Even though these are little more than annoyances to these obscenely wealthy men, it's still worth it, in my view, to treat them like the criminals and pariahs they all are. Russia has operated as little more than an international crime syndicate run by Vladimir Putin, with all these oligarchs giving him kickbacks (upwards of 50%) to keep operating. If they don't play ball he throws them in jail and seizes their assets, as he famously did with Mikhail Kondorkovsky.
Source: Reuters
ROME — Italian police have seized villas and yachts worth at least 140 million euros ($153 million) from four high-profile Russians who were placed on an EU sanctions list following Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, sources said on Saturday.
A police source said a villa owned by billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, and a villa on Lake Como owned by state TV host Vladimir Soloviev, had both been seized.
In addition, sources confirmed that yachts belonging to Russia’s richest man, Alexey Mordashov, and Gennady Timchenko, who has close tied with Russian President Vladimir Putin, were impounded overnight in northern Italian ports.
Russian oligarchs are believed to have bought numerous villas in choice Italian locations over the past 20 years and sources said more assets were expected to be seized in coming days as Western states implement massive sanctions to try to force Russia to withdraw from Ukraine.
