Boris Mints is one of the few Russian billionaires to speak out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and against President Vladimir Putin.
Most celebrities in the country remain silent on the war and avoid criticism of the Kremlin. According to Mints, there’s a simple explanation for this: “They’re all scared.”
The Kremlin has a reputation for repressing Putin’s critics. Unauthorized protests have been banned in the country since 2014.
Mints says “anyone” who openly criticizes Putin “has reason to be concerned about their personal safety.”
However, he told the BBC in an email interview: “I have no intention of living in an air raid shelter like Putin.”
The 64yearold built his fortune through investment firm O1 Group, which he founded in 2003 and sold in 2018. Mints said that in Russia the “usual way” to punish a businessman for his “intolerance” towards the regime is “opening a bogus criminal case against your company.”
“These criminal cases not only affect the entrepreneurs themselves, but also their families and employees,” he said.
“Any independent director [de Putin] is seen as a threat as it might be able to fund the opposition or support protests as such these people are seen as enemies of Putin and therefore enemies of the state.
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It’s a situation Mints is familiar with, having first publicly opposed President Putin’s policies in 2014 after Crimea was annexed by Ukraine.
Mints felt he had to leave Russia for the UK in 2015 “in connection with the mounting crackdown on political opposition”, with Boris Nemtsov being shot that year.
Nemtsov was a bitter rival of President Putin. His death in 2015 is the most publicized political assassination since Putin came to power. Authorities deny any involvement.
Two years later, Mints’ former investment firm, O1 Group, was “in an open conflict with the Central Bank of Russia,” he said, and legal proceedings began in several different jurisdictions.
“When something like this happens, it’s a clear sign that you should leave the country immediately,” he said.
Mints remain a key focus of the Kremlin’s legal action.
Based on the lawsuit, Mints suggests that the “boldest course available” for wealthy Russians who don’t like Putin is to “quietly go into exile,” citing the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was once Russia’s richest man, for However, he was imprisoned for almost a decade on charges of tax fraud and tax evasion, which he believed were politically motivated.
Two of the country’s most famous oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska avoided directly criticizing Putin when calling for peace in Ukraine.
Fridman, a billionaire banker, said any comment could pose a risk not only to himself but also to employees and colleagues.
Mints called President Putin’s actions “clumsy” and said the invasion was “the most tragic event in recent history, not just in Ukraine and Russia but worldwide.”
He also compared the war to Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939.
“This war is the result of the insanity and lust for power of one person, Vladimir Putin, backed by his inner circle,” said Mints, who until 2018 was chairman of one of Russia’s largest pension managers.
The BBC turned to the Kremlin for answers to Mints’ criticism.
“Fired the day after we met”
Mints was first introduced to Putin in the early 1990s, but the two only spoke on January 2, 2000, two days after Putin was named acting president of Russia.
Mints, who worked with former Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, was keen to discuss his plans to reform local government to extend Russian democracy into the 21st century.
“Putin listened to my proposals without commenting or arguing. The next day, Putin fired me,” he said.
Mints knew at the time that Putin’s vision for Russia was “miles away” from that of the previous government.
Outside of politics, Mints opened a stockbroker three years later.
Mints was not sanctioned by the British government, unlike other Russian businessmen who have been identified as having close ties to the Kremlin.
However, his name was on the socalled “Putin List” published by the US government in 2018. Of the 210 names, 114 were listed as associated with the government.
The other 96 (including Mints) were apparently listed as oligarchs, then worth more than $1 billion, rather than their close ties to the Kremlin.
Mints, a father of four, was named Forbes World Billionaires in 2017 with a combined fortune of $1.3 billion, but dropped out of the list in 2018. But he says he’s not an oligarch.
“Not every Russian businessman is proPutin, and not every rich Russian is an ‘oligarch,’ either,” he said. “In Russia, the term denotes a business leader who is very close to Putin and whose major part of his wealth or business profits depends on cooperation with the Russian state.”
“Russia is not just an oil field with an aluminum mine in the middle,” he says. “It’s a country of 140 million people. People there, like everywhere else, have their needs, and those needs are no different from those here in the West.”
Mints, who now lives in the UK, feels comfortable not needing extra security to keep himself and his family safe and says he currently has no ambitions to return to Russia.
This text was originally published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional62517181