The Sunday Times Magazine - UK (2022-05-22)

THERE IS MORE

WEALTH IN TODAY’S

TOP 250 ENTRIES

THAN THERE WAS

IN THE TOP 1,

ENTRIES IN 2017

The Sunday Times Magazine • 7

Rich List 2022

U

ntil just a few days ago it

was business as usual for

the construction workers

on the vast building site

on Winnington Road,

north London. For months

they’ve been building an

estate fit for a billionaire.

One of these mansions

wasn’t enough for the

Moscow-born fertiliser baron Moshe Kantor.

He had bought three in a row and whistled

in the demolition boys. The centrepiece

of his planned development was a three-

storey house about a third of the width of

Buckingham Palace. It included a cinema,

a swimming pool, an underground garage

and an orangery — so far so expected in

the world of the super-rich.

In recent days, though, the red crane

towering over the site — long considered an

eyesore by neighbours — has been

motionless and 60 labourers have been laid

off or deployed on other sites.

Last month Kantor was sanctioned by

the British government. The terms of this

order prevent any British citizen having any

financial relationship with Kantor, be they

lawyer, accountant or bricklayer. He may

not be moving into his Hampstead palace

any time soon, but Kantor still has plenty

of reasons to be cheerful — the 68-year-old

oligarch has seen his wealth soar recently.

The share price of Acron, the Russian

chemical giant he runs, is up by nearly

200 per cent in the past 12 months. His

wealth has grown to £8 billion.

Kantor has long been considered one

of the London-based oligarchs closest to

Vladimir Putin. The pair have been

pictured together frequently and Kantor

has organised delegations to meet the

Russian president, according to the

Israeli media. In 2017 Russia’s president

bestowed an Order of Honour on Kantor

as “recognition of his professional

achievement and longstanding fair work”.

It’s quite a gong. Putin has received the

award himself, as has another oligarch

close to the Kremlin: Roman Abramovich.

Kantor, who has joint British, Russian

and Israeli citizenship, has not only been

on good terms with the Kremlin’s warlord

president. The former Labour prime

minister Tony Blair became chairman of

Kantor’s European Council on Tolerance

and Reconciliation in 2015. Two years

ago Kantor hosted the World Holocaust

Forum in Israel, an event attended by

Prince Charles and Emmanuel Macron.

Putin was there too.

Although the Kantor Centre — a part

of Tel Aviv University — has strongly

condemned the Russian leader’s invasion,

Kantor himself has been quiet about the

Ukraine war.

If you expected this year’s Sunday Times

Rich List would show that the fortunes

of the London-based oligarchs close to

Putin have been smashed by the sanctions

imposed in the wake of the Ukraine

conflict, you will be disappointed.

Asset freezes and travel bans have caused

some irritation and disruption for the

UK-based wealthy Russians close to

the Kremlin — but their multibillion-

pound fortunes remain largely intact.

This year’s Rich List — our 34th

edition — again identifies record wealth,

with 177 billionaires, six more than in 2021.

The combined wealth of the UK’s 250 most

affluent individuals and families has

climbed to £710.723 billion, an 8 per cent

rise in just 12 months.

One statistic perhaps illustrates this

astonishing, even bewildering golden era

for the super-rich better than any other.

There is more wealth in the top 250

entries in this year’s list than there was

in 1,000 entries of our 2017 Rich List.

It would be entirely reasonable to think

that the underlying value of Russian assets

held by allies of Putin who feature in this

year’s Rich List would be lower. After all the

rouble collapsed by 50 per cent when

Putin’s tanks rumbled into Ukraine. Today,

however, it is worth more against the

pound than it was before the war.

This artificial rally is largely due to the

Kremlin’s imposition of strict currency

controls and the Russian central bank’s

raising of interest rates to an eye-popping

20 per cent. The latter will cause financial

misery for millions of Russians, yet it

shores up the value of many oligarchs’

Russian-based businesses.

So what about all those high-profile

seizures of villas, mansions and superyachts

during the opening weeks of the conflict?

Well, the reality is that there’s a world of

difference between freezing assets and

seizing assets.

Alisher Usmanov, best known in the

UK for once owning a large stake in

Arsenal, has had more of his trinkets

seized than most. Italian authorities in

March took control of the Uzbek-born

metal baron’s Sardinian villa and a

£550,000 armour-plated Mercedes. The

French grounded two of his helicopters,

thought to be worth about £20 million.

The Germans then took possession of

Dilbar, Usmanov’s 512ft superyacht.

Although transferring ownership into the

name of his sister Gulbakhor Ismailova

ROMAN ABRAMOVICH

2021 £12.101bn

2022 £6bn

DOWN £6.101bn

MOSHE KANTOR

2021 £3.522bn

2022 £8bn

UP £4.478bn

ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES, REXFeb 15 Mar 1 Mar 16 Apr 1 Apr 16 May 1

£0.

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Russia invades

Ukraine

Rouble hits

record low

RUSSIAN

ROUBLE

VERSUS

BRITISH

POUND

Rouble back to

prewar level

one month after

the invasion

Value of

one rouble

THE OLIGARCH ROLLERCOASTER

➤