Many years later, when Mikhail Khodorkovsky, perhaps the most famous "oligarch", was leafing through legal books in the prison of new Russia with a little loss and helplessness, perhaps his childhood dream would reappear in his mind.
1963, the richest man in Russia listed by Forbes magazine in 2003 and 2004, was once an oligarch in oil and banking, and was born in an ordinary collective apartment in Moscow. Khodorkovsky's father is an engineer and a Jew. He works in the high-pressure machine tool workshop of a factory. Environment can often determine a person's ideal.
Just like Jiang Menglin, a child in China's Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces at the end of 19, his biggest dream is to pass the imperial examination and get all the honors and privileges that an imperial government official can get. Mikhail Khodorkovsky's childhood dream is to become a red manager of a Soviet factory-the CEO of a Soviet enterprise, which means that he can get the respect and special rights in the eyes of a child. Under the conditions of planned economy and shortage economy in the former Soviet Union, these respects and privileges are extremely concrete and vivid. It may mean bread and milk, or cars and big houses. On the other hand, there are endless shopping queues and various delivery bills.
In order to realize this dream, Khodorkovsky is bent on becoming an elite under the existing social conditions and game rules. He has been a good boy since he was a child. Kristia freeland, a reporter from Moscow Station of Financial Times, an elegant lady with a delicate face, found the mark of the good boy who listened to the teacher the most in Khodorkovsky, although his greed has been lamented by people. "Khodorkovsky has brown hair, big, brown, naive glasses, handsome face, and a pair of oversized eyes. His voice is extremely soft, with a modest to almost weak smile. " Freeland described it as the youngest of the seven oligarchs who were said to control Russia at that time.
Freeland's speech to oligarchs was very interesting. For example, Friedman is an outsider, potanin is an aristocrat, berezovsky is a vagabond (some people call him godfather), and Gusinski is a director. But guess what Khodorkovsky's address is? -"bureaucratic"! Khodorkovsky is the darling of the Youth League. Former Deputy Secretary of the Communist Youth League Committee of Mendeleev College in Moscow. Washington post reporter David Hoffman said: "He has many high-level patrons, including the KGB." If it weren't for his Jewish ancestry and the hostility towards Jews in the Soviet Union at that time, Khodorkovsky might have become the elite of the system he later destroyed.
How did he become an oligarch?
Rui Xue, one of the most famous sociologists in contemporary China, once told reporters that he believed that a harmonious society must be an open society with smooth flow among all social strata. An unharmonious society will inevitably create many obstacles to the flow of individuals. A person's family background and other leading factors often determine his position in society all his life, while personal talent and acquired efforts often do not help.
Khodorkovsky's initial efforts to realize his childhood dream were hindered by his background: after obtaining an engineering degree from Mendeleev Institute in Moscow, Khodorkovsky hoped to get a job in a key military enterprise-although it was not the best job assigned to his class, it would bring Khodorkovsky closer to his dream. As he was at the top of his class, Khodorkovsky thought he would definitely get the job, but his request was rejected. Although no one has ever officially explained the reason to him, the stubborn young man insists that because he is Jewish, the government thinks he is not suitable for working in a highly confidential military enterprise.
After the most formal gate was blocked at that time, Khodorkovsky had to choose other roads. In universities, due to the prevailing "self-financing" plan-that is, factories and various organizations raise funds by themselves, the Youth League has gained the right to freely control all kinds of income it has obtained. The * * * youth league in the university has turned into a chamber of commerce. The * * * Youth League working in the school gave Khodorkovsky the opportunity to open a "youth cafe". But the future richest man's first business trip was not smooth. "It was an unpleasant experience," Khodorkovsky recalled.
But the later experience was much smoother. He founded the "Youth Science and Technology Innovation Center" to carry out business activities under the protection of * * * youth league and network. Although nominally, the Youth Science and Technology Innovation Center allows young scientists to make money by solving technical problems for factories, the main business of Khodorkovsky and his colleagues is actually a financial trick: converting non-cash credit into cash.
There are two kinds of funds under the Soviet system, one is cash and the other is non-cash credit. Cash is scarce. Under the planned economy system, cash can only be used for specific purposes, such as paying workers' wages. What factories and enterprises are not scarce is virtual non-cash credit. The state deposits them in factory accounts as subsidies to factories, which can be paid as funds to another factory, but they cannot be turned into cash through formal channels. The asymmetry of the two funds leads to the imbalance of their values. One assessment is that the value of cash rubles is 10 times that of non-cash rubles.
