Gennady Timchenko, the chief trader of our oil (whose Kremlin nickname, as we know, is “Gangrene”), gave a major interview.
Gennady Timchenko: You Have to Pay for Everything in Life.
Give it a read — it’s very revealing for anyone who wants to understand what “Putin’s wallets,” “Putin’s businessmen,” and “Putin-style patriotism” really are.
One very telling moment: the guy actually boasts that he doesn’t use a computer:
Some may say that’s a trivial detail, but to me it seems like an important part of the image of a man who supposedly made billions through “honest trading.” Of course — what do computers and information systems have to do with trading? Obviously, the owner of Gunvor doesn’t need to sit personally in Platts or Argus. But after all, the Putin legend goes: Gangrene built from scratch this amazing and perfectly legal scheme for trading Russian oil that made him a billionaire. Apparently, that can be done without a computer too. Without being distracted by emails.
The rest of the image, I’d say, boils down to “I’m a Finnish citizen, my children are Finnish citizens, my family is now in Europe, I pay taxes in Switzerland — but overall I’m a great patriot of Russia. The Americans are to blame for everything.”
No, no, we haven’t sold out to anyone at all. We just sell our oil through a Swiss offshore company registered to some random nobody who gave up Russian citizenship to minimize taxes — but that doesn’t count.
Also worth noting, of course, is the now widely quoted part of the interview where Timchenko says he is ready to give up all his capital:
It makes you want to say: the need has already arisen, dear Gangrene. The Russians you love so much are being hit with a sales tax to cover the costs of Crimea. And what you ~~stole~~ earned would be enough to fund the peninsula’s development for five years. Share these hardships with us.