Yuri Milner, a millionaire who was born in Moscow but has already renounced his Russian citizenship, has severed his last ties to his native country. He did this after publicly criticizing Russia for its military attack against Ukraine.
According to a fact sheet that was most recently updated and published on the website of Milner’s Silicon Valley investment business, DST Global, Milner successfully renounced his Russian nationality in the month of August. After obtaining citizenship in Israel in 1999 and staying there for nine years, the 60-year-old dad of three decided to transfer his family to California in 2014. Prior to that, they had been residing in Israel.
After the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, my family and I made the decision to permanently leave Russia. The billionaire announced the news in a tweet on Monday. “And this summer, we formally finished the process of abandoning our Russian citizenship,” the message said.
In the wake of public outrage inside the West over the conflict in Ukraine and attempts by the United States and its partners to confiscate the assets of that so oligarchs with connections to the Kremlin, a number of businessmen who were born in Russia have attempted to put some distance between themselves and their home country. At least seven other Russian billionaires, including Milner, sent a request to the Forbes magazine in the United States asking the publication to avoid disclosing their countries of origin.
The wealth that Milner amassed, which is estimated by Bloomberg to be worth $3.5 billion, has earned him the title of Russia’s most powerful technology investor. He was an investor in Facebook, Twitter, and Airbnb, and he made profitable bets on Chinese technology businesses such as the online store Alibaba and smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi. He was also an early investor in the companies.
In 2018, the United States Treasury Department included Milner on its so-called “Kremlin list,” which includes officials and tycoons suspected of having connections towards the Russian government. On the other hand, he hasn’t stepped foot inside Russia since 2014, while his venture capital business hasn’t received any funding from Russian entrepreneurs since 2011. Russia is not the home of any of the 80 businesses for which DST has taken an equity stake.
Milner, who’d been born to a Ukrainian-Jewish dad as well as a Russian-Jewish mother, received his bachelor’s degree in theoretical physics at Moscow State University around 1985. Milner was born to a Russian-Jewish father and a Ukrainian-Jewish mother. After another five years, he made history by becoming one of the first students from the Soviet Union to study in the United States. He enrolled in the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Between the years 1992 and 1995, he was employed by the World Bank in Washington.
The Declaration of Strategic Targets (DST) made a statement in which it condemned “Russia’s war with Ukraine, its sovereign neighbor,” after Moscow moved soldiers into the neighboring nation in February. The Breakthrough Prize Foundation, which is run by Milner, has leveled accusations against Russia, stating that the country has engaged in “unprovoked and savage attacks on the civilian population.” It was announced that he and his organization would contribute a total of $14.5 million to the humanitarian relief effort in Ukraine.
In the early part of this year, Milner said to Bloomberg, “I cannot go again and alter history.” “The fact that I was conceived in Russia is something that cannot be changed. I am unable to alter the reality that some of our funding came from Russia.
People who give up their citizenship are not subject to an exit tax in Russia, which is not the case in the United States. When Russian bank founder Oleg Tinkov relinquished his US passport in 2013, he is believed to have lied about his total wealth in order to avoid paying the exit tax. He was found guilty of tax fraud the previous year and consented to pay fines totaling more than $500 million.
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