UK Press Features

The yachtsmen of millionaire Moscow

Times Saturday Magazine – Spring, 2004

Someone is playing the James Bond theme tune on this chilly Moscow afternoon. A dozen men, all big, all in black leather and dark glasses, and all looking deeply depressed, have come out of the Boat Show for a cigarette in the spring sunshine. They inhale noisily. They ignore the sexy da-da-da-DA-da-da-da music. And they pretend the two luxury yachts rearing up over their heads aren’t there.

Russia is awash with money. The economy is booming. Oil prices are at a peak. It’s business-a-go-go for anyone with half an idea. But only really rich big spenders can feed their greed. For anyone with not quite enough millions to pocket the most over-the-top of giant motor yachts, there’s probably nowhere more depressing to be than this Motorboats and Yachts Show. It’s packed to the gills with aspirational leisure toys – boats and helicopters, microlights and motor sledges, all the most expensive kinds of fun for men who want you to know they have everything. No wonder these less privileged guys are mooching around outside, feeling exposed and hopelessly middle-income. They know the score. If you don’t have the wad of dollars in your pocket to throw at the salesman – without counting, naturally – before roaring, “I’ll have the most expensive one,” you just don’t cut it in boom-time Moscow .

Fortunately for the Western boat-builders and sellers, who are flooding into Moscow from all over the world because they’ve heard tell of the legendary extravagance of Russian millionaires, there are plenty of richer, and therefore happier, buyers inside the pavilion. In fact, the joint is jumping. I’m talking to Ivan Bronov, a toned, relaxed young man in a baseball cap and sports shoes — who turns out to own a magazine and restaurant empire, as well as a Dominator motor yacht, and to dream of sailing round the world – while I prepare to look around the 38-foot motor yacht being exhibited by his friend Dennis, another twentysomething entrepreneur (though this time in pinstripes), when the gaggle of men who’ve been looking around it before me jump down from its polished deck. They are carbon copies of the depressed guys outside – same black leather, same dark glasses – except that these ones are all Alpha-male triumphant smiles. “I like this boat!” one of them booms. “I’ll take it!”

“ I’ve sold ten since yesterday morning,” Dennis whispers. “At $200,000 each.”

Yet even that’s nothing special to boast about here. At the next stand, Andrei Boiko, the fleshy boss of Moscow ’s poshest yacht club, Burevestnik, is smiling hugely over the Maybach car he’s showing. It’s all chamois seats and walnut panelling, and the leggy blonde expo-leidis working for him whisper that it retails for getting on for a million dollars. It’s only there to go with the stand’s main attraction — more walnut panelling and antique glamour, but this time on a long, slim motor yacht that sells for upwards of 600,000 euros and is pulling in crowds of slavering wannabe buyers.

The foreigners who have come to sell are trying to look demure, but you can see the wild surmise in their eyes. With terrorism-shy Americans pretty much out of the European market for now, they are thrilled to find dollars pouring out of the East.

“ This is still a tiny show, but it’s grown very rapidly over the last five years. We see Russia as an emerging market,” says Derek P Carter, who has flown out from Oundle with a couple of boats and whose firm, Fairline Boats plc, already has links with Burevestnik Yacht Club. He only chortles when I ask if Russian buyers like their boats fitted out a particular way. “We only have one standard fit – the epitome of luxury,” he says grandly, then relents: “but there are choices of wood types, leather, fabrics, electronic entertainment systems and so on. And what we’re seeing is that Russians do like their boats specified to the nth degree. They put all the options on. They like a fully loaded boat.” He grins like a Cheshire cat.

Katrin Theodoli, sleek American owner of Magnum Marine, which makes luxury sports motor yachts, is here for the first time in her spring furs, ready to start wining and dining potential clients. She’s looking happy too. “This is a new market, because five years ago we had no potential Russian clients and suddenly we have more and more new interest,” she says. “And buyers from Russia are maybe more extravagant and less ready to compromise, which of course is wonderful for a boat-builder. There’s no limit to their desire to have luxury.”

