Tinkov, the founder of one of Russia’s largest banks, criticized the war in Ukraine in an Instagram post last month, explaining the next day that President Vladimir Putin’s administration had called his executives and threatened to nationalize his bank if they did not cut ties with him.
Last week, he was forced to sell his 35 percent stake in what he described as the “desperate sale, or sale under fire, that the Kremlin has imposed on him.”
“I couldn’t discuss the price,” Tinkoff said in a phone interview with The New York Times.
He added, “It was like a hostage, you take what you’re offered. I couldn’t negotiate.”
In parallel, the 54-year-old Russian billionaire revealed, in his first speech since the Russian military operation, that he hired bodyguards after his friends in contact with the Russian security services told him that he should fear for his life.
He quipped that while he survived leukemia, perhaps “the Kremlin will kill me.”
On the other hand, “Tinkov Bank”, which was founded by the billionaire in 2006, denied his description of the events, and said: “There were no threats of any kind against the bank’s leadership.”
“Oleg has not been in Moscow for many years, has not been involved in the life of the company and has not been involved in any matters,” the bank said in a statement.
It is noteworthy that Oleg Tinkov ran into trouble in the West, agreeing to pay 507 million dollars last year to settle a tax fraud case in the United States.
And last March, Britain included him on the list of sanctions against the Russian business elite.
The man’s fortune amounted to more than 9 billion dollars last November, and he became famous as one of the few self-made businessmen in Russia after he accumulated his fortune outside the energy and metal industries.