Ant, Yukos and the Warning to Rebel Billionaires
Moscow crushed its richest man and that proved a turning point in the country’s economic policy. Could Beijing’s crackdown on Jack Ma and Ant mark a similar shift?
All of Khodorkovsky’s money couldn’t keep him out of Putin’s prison.
Photographer: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty
In the thick of it, back in Moscow in 2003, it never seemed possible that the onslaught would go as far as it did. In the end, it took only months for Mikhail Khodorkovsky to find his oil empire under siege, and not much longer for the edifice to crumble.
The parallel between the Yukos Oil Co. debacle almost two decades ago and the crackdown on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and affiliate Ant Group Co. over the past weeks will seem at best inexact. And, to be clear, it is. Jack Ma didn’t benefit from a chaotic and often murky privatization process, nor has he been involved in the direct political machinations of the kind dabbled in by Russian oligarchs in the 1990s. Ultimately, Khodorkovsky spent more than 10 years behind bars — though he has maintained his innocence — and the bulk of the company he had turned around was taken over by state-owned Rosneft. Blunt, devastating blows.