Zee Beam News

28.03.2008 - RBC - Moscow The number of dollar billionaires in Russia does not correspond to the scale of the country’s economy, believes Sergei Stepashin, Chairman of Russia’s Audit Chamber. “Over the past eight years the number of dollar billionaires in Russia grew from a handful of people to more than a hundred. By the number of billionaires Russia is now second to the United States, but this does not correspond to the scale and level of the country’s economy,” Stepashin said at an audit conference in Moscow today. Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, Stepashin warned. The income difference between the richest and the poorest ten percent increased from 13.9 percent in 2000 to 15.3 percent in 2006, according to the Federal State Statistics Service. The Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported a wider gap, at 30 times. “This misbalance is a serious potential threat, and the government should develop an effective incomes policy,” Stepashin concluded. According to the Forbes rich list, Moscow is home to the largest number of billionaires. It is followed by New York. The United States leads with 469 billionaires, with Russia a distant second with 87 billionaires. Russia’s richest man is Oleg Deripaska. With his fortune estimated at $28 billion, he was ranked 9th, outdoing his rival Roman Abramovich (last year Abramovich was ranked 16th, and Deripaska - 40th). The Governor of the Chukotka region and owner of Chelsea Football Club rose to 15th place, his fortune valued at $23.5 billion. There are thirteen other Russians on the Forbes list, including Severstal’s owner Alexei Mordashov ($21.2 billion, ranked 18th) and Mikhail Fridman, Chairman of Alfa-Bank ($20.8 billion, 20th). The poorest among Russian billionaires is businessman Alisher Usmanov, with $9.3 billion.