Russian oligarch forced to sell off stakes in bank

A Russian oligarch was forced by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration into selling his entire stake in the bank he founded after he publicly criticized Russia’s war in Ukraine on Instagram last month.

Oleg Y. Tinkov, the founder of one of Russia’s biggest banks, Tinkoff, slammed the Russian government’s decision to invade Ukraine as “crazy” in the social media post, in which he said he didn’t see any beneficiary to the war and claimed 90 percent of Russians did not support the war.

The very next day, the Kremlin contacted bank executives and threatened to nationalize the bank if it refused to cut ties with Tinkov, who founded the bank in 2006, the rare self-made Russian billionaire told The New York Times.