With extensive contacts and the protection of officials, including senior bank officials, Khodorkovsky found a way to convert non-cash credit into cash. "The Youth Science and Technology Innovation Center and a research institute have accounts in the same bank, and the money is transferred from one account to another, and the Youth Science and Technology Innovation Center withdraws money from its own account." Krystanov Skaya, a sociologist who studies the Russian elite, said. Therefore, the sociologist said, "The first form of privatization is cash privatization".
Khodorkovsky distributed the cash to the participants around him: his colleagues, the leaders who sheltered him, the top management of factories and research institutes, and then distributed it to the alliance organizations who sheltered him according to a certain proportion. He won the gratitude of all parties. Leaders of these industries are willing to cooperate with Khodorkovsky because they know: "They are cooperating with the authorities, not with professional swindlers". Academician Schederin, the original funder of Khodorkovsky and director of the Institute of High Temperature, said: "They are full of energy. They are well-known regiment officials, elegant and simple young people, not those despicable thieves. "
Another advantage of Khodorkovsky is that he has accumulated these non-cash credits, found some companies with export rights that hold a large amount of foreign exchange, and converted the non-cash credits into foreign exchange. He was only twenty-four or five years old when he did these things.
The most important link for Khodorkovsky to become an oligarch began to appear, and ambitious young people wanted to enter the banking industry that had been monopolized by the state. The young man who has studied a little law found that there is a small clause in the Law on Cooperative Enterprises that has been promulgated, and cooperative enterprises can set up their own banks. 1At the end of 998, Khodorkovsky's bank was officially registered as Mehnert Pa Bank. Khodorkovsky's network once again played a role. He found Academician Schederin, who had helped him, and told him that he had made a lot of money and wanted to open a bank, but he was worried about the current social situation and needed high-level asylum. Schederin later recalled: "After listening to their descriptions, I said to them,' You have done a good job, children, tell me how I can help you, and I am willing to do so." "
"We have not encountered any obstacles from state organs." Khodorkovsky later said this. The advertisements of Paco Bank in Mehnert began to appear on the streets and on TV. When you turn on the TV, people can see a simple and handsome young man waving his hand and saying, "I'm Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to guarantee your future, and I want to buy Gubu from Mehnert Papa Bank! Mehnert Pa is a commercial bank. " Advertising and stock movements are political insurance policies to resist possible repressive measures taken by the government. David Hoffman, a Washington post correspondent in Moscow, explained this.
Mehnert PaCO Bank has also become an intermediate commercial bank approved and selected by the government to lend to enterprises. A large number of state funds flowed into Menapa Bank, and the timeliness of funds made Khodorkovsky profitable. In the attempted coup to overthrow Gorbachev before the collapse of the Soviet Union, two senior officials, Nikolai Crouzil and Gerogier Pavlov, committed suicide by jumping off a building. Their suicide makes the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds a mystery. It is suspected that Khodorkovsky's Mai Hnat Bank once kept this batch of funds, even suspected that he used his contact with foreign banks to help transfer this batch of funds, or that he embezzled this batch of funds himself.
What really made Khodorkovsky an oligarch was the later auction plan and the loan-for-stock plan. Qin Hui is the most outstanding scholar in China who studies countries in transition. He pointed out to reporters: "The privatization voucher plan of Gaidar and Chubais is not the reason for creating oligarchs. None of the people who bought privatization vouchers among the people became oligarchs, and most of them went bankrupt. The birth of oligarchy is due to the incompleteness of privatization voucher plan. In the supplementary auction as a plan to distribute privatization certificates to the people, oligarchs really appeared. "
In Chubais's design, the auction plan is to bring capital to enterprises that cannot be brought by privatization certificates. The specific way is to require each bidder to promise the future investment quota to the enterprise while paying the government cash. "However, in Russia's turbulent market economy, transferring assets for future commitments has created opportunities for savvy businessmen to make a fortune." Kristia freeland of the Financial Times commented.
"Mehnert Palmer is very active in this investment auction. They make high investment commitments, and then they use the guarantee of Mehnert Palmer Bank to support these commitments, and then these guarantees will disappear. They have a complete system ... this is the form of property division in China. " Another oligarch, Friedman, the founder of Alpha Group, said this.
