It was a few lines on Instagram, they cost Oleg Tinkov a fortune. He saw “not a single beneficiary of this crazy war,” the Russian businessman began his text in mid-April. “Innocent people and soldiers are dying.” The next day, the Russian presidential administration contacted his bank, Tinkoff Bank. She should break all ties with her founder, said Oleg Tinkow, 54, now the New York Timesotherwise the bank would be “nationalized”.
At the end of April, Tinkow had already sold his 35 percent stake in the bank’s parent company. He speaks of a “desperate sale, an emergency sale”. He only got “kopecks” for it, he says, but he does not name the amount. The bank itself disagrees: There were no threats, she told the newspaper. In her press release on the sale, she also printed a quote from the founder. Tinkow says he wants to have more time for his health and his family. He was diagnosed with leukemia in 2019.
Tinkow became a billionaire through Tinkow, not through the state
His stake in the bank is now owned by Vladimir Potanin, another Russian billionaire. Potanin is a major shareholder and president of the Norilsk Nickel mining company. He is said to be even richer than Tinkov – and from the Kremlin’s point of view more reliable. After all, Oleg Tinkov makes it a point not to be one of Putin’s oligarchs, someone who would have gotten rich from lucrative posts at the top of state-owned corporations.
Tinkow was born in Siberia, the son of a miner. To study, he moved to Leningrad, today’s Saint Petersburg, to the Mining University. But instead of following in his father’s footsteps, he soon earned his money with imported electronics, later with deep-frozen dumplings, his own brewery, and a restaurant chain. In 2006 he founded the online bank Tinkoff, which does its business with credit cards. Tinkoff made Oleg Tinkov a billionaire, and Bloomberg estimated his total assets at more than $8 billion in November. Today it should be significantly less.
“In every country there are ten percent idiots.”
Though he doesn’t consider himself an oligarch, Tinkov lives the typical lifestyle of a Russian super-rich. He sent his children to elite schools abroad and owns houses in Europe and North America. his yacht La Dacha is 77 meters long and can drive through ice. In an interview with the Financial Times In 2015 he let it be known that he knew Vladimir Putin personally and how much he admired Trump and Berlusconi.
In 2020, the US Department of Justice accused him of tax evasion, and Tinkow was arrested in London. Shortly thereafter, he resigned as CEO of Tinkoff Bank and made his leukemia disease public. He eventually avoided extradition to the United States by paying more than half a billion dollars in fines. In Great Britain he has been on the sanctions list since March because of Putin’s campaign.
Tinkov has repeatedly criticized the political situation in Russia, but never too loudly. 90 percent of Russians are “against this war,” he wrote on Instagram in April. “But in every country there are ten percent idiots.” At the end of his message he addressed the West: “Please give Mr. Putin a clear way out so that he can save face and this massacre will be stopped.”
The bank reacted immediately: Oleg Tinkov was no longer an employee and had not been in Russia for a long time, she said on the Telegram messenger service. She also wanted to rename herself, which had been planned for a long time and has now become even more urgent. Meanwhile, photos and videos of Russians cutting up Tinkoff credit cards into small Z letters are circulating on the Internet; in support of the Russian military.