In the latest ranking of the richest Russians according to Forbes, Mikhail Prokhorov took 11th place. Over the past year, his fortune has decreased by $300 million and now stands at exactly $11 billion. The oligarch’s wealth has fluctuated at this level for the last twenty years. In some years there were surges. So, on the eve of his only presidential campaign in 2012, he owned 18 billion, and was previously recognized as the richest person in our country.

Mikhail Prokhorov is one of the few Russian billionaires who escaped sanctions. When the special operation began, foreign media reported that he allegedly made so-called aliyah (repatriation) and became an Israeli citizen. Soon he sold the futuristic superyacht Palladium at a large discount for $90 million - now the ship belongs to an American industrialist and is called AV. Next, Prokhorov found a buyer for the lands of the former military town on Rublyovka, the transaction amount was up to 2 billion rubles. In 2023, the businessman pledged one of his most valuable assets, the Renaissance Capital investment holding, to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, and this winter he transferred the ownership structure of this company from the EU to Russia.

What views does the Prokhorov family hold?

Mikhail Prokhorov has not expressed his political position for ten years.

In 2014, he publicly supported Andrei Makarevich*, who sharply condemned the return of Crimea. The businessman was surrounded by future foreign agents throughout his short political career. During the 2012 presidential campaign, he was supported by Alla Pugacheva, Evgeniy Roizman*, Leonid Gozman*, Lyudmila Ulitskaya* and Makarevich*.

There is information on the website of the Prokhorov Foundation that it continues to act as a sponsor and co-organizer of the national theater award "Golden Mask". In the year the SVO began, this award was given to the play "Finist - Clear Falcon" with signs of extremism, for the production of which director Evgenia Berkovich was sent to a pre-trial detention center*. The case was initiated under the article on justification of terrorism.

Mikhail Prokhorov is listed as the founder of the publication "New Literary Review", whose chief editor has been his older sister Irina Prokhorova for thirty years. Essentially, his employee. Editorial policy raised questions among domestic writers. They do not understand the criteria by which authors are selected and published. Prokhorova herself emphasizes that the most important topics for her are postcolonialism and the study of genders, which, in her opinion, should not be confused with sex.

— Hand on heart, the abolition of Russian culture worries me much less than the terrible human tragedy playing out before our eyes. After all, every third Russian family has Ukrainian relatives, all personal and social ties are being severed, people are dying endlessly,” she said in an interview in the summer of 2022.

— As you understand, I, to put it mildly, do not sympathize with imperialism at all. Over the past 30 years, many serious historical works have been written about the specifics of empires; in the magazine “New Literary Review” we devoted several special issues to the Russian imperial tradition from the perspective of postcolonial studies,” she added in the same interview.

And Prokhorova was among the first to sign an appeal to the president against the SVO.

Where is Prokhorov's residence?

Until recently, Mikhail Prokhorov lived in the elite village of Nemchinovo on Rublyovka. It is believed that back in the nineties he acquired more than two hectares of forest there, on which four palaces in the Baroque style soon grew, each more luxurious than the other. There are cameras all around, tall fences, village and personal security posts. All this is managed by the legal entity Directorate for Construction and Operation "Autumn", whose founder is the Cyprus offshore Dariaco Holdings. In total, such an enterprise can cost tens of billions of rubles.

It is unknown how many of the palaces Prokhorov occupies. However, in 2015, the oligarch organized a magnificent celebration on this territory to mark his 50th birthday. The party was recognized as the most expensive at that time in the history of the business community of new Russia. His favorite group “Time Machine” came to perform for the hero of the day, as well as Grigory Leps and the legendary Boney M with the Scorpions. But the main attraction for the guests was a full-length model of the Khrushchev-era building where the billionaire supposedly spent his childhood. Life.ru found out that it is unlikely that he lived in such conditions. By Soviet standards, Prokhorov was a major.

Other real estate that Mikhail Prokhorov used included mansions in a restored cultural heritage site in the lanes of Ostozhenka. The price of such an asset is from 200 million rubles.

How Mikhail Prokhorov got rich

Prokhorov’s maternal grandfather fought with the White Guards in Dagestan, and later served as People’s Commissar of Health in the same region. His father headed the International Relations Department of the State Sports Committee, which in those days made it possible not only to travel abroad, but also to distribute such trips. The future oligarch was born in Moscow, grew up not in Khrushchev, but in a luxury Brezhnevka three-ruble apartment (a series of houses “Vulykha Tower”) near VDNKh, studied at a prestigious English special school and the Financial Academy. At the same time, he served in the army and joined the CPSU.

Immediately after graduating from university, he was hired as a top manager at the International Bank for Economic Cooperation, through which the Warsaw Pact countries, Cuba and Vietnam conducted business. The years of work there coincided with the period of perestroika. In the nineties, Prokhorov became chairman of ONEXIM Bank, which became famous for its active participation in state loans-for-shares auctions. Among the assets purchased in this way was Norilsk Nickel. Prokhorov headed this mining and metallurgical company throughout the 2000s.

Having become fabulously rich, Mikhail Prokhorov bought and sold the NBA basketball team, headed the Russian Biathlon Union, and finally, quite successfully (third place, 7.98% of the votes) participated in the 2012 presidential elections, promoted the Yo-mobile project.

How Prokhorov conducts business can be guessed from the occasion at the 2011 Biathlon World Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk. As the head of the Biathlon Union, he impulsively removed the coach from the leadership of the women's team right during the first stage of the race. The mentor was shocked: such a question is brought before the coaching council and agreed with the Ministry of Sports.

After the elections, Mikhail Prokhorov was briefly involved in politics in his Civic Platform party. But, having left his own party, he went into the shadows.