It was not a good year economically for the richest Russian oligarchs. They have lost nearly $95 billion due to the harsh sanctions imposed by Western countries. Since the invasion, they lost $330 million a day.
Roman Abramovich, the former owner of the London football club Chelsea, was the biggest loser. His fortune fell 57% to $7.8 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Abramovich was one of the first oligarchs to be subjected to Western sanctions. The West accused Abramovich of having “obvious ties” to Putin’s regime and being part of a group of wealthy Russian businessmen who had “blood on their hands”.
The fortune of Gennady Timchenko, energy investor and close friend of Putin, has fallen by 48% to $11.8 billion. Suleiman Kerimov, another ally of the Russian president, has lost 41%, to $9 billion, according to the index.
American billionaires
In total, twenty wealthy Russians tracked by the daily updated Bloomberg list have lost about $95 billion by 2022. However, their losses are not of the same magnitude as those of US tech billionaires this year. Elon Musk’s fortune fell by almost 50% to $138 billion after a sharp fall in the value of shares of his electric car company Tesla. He lost his title as the world’s richest person in December to France’s Bernard Arnault, boss of LVMH, a luxury goods company.
Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune even fell by 65% to $45 billion as the value of Facebook parent company Meta plummeted. He dropped 19 places on the Bloomberg index to finish in 25th place in 2022, his lowest position since 2014.
Overall, the 500 richest people in the world lost nearly $1.4 billion by 2022.
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