Former Russian banking billionaire says an Instagram post cost him $9 billion: His company was sold for 3% of its value in ‘hostage’ situation
"I couldn’t negotiate the price. I was like a hostage," Oleg Tinkov told The New York Times in 2022. More details are now emerging.
Former Russian banking tycoon Oleg Tinkov says a single Instagram post condemning the war in Ukraine cost him nearly $9 billion, after he was forced to sell his stake in his bank for a fraction of its real value. He described the episode as a “hostage” situation that shows how dissenting billionaires are brought to heel in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Tinkov, the founder of Tinkoff Bank, was once celebrated as one of Russia’s wealthiest bankers. That status changed dramatically in April 2022, when he used Instagram to denounce the war as “insane” and to criticize Russia’s military as poorly prepared and riddled with corruption. As CNBC reported at the time, Tinkov claimed 90% of Russians opposed the war, and the remaining 10% were “morons.” He urged an immediate and “face-saving” end to the war.
Tinkov told the BBC recently that within a day of that post, senior executives at his bank received a call from officials linked to the Kremlin, delivering a stark ultimatum. Either Tinkov’s stake would be sold and his name scrubbed from the brand, or the bank—then one of Russia’s largest lenders—would be nationalized.
A forced fire sale
Tinkov said that what followed was not a negotiation but coercion under threat. He claimed he was told to accept whatever price was offered for his roughly 35% stake in TCS Group, the owner of Tinkoff Bank, or risk losing everything. “I couldn’t negotiate the price. I was like a hostage,” he told The New York Times. He ultimately sold the stake in April 2022, shortly after his Instagram post.
Within a week of this conversation, Tinkov said, a firm linked to metals magnate Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia’s richest men and a key supplier of nickel used in military hardware, stepped in to buy the stake. Tinkov told the BBC that the deal valued his holding at just about 3% of its true market worth, wiping out almost $9 billion of the wealth he had built over decades in business.
Exile and erasure
After the sale, Tinkov left Russia, eventually renouncing his Russian citizenship and becoming one of the few high-profile businessmen to publicly break with the Kremlin over the war. He alleged that the campaign against him extended beyond the balance sheet, including pressure to remove his name from the bank brand and efforts to erase his role in building the institution that once carried it.