'Everybody's Waiting for Putin to Die.' A Russian Businessman on the Hopes for His Homeland
Evgeny Chichvarkin is looking agitated. He’s just heard a whisper about some potential stock going cheap and so politely declines my suggestion we leave his bustling wineshop in London’s tony Mayfair district in search of somewhere quieter to chat.
But Chichvarkin isn’t dashing off in pursuit of another 1774 Jura vin jaune, which sells for a precise £72,553.80 ($95,308) at Hedonism Wines, the store he set up in 2012 to be “the world’s best wineshop.” Instead, he is preparing to inspect a consignment of military fatigues and battle wear at a warehouse in the nearby town of Slough—worth some $650,000, he tells me conspiratorially. “It belongs to a rich Russian who had his assets frozen and needs to sell. If it works out, I’ll send it straight to the Ukrainian army.”
Chichvarkin isn’t your typical wine merchant. In fact, with his Salvador Dalí mustache, billowing pantaloons, gold tooth earring, and pink leather winkle pickers, the very idea of typical seems anathema to the 47-year-old entrepreneur, who has lived in London since fleeing his native Russia face down in the back of a car in 2008.
Chichvarkin was born in St. Petersburg, back when it was still Leningrad. He rose to become one of his nation’s youngest billionaires, by founding cellphone retailer Evroset in 1997, which swelled to 5,000 stores by 2007. But he fell afoul of local officials who accused Chichvarkin of kidnapping and extortion—charges he has always called bogus. Chichvarkin and his business partner sold Evroset for a reported cut price $400 million, and after successfully fighting extradition proceedings, he now lives in exile. In London, he has enjoyed a coda as businessman, restaurateur, and thorn in the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin, supporting democratic causes in Russia and its periphery by funding opposition parties and issuing scathing critiques.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/everybody-s-waiting-for-putin-to-die-a-russian-businessman-on-the-hopes-for-his-homeland/ar-AAVGCVv
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