Another Billionaire Incurs Putin's Wrath

Since Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, people who had made billions in the murky first decade of Russian capitalism have been picked off one by one: jailed, pushed out of the country, forced to give up assets or take part in unprofitable projects. Now, apparently, it's Viktor Vekselberg's turn: An attack on some of his top managers means that repeated demonstrations of loyalty to the Kremlin are no safety guarantee.

The story goes back to July 28, 2000, when Putin held his first official meeting with the generals of Russian business. Media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky couldn't attend because he was in jail: Putin was in the process of taking away his TV station. Boris Berezovsky, whose diverse assets, including media ones, had helped Putin get elected, wasn't there either: Just a few months later, he would decide not to return to Russia from London to avoid imprisonment. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who would later lose his oil company to the government and spend 10 years in jail, was there. So was banker Sergei Pugachev, who is now in France, having lost his Russian holdings.