Khodorkovsky got Yukos in the loan-for-stock program. The loan-to-share conversion plan was invented by another oligarch, Vladimir Potanin, who was called "noble" by freeland. He wants to use it to get his dream nickel factory in Knollys. This is one of the customers of his Onekom Bank after the collapse of the Soviet banking system. Potanin wants to be the owner of this enterprise, but he doesn't suggest buying the enterprise at a low price, which is too obvious. Instead, he promises to exchange loans for the management right of the enterprise. This is the prototype of the loan-for-stock plan. Potanin and his allies-many oligarchs with banks-persuaded two deputy prime ministers, Soskovic and Chubais. The former itself is a supporter of financial industry integration, while the latter hopes to bring capital to enterprises. Russian politician ZaDonoff said at a cabinet meeting to decide whether to approve the loan for stock exchange that this plan "will be the beginning of an economic oligarchy era". Nevertheless, radical plans that are considered "stupid" and "excessive" by western economists are still being implemented.
In the auction of Yukos/KLOC-0 on February 8, 1995, 45% of Yukos shares were traded in the form of loans for shares, and 33% were traded by auction. The price paid by Khodorkovsky was $65.438+$59 million and $65.438+$50 million respectively. His competitors were composed of three banks, and the CEO of one bank later complained to Washington post reporter Hoffman: "Khodorkovsky was buying Yukos with Yukos' money ... they stole the company. Alfred Koch, a young reformist economist, supervised the implementation of the loan-for-stock plan, and later hinted that Khodorkovsky used his connections in Yukos to raise money to buy Yukos. The low auction price of Yukos also caused controversy: one comparison is that Yukos was valued at $700 million at that time, and less than two years later, Yukos was listed on the Moscow Stock Exchange with a market value of $7 billion.
It was filmed that Khodorkovsky of Yukos really became an oligarch, although there were some setbacks later. In the Russian financial crisis, Mai Hnat Bank faced bankruptcy, but Khodorkovsky also successfully transferred the assets of Mai Hnat Bank to other financial institutions under his control, and made it impossible for the court to understand the complete financial situation of Mai Hnat Bank-because the truck loaded with all the financial documents of Mai Hnat Bank inexplicably fell into the Volga River. At the same time, Khodorkovsky secretly transferred Yukos assets and diluted shares, and finally squeezed out some equity control rights of Yukos, including American tycoon Kenneth Dart and several debt banks.
Khodorkovsky not only had the opportunity to realize his childhood dreams, but also turned these enterprises into his own assets by the way.
"At the peak, the oligarchy of 7 to 65,438+00 is the real government. They can change the prime minister at will and implement economic policies that are beneficial to them. " Former Russian Prime Minister Gaidar said. Yeltsin was re-elected and Putin came to power, which was also the result of oligarchy's support. Berezovsky, the godfather of oligarchy, can even proudly claim that he chose two Russian presidents. Of course, Khodorkovsky flashes every time, though not as bright as berezovsky and Gusinski.
The "war" soon began,
The war was over soon.
When the oligarch was sentenced to death, Khodorkovsky did not seem to be affected.
The "death penalty" was originally executed by yevgeny primakov. The 68-year-old KGB officer became Russian Prime Minister in 1998. There is no interest dispute or personal enmity between the determined old KGB and the oligarchs-this is the reason why the young reformists headed by Chubais failed in their attempt to crack down on the oligarchs' "robber capitalism". Moreover, unlike the young reformers who had no political power base, primakov was able to mobilize all the forces of the secret security agencies and the government to crusade against the oligarchs he hated. He collected the criminal evidence of oligarchs, dismissed berezovsky from various government posts, and issued an arrest warrant against the godfather of oligarchs. But Khodorkovsky magically maintained a good relationship with primakov.
But after berezovsky and Gusinski went into exile one after another, Putin did not forget his declaration of "eliminating oligarchy". It is widely believed that Putin has launched a war against oligarchs since he took power from Yeltsin in 2000. He said to freeland: "Those rich people should not control society ... oligarchs can't and have no power to influence the government's decision-making. If someone doesn't like this, if someone is used to anarchism, then sorry, they will have to abide by the new rules. "
Khodorkovsky seems to be well adapted to the new rules. He tried to transform himself from a robber capitalist into a spokesman for Russian capitalism. The year 2000 is not only the beginning of Putin's consolidation of power, but also the beginning of Khodorkovsky's image reconstruction. "With money, who needs a casino?" Khodorkovsky said in an interview with western reporters.
