[imagesource: Guardian Design]

We use Forbes to track the net worths of the world’s wealthiest individuals.

According to their real-time billionaire tracker, Elon Musk is out in front with $239 billion and Bezos is giving chase with $178 billion.

Musk’s net worth increased by $3,7 billion in the past 24 hours alone.

These numbers are calculated in part using publicly available knowledge of how many shares they own in various companies.

Tracing the wealth of Russian President Vladimir Putin is a bit more of a guessing game. In fact, Forbes has said that figuring out Putin’s net worth is “probably the most elusive riddle in wealth hunting”.

Running Russia earns him an annual salary of $140 000, and among his publicly disclosed assets are an 800-square foot apartment, a trailer, and three cars.

Yeah, that’s not really the whole picture. There’s been a tremendous amount of quid pro quo during Putin’s time in power, and the oil export licence he granted his friend Gennady Timchenko (the small figure on the left of the image above) is reported to have earned him billions in kickbacks.

By the way, the woman wearing shades on the right is Svetlana Krivonogikh, who it has been claimed is Putin’s lover.

Last year’s Pandora Papers leaks showed she had accumulated assets worth an estimated $100 million, including a luxury apartment in Monaco.

When it comes to Putin’s wealth, it really is a guessing game, reports Fortune:

…according to some experts, he may be the wealthiest man in the world with assets totaling up to $200 billion…

Putin is rumored to be the owner of a beautiful 190,000 square-foot mansion sitting atop a cliff that overlooks the Black Sea. This coastal property is reputed as the largest private residence in the country and serves as his private palace endearingly called “Putin’s Country Cottage”…

The Black Sea Mansion was designed by Italian architect Lanfranco Cirillo and cost $1.4 billion to construct. The money for this extravagant project was supposedly laundered through the country’s 13-billion-dollar national project called “Health” in which the state bought expensive medical equipment at a much higher rate than the market price…

I’m not sure you can call 190 000 square metres a cottage.

The Kremlin has stated that the mansion is actually owned by his childhood friend and judo buddy, Arkady Rotenberg, but that’s been rubbished by experts who point out that it’s guarded by the FSB (Russia’s federal security service) and is a no-fly zone.

Aside from his watch collection, said to run into the millions and millions of dollars, Vlad has a number of toys at his disposal:

Apart from the Black Sea Mansion and 19 other houses and 700 cars, Putin supposedly has a collection of 58 aircraft and helicopters including a $716 million dollar plane called “The Flying Kremlin” that has a toilet made of gold…

And to keep his options open by land, air, or sea, he also has a $100-million-dollar megayacht [above] designed by a nuclear submarine maker from the Russian navy.

Russian oligarchs and billionaires are having their properties and yachts seized. You’d be a brave man to take ‘Graceful’, which sailed out of Germany and back to Russia before the Ukraine invasion launched.

In 2017, when pushed to reveal the extent of his wealth, Vlad gave one of the all-time classic responses:

“I am the wealthiest man, not just in Europe but in the whole world: I collect emotions. I am wealthy in that the people of Russia have twice entrusted me with the leadership of a great nation such as Russia. I believe that is my greatest wealth.”

He said that with a straight face. That’s dedication.

Based on that quote, I put the odds of there being a ‘live laugh love’ motif in his hallway at 50%.

Other estimates have put Putin’s wealth at closer to $125 billion. Anders Aslund, who authored the 2019 book Russia’s Crony Capitalism, said it was untraceable and “hidden in a web of offshore havens held by Mr. Putin’s allies, friends and relatives”.

This will make any potential sanctions the world imposes on Putin difficult.

Perhaps the most on the nose comment comes via Nate Sibley, a researcher at the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, who spoke with The New York Times:

…Mr. Putin does not need to own a vast fortune because he is an autocrat who “controls everything.”

“When people say he’s worth such and such, what does that mean?” he asked. “Are they really saying that he’s going to cash in and retire to St. Tropez?”

He does love whipping off his shirt so it’s not that hard to imagine him on the beach.

[sources:fortune&nytimes]