Environment can often determine a person's ideal. Mikhail Khodorkovsky's childhood dream was to be the red manager of a Soviet factory-the CEO of a Soviet enterprise, which meant that he could gain the respect and special power in the eyes of a young child. Under the conditions of planned economy and shortage economy in the former Soviet Union, these respects and privileges are extremely concrete and vivid. It may mean bread and milk, or cars and big houses. On the other hand, there are endless shopping queues and various delivery bills.
In order to realize this dream, Khodorkovsky is bent on becoming an elite under the existing social conditions and game rules. He has been a good boy since he was a child. Kristija freeland, a reporter from the Moscow station of the Financial Times, an elegant lady with a delicate face, found the mark of the good boy who listened to the teacher the most in Khodorkovsky, although his greed has been lamented by people. "Khodorkovsky has brown hair, big brown eyes, innocence, handsome face and a pair of oversized glasses. His voice is extremely soft, with a modest to almost weak smile. " Freeland described it as the youngest of the seven oligarchs who were said to control Russia at that time.
Khodorkovsky's initial efforts to realize his childhood dream were hindered by his background: after obtaining an engineering degree from Mendeleev Institute in Moscow, Khodorkovsky hoped to get a job in a key military enterprise-although it was not the best job assigned to his class, it would bring Khodorkovsky closer to his dream. As he was at the top of his class, Khodorkovsky thought he would definitely get the job, but his request was rejected. Although no one has ever officially explained the reason to him, the stubborn young man insists that because he is Jewish, the government thinks he is not suitable for working in a highly confidential military enterprise.
After the most formal gate was blocked at that time, Khodorkovsky had to choose other roads. In universities, due to the prevailing "self-financing" plan-that is, factories and various organizations raise funds by themselves, the Youth League has gained the right to freely control all kinds of income it has obtained. The * * * youth league in the university has turned into a chamber of commerce. The * * * Youth League working in the school gave Khodorkovsky the opportunity to open a "youth cafe". But the future richest man's first business trip was not smooth. "It was an unpleasant experience," Khodorkovsky recalled.
But the later experience was much smoother. He founded the "Youth Science and Technology Innovation Center" to carry out business activities under the protection of the Communist Youth League and the Internet. Although nominally, the Youth Science and Technology Innovation Center allows young scientists to make money by solving technical problems for factories, the main business of Khodorkovsky and his colleagues is actually a financial trick: converting non-cash credit into cash.
There are two kinds of funds under the Soviet system, one is cash and the other is non-cash credit. Cash is scarce. Under the planned economy system, cash can only be used for specific purposes, such as paying workers' wages. What factories and enterprises are not scarce is virtual non-cash credit. The state deposits them in factory accounts as subsidies to factories, which can be paid as funds to another factory, but they cannot be turned into cash through formal channels. The asymmetry of the two funds leads to the imbalance of their values. One assessment is that the value of cash rubles is 10 times that of non-cash rubles.
With extensive contacts and the protection of officials, including senior bank officials, Khodorkovsky found a way to convert non-cash credit into cash. "The Youth Science and Technology Innovation Center and a research institute have accounts in the same bank, and the money is transferred from one account to another, and the Youth Science and Technology Innovation Center withdraws money from its own account." Krystanov Skaya, a sociologist who studies the Russian elite, said. Therefore, the sociologist said, "The first form of privatization is cash privatization".
Khodorkovsky distributed the cash to the participants around him: his colleagues, the leaders who sheltered him, the top management of factories and research institutes, and then distributed it to the alliance organizations who sheltered him according to a certain proportion. He won the gratitude of all parties. Leaders of these industries are willing to cooperate with Khodorkovsky because they know: "They are cooperating with the authorities, not with professional swindlers". Academician Schederin, the original funder of Khodorkovsky and director of the Institute of High Temperature, said: "They are full of energy. They are well-known regiment officials, elegant and simple young people, not those despicable thieves. "
Another advantage of Khodorkovsky is that he has accumulated these non-cash credits, found some companies with export rights that hold a large amount of foreign exchange, and converted the non-cash credits into foreign exchange. He was only twenty-four or five years old when he did these things.
The most important link for Khodorkovsky to become an oligarch began to appear, and ambitious young people wanted to enter the banking industry that had been monopolized by the state. The young man who has studied a little law found that there is a small clause in the Law on Cooperative Enterprises that has been promulgated, and cooperative enterprises can set up their own banks. At the end of 1989, Khodorkovsky's bank was officially registered as Mehnert Pa Bank. Khodorkovsky's network once again played a role. He found Academician Schederin, who had helped him, and told him that he had made a lot of money and wanted to open a bank, but he was worried about the current social situation and needed high-level asylum. Schederin later recalled: "After listening to their descriptions, I said to them,' You have done a good job, children, tell me how you can help your, and I am very willing'."