Khodorkovsky carried out two reforms on his Yukos, which won him the favor of the west: improving the working methods of Yukos; Improved attitude towards investors. Within a few months after taking over Yukos, Khodorkovsky fired thousands of drunken workers. In terms of corporate governance, Yukos Company began to publish financial statements in accordance with American GAAP in June 2000, and hired McKinsey & Company as its consultant. In 2003, there were more than 50 foreigners among Yukos executives, including Bruce Misamo, the chief financial officer employed by PennzEnergy Oil Company. Khodorkovsky was also the first oligarch to officially announce personal shares and partner shares. In the transaction with investors, Khodorkovsky paid dividends to shareholders according to the annual report and compensated depositors who suffered losses during the bankruptcy of Mehnert Pa. Five days before Khodorkovsky's arrest, Yukos still reported a net profit of $955 million in the second quarter, an increase of 26% over the same period last year.
"It takes a lot of courage to think that you can run a world-class multinational oil company, but it takes more courage to think that you can create such a company ... But if you want to be a factory director at the age of 5 and an oligarch at the age of 35, these ideas are still reasonable." Freeland commented.
As the government armed men shouted "Drop your weapon or we will shoot", everything came to an abrupt end. On June 25, 2003, government armed men rushed into Khodorkovsky's private jet to refuel at novas Buick Airport, arrested him, and then flew back to Moscow, throwing this young, rich, handsome and popular entrepreneur like a rock star into an eight-person cell in Matoskaya Tisna prison, which was "notorious and overcrowded" (freeland's evaluation) on charges of ". There is no need to argue whether these charges are established. In a transitional society, the way to acquire wealth may be a legal means corresponding to 1000 illegal means.
As for the analysis behind Khodorkovsky's arrest, some people think that it is a struggle between the bureaucratic elite including the old KGB and the new political forces rising during the transition period. Olga Krunovskaya, a famous Russian sociologist, came up with a figure: in the highest power class, the proportion of bureaucratic aristocrats rose from 4.8% in Gorbachev's period to 58.3% in Putin's period. Another analysis believes that this is Putin's efforts to consolidate his regime. Because from 2003, Khodorkovsky began to express his strong interest in politics: supporting the opposition party, commenting on state affairs, and even including a secret plan to change Russia's political system and become prime minister under the new system. This plan cannot be confirmed by Khodorkovsky himself, but this statement is circulated in the media.
"He told me that he was young and rich, and one day they had to release him, and then he could continue fighting." Freeland said that Khodorkovsky told him this. Russian politicians, businessmen and Yukos executives also heard similar farewells.
Berezovsky commented: "It is a terrible thing for Putin to put Khodorkovsky in prison. He is still young and will eventually be released from prison, so that Putin has a rich opponent with strong personal grievances. If he is put in prison, Putin will almost have to shoot him. Everything in Russia is so extreme. " The trial of Khodorkovsky has continued to this day, and he and his subordinates denied all the charges against Yukos and himself.
On June 1 65438+1October1day, 2004, the court ruled to extend the detention time of Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky's lawyer appealed. But prosecutors believe that once released, Khodorkovsky may flee abroad or put pressure on witnesses. The Moscow City Court rejected the appeal of 12. 1 and ordered him to remain in detention until he was formally tried on February 4, 2005 on charges of fraud and tax evasion.
But the company can't be as stubborn as Khodorkovsky: the Russian government said that Yukos owed $27 billion in taxes and would sell Yugansk, the largest subsidiary of Yukos, to offset the taxes, with a starting price of about $9 billion. 12 15, Yukos Company filed for bankruptcy protection with a court in Houston, USA, hoping that the court could prevent the Russian government from selling Iusco Company on Sunday. 12 19 A little-known company, Baikal Financial Group, invested 9.35 billion US dollars to win the main production assets of Yukos Company and became the official owner of one of the largest oil producers in Russia, accounting for 60% of the total oil output of Yukos Company. No one knows the people behind Baikal Financial Group or the source of its funds.
Yukos, an oil giant, once had a market value of $40 billion, but now it has a market value of less than $2 billion. The dream of a 5-year-old boy was realized at the age of 35 and shattered at the age of 40.