In this interview, Matan Hazanov converses with an unnamed speaker about how the Russian KGB (and later state apparatus) systematically took control of private enterprises during the post‑Soviet era. The speaker describes a process that mimics private‑equity buyouts: the state offers a "fair" market price for a business, rolls the acquired assets into a massive state‑backed project, and appoints the original owners as directors of the new conglomerate. While the arrangement appears lucrative on paper—granting wealth, status, and a high‑profile role—it effectively enslaves the former owners, as they cannot access the cash, sell their stake, or leave the country without surrendering everything. Hazanov highlights that this model was repeated dozens of times, turning private firms into extensions of state power and ensuring that financial streams support only the ruling political agenda.
Chapters
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. I mean, 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, they offered to people that they trust can run the business well, they offered 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 it's 15 or 20% of that project, and they add additional funds, and you become the director of this organization. It sounds good, eh?
Yeah.
Does it? Yeah, but it's actually slavery and nothing else, because everything you have stays in this company, and you cannot escape. So I know a few people who escaped empty-handed. The only way for you to escape, if they allow you to escape, They just deliver everything and then quit.
So let's say— let's— we're going to use fake numbers here. These are not real numbers. Let's say your business was worth $100 million. 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 do whatever, 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 a few people who ended up like this.
