For two decades, Oleg Deripaska pursued one of the few things he couldn’t buy—American acceptance—with all the tenacity you’d expect from a man who built what was once the world’s ninth-largest fortune.
The Russian billionaire hired Wall Street lawyers and K Street lobbyists, bought a Washington mansion on Embassy Row and even offered to help find a missing American spy in Iran. But each attempt to obtain a basic U.S. travel visa was ultimately rejected over his alleged brutality in amassing the wealth that opened so many doors elsewhere, including to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.
