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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Richer Russia lose $ 10 billion in 2 days

Mulher passa por uma placa de anĂșncio taxas de moeda estrangeira e o rublo em Moscou

Moscow - The twenty richest people in Russia have lost $ 10 billion this week because the central bank raised interest rates to compensate for the sanctions imposed by Western countries that crushed the ruble and left the RTS Index of the country in the lowest level since March 2009.

The billionaires have lost a total of $ 62 billion in 2014, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and together control $ 174 billion.

The European Union and the US limited the access of Russian companies to finance to punish President Vladimir Putin after he annexed the Crimea in March. Russia's problems were compounded by the corresponding collapse in oil prices, a base of the economy.

The ruble plunged 50 percent since the end of June. Crude oil reached its lowest point in five years after the United Arab Emirates said that OPEC will not contain production. In response, the Central Bank of Russia increased the benchmark interest rate of 10.5 percent to 17 percent in the middle of the night in Moscow, on 15 December, when the ruble fell to more than 64 per dollar for the first time.

"Optimists who thought in March that it would all work out in the end now understand that nothing will be fine," said Stanislav Belkovsky, adviser to the Kremlin during the first term of Putin and currently a consultant of the National Strategy Institute of Moscow, a research firm. "The richest of Russia consider this situation very negatively, but they do not have the tools to reverse it."

Leonid Mikhelson was the most affected in terms of dollars among those who remain among the twenty richest people in the country. He lost $ 8.7 billion since the beginning of the year. The 59-year-old man is the CEO of OAO Novatek, the second largest producer of natural gas from Russia. His fortune is $ 9.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg ranking.

Ties with Putin

Gennady Timchenko, 62, recorded the second largest loss of dollars, $ 7.8 billion this year. Timchenko, which has close ties to Putin, owns 23.5 percent of Novatek and was hit by individual US sanctions in March. His net worth is $ 3.2 billion.

Declines also dethroned Alisher Usmanov the top of the list of the richest in Russia. The 61 year old man owns more than 20 percent of OAO Mega Fon, the second largest mobile operator in Russia, which fell 58 percent in 2014. Usmanov, whose losses in Russia were mitigated by gains in Chinese companies technology Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc., lost $ 6.8 billion so far this year.

Usmanov gave the lead to Viktor Vekselberg, who has been at the top for 17 days at the end of 2012, after he and four billionaires partners decided to sell his half of the oil venture TNK-BP to state-owned OAO Rosneft for $ 28 billion.

Evtushenkov and Deripaska

No one suffered more in percentage terms than Vladimir Evtushenkov. Once the 14th richest person in Russia, 66 year-old man lost almost 90 percent of his fortune, which expelled him from the list of twenty. The billionaire was sentenced to house arrest by a Moscow court in September after an investigation for money laundering linked with the purchase of $ 2.5 billion in stock in oil producer OAO Bashneft.

The billionaire Oleg Deripaska's aluminum, who owns a 48 percent stake in United Co. Rusal, the world's largest aluminum producer, listed in Hong Kong, is the only Russian billionaire whose fortune increased this year.

The 46 year old man earned $ 855 million because the fall of the ruble boosted mining and metal fabrication companies that have costs in rubles and get their revenue in foreign currencies. United Co. Rusal grew 101 percent this year. Shares in Rusal declined 4.9 percent to $ 4.62 Hong Kong operations in that city yesterday.

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