (it is known that the bank was created under the patronage of high-ranking officials). “ONEXIMbank receives all conceivable “degrees of authority,” Kommersant wrote in 1995, referring to the privileges that the authorities gave it. Perhaps the idea was to leave debts and distressed assets in the semi-state Vnesheconombank, which was breathing its last, and transfer everything of value to a new structure.
The bank received industrial assets in Russia in two ways. With the support of the governors, he entered the capital of local banks, which provided loans to various plants and factories. Unpaid debts were easily converted into shares. There was also another mechanism. The federal government took loans from ONEXIMbank secured by shares of industrial giants. The apogee of this story falls on 1998-1999, when the government, and together with it the ONEXIMbank, declared a default. The assets collected in the bank were quickly divided among the “effective owners”. The chairman of the board of the bank, Mikhail Prokhorov, also came out of default not empty-handed. One can only wonder why, in 2007, he again began to use the already meaningless abbreviation “ONEXIM” for the company that managed his assets. Actually, this is where the billionaire business success story can end. All his further projects ended rather ingloriously or scandalously. And Prokhorov gained fame not so much as a talented businessman, but as a reveler and ladies’ man.
From beauties to “Yo-mobile”
What is the story alone, when the French authorities arrested a Russian nouveau riche on charges of pimping! It was in 2007 in Courchevel, where the billionaire came with a harem of almost two dozen young beauties. They say that he gave them champagne from a basin to drink in clubs, and took four people to his room at once. Before that, Prokhorov publicly played tricks with sexy girlfriends along the Cote d’Azur. But either the patience of the French burst, or the gendarmes were given a tip by harsh people from Moscow, but in the end, the billionaire spent four days in the French “monkey”. It is clear that the accusations of pimping were not confirmed – Prokhorov, of course, did not earn on the girls, but rather spent on them. But the image of Russian business in Europe did not benefit.
The party on the Aurora cruiser, which Prokhorov arranged in 2009, also went down in history. The highlight of the program then was Sergei Shnurov with obscene songs, whose voice carried far over the Neva.
The opportunity to somehow improve the image of Prokhorov was given by the Yo-mobile project. But in the end, the first Russian electric car turned out to be a soap bubble, which was inflated by PR people hired by Prokhorov. It is now obvious that all this innovative activity was started in 2010 with an eye to the 2012 presidential elections, in which Prokhorov took part. The previous scandals of history had to be somehow blocked in the media field, and so a ghost car appeared with the letter “ё”. His project was finally closed in 2014. But they promised to build a car for 90% of Russian components. What was the cost then not to aim at a new car, but simply to establish the production of ABS units or airbags in the country? Now our auto industry would be in a completely different position. But the money was spent in a completely different way.
$10,000,000,000 in cash
The fact that Mikhail Prokhorov began to gradually withdraw from industrial assets into cash, they began to talk back in 2008. Someone even remembered that the favorite song at the Courchevel revels of the “main bachelor of Russia” was the composition of the “Beasts” group with the words “I’m leaving, I’m leaving beautifully!”. Mikhail Prokhorov has been leaving the Russian economy for more than 10 years. Not quickly – well, you need to carry away a lot.
In 2008, ONEXIM withdrew from its stake in Norilsk Nickel. Business media wrote that Prokhorov could have received about $7 billion in cash from this deal. In 2016, ONEXIM got rid of the development business and the land bank (about 28 thousand hectares for development in cities). The size of the transaction in this case could be estimated at tens of billions of rubles.
Here is how the Prokhorov sale of Vedomosti was then described: “For a couple of years, Onexim has been trying to find a buyer for Quadra, for several years it has been looking for a buyer for IC Soglasie and Renaissance Credit (Onexim has 100% everywhere). Onexim was planning to leave Uralkali a year ago. In May 2016, it became known that the buyout of the group’s share at market value, i.e. for about $1.6 billion (at the exchange rate on Friday), maybe Uralkali itself. “Onexim” 27% of the company could cost $ 5.1 billion in 2013.
However, Prokhorov’s attempt to escape from the ship apparently attracted attention. In 2016, the tax authorities said they uncovered offshore schemes that may have allowed them to evade taxes and withdraw money from Russia. Initially, the Federal Tax Service demanded to pay about 2 billion rubles to the budget, but then the “ONEXIM case” fell apart into many episodes and branches. A new wave of searches took place in the company in 2019. According to leaks, the amount of tax claims was then half a billion rubles. However, whether it was possible to collect all these amounts in the end, there was no information yet.
Meanwhile, Mikhail Prokhorov was increasingly active in cash. The last major deal took place in January. Finally, a buyer was found for the Kvadra energy company, in which ONEXIM has had shares since 2008 (the sale of the asset to other participants in the generation market was hampered by the FAS for a long time). The company unites 20 power plants in the Central Federal District. And although the buyer was the state-owned Rosatom, the price of the transaction remained a secret. But in any case, we can talk about tens of billions of rubles.
The last notable business of Mikhail Prokhorov in Russia was the Renaissance Credit bank – the capitalist owns it through offshore Cyprus. However, at the end of last year it became known that the bank was put up for sale. And at the end of May, the news came that the investment bank was closing its branches in the US and the UK. Founded back in the 90s, the bank has a network of branches in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, Cairo and Cyprus. The company is also engaged in transactions in the stock markets of the Middle East countries – the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman and Tunisia. Will this structure help its beneficiary to leave Russia beautifully and safely hide his billions from both Russian tax authorities and oligarch money hunters in the West? So far, Prokhorov is succeeding. They say that now he has about 10 billion dollars in his hands. There will definitely be enough for girls and champagne. So, maybe for the sake of this, corporate wars were started at Siberian factories, courts with tax officials and beautiful speeches as part of the presidential campaign?