For some reason, this true story is very popular with people. In the past few weeks, I’ve told it half a dozen times and keep getting requests for a repeat performance. So I decided to publish it on the blog and then direct everybody who wants to hear about this to the published version.
Among the many “New Russian” millionaires and billionaires, there was this one guy who owned a chain of banks. He was extremely rich in spite of his fairly young age (the guy is a couple of years younger than I am.) His wealth is not surprising, however, given that his Daddy held a high rank with the KGB during the Soviet era.
So one day the banker millionaire was driving down the street in his Maybach. Of course, just like any other self-respecting New Russian oligarch, he was accompanied by a cortège of vehicles carrying his bodyguards. As the Maybach was proceeding on its way, a battered old BMW (with no cortège) overtook it.
The New Russian banker was outraged. How come some insignificant little BMW was going to overtake him, an important business leader?
The banker’s posse stopped the BMW, dragged out the driver, and gave him a beating.
What the banker didn’t know, however, is that, even though the driver of the dinky little BMW didn’t have an entourage of bodyguards, he had something better. He had a girlfriend called Katya. And Katya had a father called Vladimir Putin.
Katya told her Daddy about the mean banker who beat her boyfriend and, of course, the doting father took care of the situation.
The banker is in jail now. All of his property, including the chain of banks and the Maybach, has been requisitioned for the benefit of the state.
The moral of the story: even people in dinky little BMWs can turn out to have important connections.
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