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My name is Luke Harding.
I'm a journalist and a writer,
and my new book is called “Collusion,” and it's about Donald Trump and Russia.
Putin and money, they're a taboo topic inside Russia.
I wrote stories about this in 2007 based on sources inside his presidential administration who were saying, quietly,
that he was worth about $40 billion.
That was a decade ago.
The thing is Russia's a kleptocracy.
It's also the world's biggest oil producer,
and the people at the top of the Russian state are all kind of multi-billionaires.
And Putin is at the head of this pyramid although officially his salary's $100 thousand a year.
Putin allegedly controls 37% of Russian oil company Surgutneftegaz, 4.5% of natural gas company Gazprom.
He also has holdings in commodities trader Gunvor.
In 2012, estimates of his wealth were upped to $70 billion.
Now, everyone in the Russian elite knows he's the richest guy in town by a long way,
but the beauty of the system is that formally nothing belongs to him and everything is held by proxies,
some of whom are now under US sanctions.
It's a kind of clever system,
but of course he's enormously rich and for Putin,
the thing about money is it's kind of liquid power, and power ultimately is what interests him.