Vagit Alekperov in Moscow, Russia, 16 January 2015. Photo: EPA/YURI KOCHETKOV
The world is now home to 146 Russian billionaires, 15 of whom joined the financial elite in the past year, according to Forbes Magazine’s 2025 World Billionaires List, which was published on Tuesday.
Russia’s richest person for the second year in a row is the Azerbaijan-born co-owner of energy corporation Lukoil, Vagit Alekperov, who has an estimated fortune of $28.7 billion.
Eight Russians featured among the world’s 200 richest people, including the principal shareholder of steel and mining giant Severstal, Alexey Mordashov ($28.6 billion), and the owner of gas company Novatek, Leonid Mikhelson ($28.4 billion). Though last year’s list of the 200 richest people in the world featured 11 Russians, the drop is due to three billionaires who were previously listed as Russian now being listed as coming from elsewhere.
Most notably, the founder of EuroChem and the Siberian Coal Energy Company, Andrey Melnichenko ($17.4 billion) is now listed as coming from the UAE, having become a citizen of the country in 2021.
Similarly, the founder of global conglomerate USM, Alisher Usmanov ($16.7 billion), was this year listed as coming from Uzbekistan, while Mikhail Prokhorov ($10.7 billion), the founder of the private investment fund ONEXIM Group, is now listed as being Swiss.
The Forbes list featured 15 new Russian billionaires, of whom the richest is Indian-born Vikram Punia ($2.1 billion), the owner of pharmaceutical company Pharmasyntez, making Russia the country with the fifth-most new entrants.
The list was topped by US tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk ($216 billion), Mark Zuckerberg ($215 billion) and Jeff Bezos ($192 billion).
