Tycoon found guilty of fraud walks free
A MOSCOW court convicted one of Russia’s most flamboyant tycoons, Sergei Polonsky, of fraud yesterday, but the property developer who symbolised the excess of the oil-fuelled boom times walked away a free man.
The presiding judge, who had just sentenced Polonsky to five years in prison in one breath, ordered his release in the next, saying too much time had elapsed since his crime for the sentence to have legal force.
Polonsky, 44, staged antics during his career ranging from a hunger strike to eating part of his tie on TV.
However, they failed to endear him to Russians left behind by the boom during President Vladimir Putin’s first two terms in office and who are now struggling following a sharp economic slowdown.
Vedomosti, a business daily, quoted him as saying in 2008 that anyone who did not have a billion dollars could “f***k off”. Polonsky – a former occupant of the Forbes rich list with a fortune of $1.2-billion (R16.25-billion) – disputes the accuracy of the quote.
Nevertheless, it went viral as the global financial crisis was about to hit Russia and many ordinary people remember it with bitterness to this day.
The conviction, despite his unexpected release, appears to mark the end of an era in Russian business when displays of fabulous riches were common and tycoons were self-made through wheeling and dealing. That has been replaced by a more sober atmosphere, where the Kremlin frowns on the flaunting of wealth and only Kremlin-connected tycoons make the biggest fortunes.
Polonsky has spent the last five years fighting the fraud allegations and more than two years in pretrial detention in Moscow.
He says his fate is a cautionary tale about the risks of doing business in Russia today.
Making money is closely tied up with fickle and often corrupt political connections, and business partners routinely betray one another, stealing and cheating their way to huge wealth, he alleged in court.
Polonsky’s legal problems began in 2012 when prosecutors accused his firm of stealing more than 5.7-billion roubles (now R1.3-trillion) of prepayments for flats in an unfinished Moscow complex it was building.