A foreign investor has claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be the world's richest person with a stolen fortune of 200 billion dollars.
According to News.com.au, Hermitage Capital Management CEO Bill Browder said that Putin stole billions of dollars from Russia's coffers and hid it in overseas accounts.
Browder said that the amount of money that Russia has made under Putin in the last 14 years that has not been spent on schools, hospitals and so on is kept in Swiss bank accounts, shares, hedge funds managed for Putin and his associates.
Putin's fortune would make him twice as rich as Bill Gates, who has a net worth of 78.6 billion dollars.
Browder, once the largest foreign investor in Russia, said that he supported Putin before he was expelled in 2005 because he was considered a "threat to national security."
Browder claims in his book "Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice" that Putin made a deal with rich oligarchs that if they shared their wealth with him, they would be spared jail time for "stealing profits from companies".
src:sify.com