How the KGB pressured Russian business owners to sell their companies at fair prices, then trapped them in larger state-aligned projects with small equity stakes and director titles they couldn't escape. Some refused to cooperate.
You did this over 30 times, buying these assets and turning them around. I would call it more like a private equity firm at that point. Meaning you're looking for undervalued assets, you're fixing them up, you're selling them, you're doing all this amazing thing, amazing things. And why ever stop doing that? Why not stay in Russia and keep building out that business?
It was the time in Russia when KGB wanted to take over everything. They wanted to have a share in every good venture, to control the financial streams, to make sure that the companies will not fund other political movements other than the one that supports Putin and his party. But somebody has to operate it, somebody has to manage it. And they were actively doing headhunting. What they, what they did, they offered to people that they trust can run the business. Well, they offer to those people to sell all their business on the good market price to the people that they appoint. And then you use this money in some much bigger project, let's say 15 or 20% of that project, and they add additional funds and you become the director of this organization. It sounds good, huh?
Yeah.
Does it? Yeah. But it's actually slavery and nothing else because everything you, you have in this stays in this company and you cannot escape. So I, I know few people who escape empty handed. The only way for you to escape, if they allow you to escape, deliver everything and quit.
So let's, let's. We're going to use fake numbers here. These are not real numbers. Let's say your business was worth a hundred million dollars. They would come buy it out for a fair price. They would take that 100 million. They won't allow you to keep it. Take. Put in your bank.
Exactly.
They would roll that into a project of 1.5 billion. You own part of it or whatever, and they put you as a director of that. So now you're much bigger. And it sounds great on paper. Right. You're very wealthy, you live a good lifestyle, you have a lot of power. But you're stuck because the KGB won't just allow you to take that money or to sell it or to go out of the country or to do whatever you. Unless you give up everything.
Yeah.
So that's how you get to the.
If they allow you to give up everything, you have to ask to be able to give up everything. I know the stories of few people who ended up like this. So. And you cannot say no. So. So once I spend the entire day in the KGB building, they offered me exactly that. It's a great project that actually was realized after that really good project. And, yes, they wanted me to sell all my business, and it was 20% of that project. It's a big project, an interesting project, and everything is good, but I'm not playing games with them.
So I said, you know what?
I'm finalizing my PhD thing, and you cannot say no. I said, I need more time. And then we just left to Canada.
