Mikhail Prokhorov is a tycoon in Russia, Jay-Z’s partner in Brooklyn—and a strong candidate to eventually replace Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, a prospect the billionaire is turning into his full-time job
When billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, alpha oligarch and partner of Jay-Z, comes to New York, he typically nabs the 52nd-floor penthouse suite at the top of the Four Seasons hotel in midtown Manhattan, which goes for $35,000 a night. It has nine rooms, and when I meet Prokhorov, he’s relaxing his 6-foot-8 frame on a couch in the dining area.
He’s in town in early February for just a couple of nights, as usual, to watch his Brooklyn Nets. Tonight they’re playing against the equally matched Chicago Bulls. Three years ago, he put $200 million into the Nets, which moved to the spectacular new Barclays Center last fall.
But the Nets are “a passion project”—more of a hobby than a serious preoccupation. “I have handed off all of my active business assets to my partners to manage,” says Prokhorov, “so that 100 percent of my time is devoted to politics.”
Sceptics may be forgiven the arched eyebrow. Prokhorov burst upon the Russian political scene just in time to run against strongman Vladimir Putin, whose 2012 election for a third term as president was a foregone conclusion. Before announcing his decision to run as an independent, Prokhorov surrendered his political party, Right Cause, to the Kremlin, saying that it was only a puppet of the government. At the same time, he negotiated with “the puppeteers”, who allowed him to run for president and collect 2 million necessary signatures in record time while other candidates were flailing. Attracting 8 percent of the vote in a third-place finish, Prokhorov went mute for a while after Putin returned to power.
The next time, he insists, he’s serious. “We are in the process of building a real, strong, powerful party called the Civic Platform. That’s what I do all day.”
To gain credibility, as well as traction, he must disprove the label of full-time dabbler. Now 47, Prokhorov has been, by turns, a hawker of denim, a banker, a metals mogul, an extreme athlete, a playboy, a sports team owner, a politician, a media power ... and a politician again. “I consider myself an alternative” to the current regime, he says. “I have, of course, already run for president. If the Civic Platform continues to move ahead, further participation in presidential elections is a possibility.” Prokhorov is careful to note his respect for Putin. But challenging the Kremlin in any way is still a dangerous game. Opponents like Prokhorov’s former oligarch contemporary, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, have found themselves entombed in the gulag. Others—like Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB agent-turned-MI6 spy, and Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant-turned-whistleblower—have ended up dead. (The Kremlin has denied any involvement in Litvinenko’s death.)
So Prokhorov is writing a new political playbook for billionaires, one far more complicated and high-stakes than the one Michael Bloomberg used to spend his way into Gracie Mansion or Silvio Berlusconi to leverage his media holdings to become Italy’s prime minister. He knows he can’t act too boldly or defiantly, or the Kremlin will shut him down immediately. He also knows he can’t be too closely allied with Putin, or he will lose credibility. And he can certainly read a calendar: The next presidential election is five years away. There’s a lot of groundwork that must be done, and Prokhorov, a consummate chess player as a kid, is suited to temporising and making thoughtful moves. “He knows how to calculate several steps ahead and can think about several things at the same time,” says Yevgeny Roizman, who followed Prokhorov from Right Cause to Civic Platform. With a net worth of $13 billion, Prokhorov can hang in this game a while.
As the game starts, Prokhorov sits down with Mila, an “acquaintance” who, he later admits, was an ex-girlfriend, and a smattering of Russians from his US-based Onexim Sports & Entertainment. Prokhorov watches the game nervously, fidgeting, cracking his knuckles and, when Chicago takes the ball up-court, roaring, “Those SOBs will now score!” For him, though, it’s simply “a way of relaxing, if you will, a contrast to the headaches of political life”. Which says as much about Russian politics as it does about Prokhorov.
The World Bank ranks it number 112, out of 185 nations, for ease of doing business. Transparency Inter- national’s Corruption Perceptions Index gives Russia a score of 28 out of a possible 100. Yet, there are more than stirrings of a middle class. Feeling marginalised and furious, the nation’s young and Moscow’s intelligentsia are bellowing for change.
(This story appears in the 05 April, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)