Vladimir Putin’s government has launched an aggressive campaign to nationalize the assets of Konstantin Strukov, one of Russia’s richest men and the owner of the country’s largest gold mining company. The move marks a sharp escalation in the Kremlin’s efforts to extract wealth from within its own elite as the financial toll of the war in Ukraine deepens.

Strukov, whose fortune is estimated at over $3.5 billion, is the founder of Yuzhuralzoloto—a gold empire built over decades with strong ties to the Kremlin. But on July 5, his private jet was grounded by Russian authorities as it prepared to leave for Turkey. His passport was reportedly seized, and the aircraft barred from departing.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    11 hours ago

    Smaller scale millionaires perhaps. Once they go multinational, it becomes very difficult to significantly harm them even if one country decides to dispossess their business. This has already happened to large corporations that exist today through nationalization at various places and points in time. E.g. Shell after Venezuelan oil nationalization.

    • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      A billionaire cannot exist in 2 countries at the same time. It doesn’t matter if his company is multinational, he isn’t.

      If you jail that billionaire, which is not hard as a state if said billionaire resides in your country, you can “convince” him to give even assets in foreign countries.

      That’s why they removed his passport.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        Right but how do you make most countries want to arrest them? We currently don’t have a setup allowing for this if no international criminal offenses are involved. It only happens if the billionaire resides mostly in an “authoritarian” country where they could get “arbitrarily” arrested. The rest of the world isn’t currently setup to do this. I’m not saying it can’t be setup or shouldn’t be setup like that.

        • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          The comment you replied to originally was talking about why billionaires should support a democratic society.

          If the society is not democratic, it would be authoritarian. Therefore what I explained could happen.

    • HubertManne@piefed.social
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      5 hours ago

      Not if its the home nation. Shell was a us company in venezuela but if the same thing happened in the US the owners would be lucky to get out of the country with what they could carry and if they worked fast enough maybe they could have a small fraction of what they used to.

    • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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      10 hours ago

      That requires rule of law to actually work. Putin is well known to murder problematic oligarchs. Combined with some proper blackmail, that tends to work very well.