"We have not encountered any obstacles from state organs." Khodorkovsky later said this. The advertisements of Paco Bank in Mehnert began to appear on the streets and on TV. When people turn on the TV, they can see a simple and handsome young man waving his hand and saying, "I am Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who will guarantee your future and buy gub from Mehnert PaCO Bank! Mehnert Pa is a commercial bank. " Advertising and stock movements are political insurance policies to resist possible repressive measures taken by the government. David Hoffman, a Washington post correspondent in Moscow, explained this.
Mehnert PaCO Bank has also become an intermediate commercial bank approved and selected by the government to lend to enterprises. A large number of state funds flowed into Menapa Bank, and the timeliness of funds made Khodorkovsky profitable. In the attempted coup to overthrow Gorbachev before the collapse of the Soviet Union, two senior officials, Nikolai Crouzil and Gerogier Pavlov, committed suicide by jumping off a building. Their suicide makes the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds a mystery. It is suspected that Khodorkovsky's Mai Hnat Bank once kept this batch of funds, even suspected that he used his contact with foreign banks to help transfer this batch of funds, or that he embezzled this batch of funds himself.
What really made Khodorkovsky an oligarch was the later auction plan and the loan-for-stock plan. Qin Hui is the most outstanding scholar in China who studies countries in transition. He pointed out to reporters: "The privatization voucher plan of Gaidar and Chubais is not the reason for creating oligarchs. None of the people who bought privatization vouchers among the people became oligarchs, and most of them went bankrupt. The birth of oligarchy is due to the incompleteness of privatization voucher plan. In the supplementary auction as a plan to distribute privatization certificates to the people, oligarchs really appeared. "
In Chubais's design, the auction plan is to bring capital to enterprises that cannot be brought by privatization certificates. The specific way is to require each bidder to promise the future investment quota to the enterprise while paying the government cash. "However, in Russia's turbulent market economy, transferring assets for future commitments has created opportunities for savvy businessmen to make a fortune." Kristija freeland of the Financial Times commented.
"Mehnert Palmer is very active in this investment auction. They make high investment commitments, and then they use the guarantee of Mehnert Palmer Bank to support these commitments, and then these guarantees will disappear. They have a complete system ... this is the form of property division in China. " Another oligarch, Friedman, the founder of Alpha Group, said this.
Khodorkovsky got Yukos in the loan-for-stock program. The loan-for-stock program was invented by another oligarch, Vladimir Potanin, who was called "noble" by freeland. He wants to use it to get his dream nickel factory in Knollys. This is one of the customers of his Onekom Bank after the collapse of the Soviet banking system. Potanin wants to be the owner of this enterprise, but he doesn't suggest buying the enterprise at a low price, which is too obvious. Instead, he promises to exchange loans for the management right of the enterprise. This is the prototype of the loan-for-stock plan. Potanin and his allies-many oligarchs with banks-persuaded two deputy prime ministers, Soskovic and Chubais. The former itself is a supporter of financial industry integration, while the latter hopes to bring capital to enterprises. Russian politician ZaDonoff said at a cabinet meeting to decide whether to approve the loan for stock exchange that this plan "will be the beginning of an economic oligarchy era". Nevertheless, radical plans that are considered "stupid" and "excessive" by western economists are still being implemented.
In the auction of Yukos/KLOC-0 on February 8, 1995, 45% of Yukos shares were traded in the form of loans for shares, and 33% were traded by auction. The price paid by Khodorkovsky was $65.438+$59 million and $65.438+$50 million respectively. His competitors were composed of three banks, and the CEO of one bank later complained to Washington post reporter Hoffman: "Khodorkovsky was buying Yukos with Yukos' money ... they stole the company. Alfred Koch, a young reformist economist, supervised the implementation of the loan-for-stock plan, and later hinted that Khodorkovsky used his connections in Yukos to raise money to buy Yukos. The low auction price of Yukos also caused controversy: one comparison is that Yukos was valued at $700 million at that time, and less than two years later, Yukos was listed on the Moscow Stock Exchange with a market value of $7 billion.
It was filmed that Khodorkovsky of Yukos really became an oligarch, although there were some setbacks later. In the Russian financial crisis, Mai Hnat Bank faced bankruptcy, but Khodorkovsky also successfully transferred the assets of Mai Hnat Bank to other financial institutions under his control, and made it impossible for the court to understand the complete financial situation of Mai Hnat Bank-because the truck loaded with all the financial documents of Mai Hnat Bank inexplicably fell into the Volga River. At the same time, Khodorkovsky secretly transferred Yukos assets and diluted shares, and finally squeezed out some equity control rights of Yukos, including American tycoon Kenneth Dart and several debt banks.