Among the current and former members of the Forbes list, Russian businessman Igor Makarov became the sixth “refusenik” from the citizenship of the Russian Federation. Now he is a citizen of Cyprus.
Earlier, several countries – Great Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – imposed sanctions against him. Information about the renunciation of citizenship appeared in profile The 61-year-old billionaire on the American Forbes website – he refused a Russian passport in 2023 and has only Cypriot citizenship. Now, in the ranking of the richest people in the world, he is listed as a Cypriot billionaire and ranks fifth among the richest Cypriots.
The Cypriot newspaper Politis reported in 2020 that Makarov received a “golden passport” of Cyprus in exchange for investments in 2008-2012. In recent years, the billionaire has lived in Cyprus, Italy and the United States.
Igor Makarov’s fortune is estimated at 2.2 billion dollars, and in 2023 he took 57th place in the ranking of the most-most Russian billionaires. Makarov is the founder of Itera, Russia’s first independent gas company. In 2013, he sold his gas assets to Rosneft. Currently, he is the founder and head of the energy company Areti (Itera vice versa).
In 2022, several current and former members of the Forbes list announced their renunciation of Russian citizenship at once:
- founder of investment company Freedom Finance Timur Turlov (received citizenship of Kazakhstan);
- founder and former owner of Troika Dialog investment company Ruben Vardanyan (moved to Armenia);
- investor Yuri Milner (has not lived in Russia for many years and has an Israeli passport);
- fintech founder Nikolai Storonsky, who has a UK passport;
- founder of Tinkoff Bank Oleg Tinkov, who has a Cypriot passport.
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