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But the purpose of sanctioning them and in effect vladimir putin himself is not to change his mind. he s not going to change his mind. he might have, by the way, if we had done it in advance, if we had done it ten years ago. but he s not going to change his mind right now. the purpose of sanctioning him is to say we don t want you to have the money either in russia, with the central bank reserves, outside of russia with your own savings, to be able to pay for this war. but as you just said to me at the beginning of this conversation, the key money, the money that really matters is going in day after day, week after week, from the energy resources that russia sells, not least to europe and other western allies. and it amounts to, you said, up to $1 billion a day. now that s going to go into russia whether putin is ....
The name of his enemies almost on any circumstance, and he keeps on saying my name, if the magnitsky act wasn t something that he deeply cared about? right. the russians do have a bit of ammunition against you, though, because if one digs into your own businesses and the way you operate, you do some of the things which you argue that the oligarchs have been doing for a long time, which you want to stop them doing, that is sort of hiding money in offshore centres. your own companies have done that, in the british virgin islands, for example. you have done tax runarounds in russia, which i would imagine you think the oligarchs use and perhaps you criticise them for, but you ve done it yourself. you have been a very ambitious, ruthless business operator in your own right, and that does leave them with some ammunition. but the ammunition isjust not true. so, there s. is anything i just said not true? everything you said is not true. nothing is hidden. the stuff in the british virgin island ....
But just to stick with the sanctions as they currently exist, you did write this a few weeks ago. you did write, they re more extreme than i ever imagined, even more than perhaps i would have asked for based on what i thought the west was capable of. and you seem there to be particularly focused on the measures taken against a host of so called oligarchs, these huge multibillionaire businessmen who have had long association with vladimir putin. do you think you overestimated the impact the sanctions on the oligarchs would have? well, so, first of all, why are oligarchs important? the oligarchs are important because they are the people who hold putin s money for him. so, if you want to sanction putin, if you want to penalise him financially, you ve got to sanction the oligarchs. can you prove that, by the way? well, you can t prove it to a court standard for one simple reason, because the reason putin doesn t hold money in his own name is he doesn t want anyone ....
You think he s worth up to $200 billion us. i said that back in 2017. i think it s much bigger than that now. the world s richest man? by far. even elon musk, by the way, admits that he s no longer the world s richest man, that vladimir putin is. right. well, we re never going to be able to prove that with pieces of paper. but nonetheless, even if we accept your contention that that s the truth and that if you get your way with the expansion of the targeted sanctions, putin s wealth will, in effect, be frozen and taken from him. what difference would that make? i spoke very recently to a man you know well, mikhail khodorkovsky, former head of yukos energy company in russia. now a long term anti putin campaigner, just like yourself. and he says that, in the end, hitting the oligarchs doesn t make much difference. they are, to quote him, putin s footmen. they will not influence him. so even if you freeze that money, freeze putin s money, too, the war machine can rumble on. well, first ....
Across the world have not succeeded in rooting out the putin money chain, have they? well, the magnitsky acts are the template or the tool that we re using now to freeze all the assets of all the oligarchs everywhere. so, did the magnitsky act prevent putin from being corrupt? no. did the magnitsky act prevent him from invading ukraine? no. but the magnitsky act is one of the principal tools for seeking redress, for tying up their financial affairs in a knot to stop them from having access to their money. it s a quite powerful tool, i think. well, do you, though? cause i mean, there are other crusaders, if i can put it that way, against corruption in russia. those who analyse and try to understand what putin and his associates are doing, who frankly believe that, in the end, there are too many ways in which money can still be hidden. there are, in many offshore centres, there are russians ....