Former Russian banking tycoon Oleg Tinkov says a single Instagram put up condemning the conflict in Ukraine value him almost $9 billion, after he was pressured to promote his stake in his financial institution for a fraction of its actual worth. He described the episode as a “hostage” scenario that exhibits how dissenting billionaires are delivered to heel in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Tinkov, the founding father of Tinkoff Financial institution, was as soon as celebrated as one among Russia’s wealthiest bankers. That standing modified dramatically in April 2022, when he used Instagram to denounce the conflict as “insane” and to criticize Russia’s army as poorly ready and riddled with corruption. As CNBC reported on the time, Tinkov claimed 90% of Russians opposed the conflict, and the remaining 10% have been “morons.” He urged an instantaneous and “face-saving” finish to the conflict.
Tinkov instructed the BBC not too long ago that inside a day of that put up, senior executives at his financial institution obtained a name from officers linked to the Kremlin, delivering a stark ultimatum. Both Tinkov’s stake can be bought and his title scrubbed from the model, or the financial institution—then one among Russia’s largest lenders—can be nationalized.
A pressured hearth sale
Tinkov stated that what adopted was not a negotiation however coercion below menace. He claimed he was instructed to simply accept no matter worth was supplied for his roughly 35% stake in TCS Group, the proprietor of Tinkoff Financial institution, or danger shedding all the pieces. “I couldn’t negotiate the price. I was like a hostage,” he instructed The New York Instances. He in the end bought the stake in April 2022, shortly after his Instagram put up.
Inside per week of this dialog, Tinkov stated, a agency linked to metals magnate Vladimir Potanin, one among Russia’s richest males and a key provider of nickel utilized in army {hardware}, stepped in to purchase the stake. Tinkov instructed the BBC that the deal valued his holding at nearly 3% of its true market value, wiping out nearly $9 billion of the wealth he had constructed over many years in enterprise.
Exile and erasure
After the sale, Tinkov left Russia, finally renouncing his Russian citizenship and changing into one of many few high-profile businessmen to publicly break with the Kremlin over the conflict. He alleged that the marketing campaign towards him prolonged past the stability sheet, together with stress to take away his title from the financial institution model and efforts to erase his function in constructing the establishment that after carried it.
In his telling, the episode exhibits how rapidly loyalty is enforced when oligarchs step out of line. Public criticism of the invasion, even from a determine whose financial institution helped energy Russia’s shopper increase, was handled as a direct problem to the state in wartime. There are quite a few examples from the current previous, together with the erstwhile oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, previously Russia’s richest man, who spent 10 years in jail after launching a pro-democracy group in 2001. Like Tinkov, he has since turn out to be an exile, residing in London.
For his half, Tinkov has taken a couple of years to retrench and is newly seen in 2025, not too long ago rising as a backer of Plata, a Mexican fintech led by former Tinkoff Financial institution executives.
However the former oligarch’s expertise sits inside a wider sample described by analysts who say the Kremlin now depends on a mixture of concern and alternative to maintain Russia’s rich elite compliant. Sanctions, war-time controls and the specter of asset seizures have made fortunes inside Russia extremely contingent on political loyalty, whereas the departure of Western companies has opened up discount acquisitions for trusted allies.
The conflict in Ukraine, in the meantime, has rumbled on, with President Trump holding conferences and calls with each Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. After the 2025 Christmas vacation, Trump met with Zelensky at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida whereas fielding cellphone calls with Putin, claiming a peace deal is “closer than ever,” greater than three years after Tinkov made his fateful Instagram put up.
