Richest man in the world

Russian President Vladimir Putin's journey to become perhaps one of the world's richest men began early in his political career in St. Petersburg.

And it blacklisted Timchenko, who Forbes said was worth $15.3 billion, saying his activities “in the energy sector have been directly linked to Putin.” One $37 million superyacht, Sirius, was bought by the Presidential Administration for Putin in 2011, and boasts a spa pool with a waterfall, wine cellar and teak interior. And in the process, they made themselves billionaires and swore fealty to the man who made it possible. By then, it was becoming almost impossible for Putin to explain away the other trappings of wealth. In particular, Navalny was seeking information about “the rising and reportedly massive volumes of trade” between Russia’s top three oil companies and Timchenko's firm that had resulted in “reportedly very large profits for Gunvor and its secretive ownership, which is rumored to include Prime Minister Putin," Beyrle wrote. In that role, he helped Putin stage the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 by building an $8 billion-plus road and railway line to the ski slopes. “After Khodorkovsky was convicted, these other oligarchs went to Vladimir Putin and said, ‘What do we have to do not to sit in the cage?’” prominent American-born Russia financier William Browder would later tell a U.S. Senate committee. While Khodorkovsky and his attorneys would claim the charges were baseless and politically motivated, he would be convicted and sentenced to spend nine years in a Siberian prison camp. He launched a major reorganization of the FSB that would give it broader powers, and placed it under his direct control. Putin had deliveries withheld and rerouted to keep the wares on government-store shelves at a bare minimum, said Karen Greenaway, a former FBI agent who taught in the city at the time and has spent much of her career investigating Russian organized crime. Yeltsin soon stepped down, which made Putin president on Dec. 31, 1999 and allowed him to coast to victory in the election that March. “And what does he do with part of the money?