BUSINESS

With billions in the bank, an enviable status as Russia’s most eligible bachelor and a newly-purchased basketball team bouncing along in the glamorous NBA, Mikhail Prokhorov might seem to have it all.

But the Onexim president suffers as much of the rest of us – or so he would have us believe.

In an interview with Vedomosti, the man rated Russia’s second richest by Forbes lamented the woes of being wealthy in the midst of poverty.

“We must realise that to be rich in a poor country is a burden,” Prokhorov said.

“I am deeply convinced that in Russia a rich man cannot be passive. The environment here makes it impossible.

"If you want to change something you have to convince that prevailing environment and then do it.

"With experience I realized that even revolutionary change must be done so that people will recognise it as the next step.

"When you are rich and successful you have few supporters, and that’s a normal reaction.”

Swipe at the critics

Prokhorov’s comments seem to be partly aimed at those who derided his proposals to allow employees to work up to 60 hours a week.

Earlier this year his so-called Oligarch’s Union, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, said that the plans had been willfully misunderstood, and that they were an opportunity for people to earn more, with Prokhorov himself blogging about the issue.

And in his latest interview he lamented the undue attention that the 60-hour figure had been given.

“This was only one technical amending and not the most important in a number of proposals,” he said. “After all, the labour laws have to be modernized – nobody argues with that. But the criticisms came from union bosses: they need to show their work. I’ve presented my amendments.

“Many times we invited the unions to discuss the subject, but nobody came.”

A simple life

In the past Prokhorov has faced allegations of wild debauchery in ski resorts and as recently as last week he was said to have attended a performance by Amy Winehouse at an oligarch-sponsored New Year party in Moscow.

But his $13.4 billion fortune is not being boosted by a lavish salary, he insisted – and indeed he does not own a mobile phone.

He said that instead he received the equivalent of the minimum wage for his work as president of Onexim, and half that from Polyus Gold.

Prokhorov earlier shifted his registered address to the tiny Siberian village of Yeruda in a bid to increase the tax revenues for Krasnoyarsk Region where his business empire was founded.

And he told Vedomosti that philanthropic efforts were a duty for all Russia’s wealthy elite.