Pursuits
Once a Fugitive, This Billionaire Aims to Be Russia's Jeff Bezos
- Gutseriev’s retail entry caps non-stop expansion since exile
- ‘You have to be exteremely greedy in business,’ tycoon says
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A decade ago, Mikhail Gutseriev was a billionaire on the run trying to avoid the fate of fellow Russian oil titan Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who’d flouted the power of Vladimir Putin and been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Ordered not to leave the country as Moscow tax officials began raiding his offices, Gutseriev sold his Russneft oil company to a Kremlin-friendly oligarch for almost $3 billion, announced his retirement from business and in July 2007 drove across the Belarusian border before a warrant was issued for his arrest.