One of Vladimir Putin’s former closest associates has said Russian businessmen were all now “serfs” who belonged to the president, with none of the country’s companies beyond his reach.
Sergei Pugachev, who was once so close to Mr Putin that he was known as the “Kremlin’s banker”, made the comments in his first interview since the state seized his multibillion-dollar ship-building empire in 2012.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Pugachev warned that there were no longer any “untouchables” in a Russian business landscape increasingly dominated by Mr Putin. The economy, he argued, had been transformed into a feudal system where businessmen were only nominal owners of their assets.
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