It’s all true. Take a quick scoot round Moscow and you’re overwhelmed by the luxury on display on all sides. From the prettily restored yellow stucco mansions of the Boulevard Ring, full of glamour shopping opportunities and chic restaurants, to the manicured out-of-town mansions of Zhukovka — the moneyed Beverley Hills of new Russia – it’s wall-to-wall status symbols. Sports clubs called things like World Class charge between $1500 and $4500 a year for membership, as the new rich pare down the muscles and bulk of their threatening pasts and turn themselves into a skinny, glamorous elite. Ladies who lunch hang out in the Vogue Café or Gallereya restaurant, chatting in Chanel, sipping at $10 glasses of freshly squeezed exotic fruit juice, picking at lettuce leaves and pushing away the Nobu-style cod, picking over the gossip from last night’s society party.

Andrei Fomin, a young ex-actor from Siberia who has become one of Moscow’s top party organisers, gets quite breathless when he talks about the soirees he has masterminded – the birthday party for IT-girl Ksenia Sobchak, Moscow’s Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, where everyone wore gold; or the private party at a completely unknown restaurant at which Eminem performed; or the wife who insisted that only vintage French wine be used in the blood-red fountains of alcohol at her party, and bought 100 litres of the stuff. “ Moscow is mad with money,” he says exultantly. “And what’s special about it people here got rich so young. That dictates their lifestyle. They want to have fun and parties. Many are not married. They drive cool cars, they travel; celebrity life is defined by their youth. They want to live for themselves, for today, and this is why Moscow is turning into the city of amusements. Moscow is spoiled, and bored of good society events done beautifully. People want wit and weirdness. You need to shock and provoke.”

Quite how all this wealth came into existence, and fell into the hands it did, is a mystery. The rich tend to divide time impressionistically into two eras: the bad old days “before money came”, and the good times of “since opportunity came”. Everyone knows that a very few Russians got rich, by fair means or foul, in the middle of the Nineties, in the wild-capitalism, grab-whatever-you-can-get years immediately after Communism collapsed. Those men, known as the “oligarchs”, were handed vast chunks of Russia ’s natural assets in return for supporting the government – a shady form of privatisation that still enrages the many who didn’t benefit. That first post-Soviet boom collapsed in 1998, along with the value of the rouble, after everyone went to the well once too often. But a second boom, fuelled by the global crisis of the last few years, which has taken the price of the oil that is Russia’s main export to peaks well over $70 a barrel, has put more cash back into the economy than the rich know what to do with.

Since Boris Yeltsin, the president of wild capitalism, was eased out of power at the turn of the millennium, ordinary Russians have been grimly pleased that their new leader, Vladimir Putin, is keeping the super-rich on a tighter rein, forcing them to pay taxes, and, every now and then, hunting one down with the full majesty of the law. Two live in exile. One is in jail. Another, Roman Abramovich, has made himself safe from the possibility of presidential investigation by buying Chelsea Football Club. At least in theory, the possibility exists that the rich would feel worried about whether Mr Putin, an ex-KGB agent with no great love of today’s billionaires, might go after them too. A wealthy friend of mine admits privately that she longs to “cash up” and buy herself a nice safe house in London . But, even though President Putin will be in power till 2008, anyone speaking on the record doesn’t have a qualm about the president’s likely attitude to their own conspicuous consumption. People who get arrested are probably corrupt, they say, and pass quickly on.

“ Let’s not put everybody in the same basket, OK,” says Rustam Tariko, a dynamic new-generation millionaire whose money comes from making Russian vodka chic. His vodka, Russky Standart, is now the country’s premium brand; his most conspicuous status symbol is a racy red motor yacht, called TERRRIBLE with three Rs (and three engines). “Obviously people who were exposed to making privatisation deals with the government are more worried today. But I am not involved. My only relationship with the government is getting licences and paying my taxes. Most wealthy people are like me. So nothing is changing in our lives.”

There’s a style vocabulary now, words I don’t remember hearing when I last lived here in 1998. There’s glamur, which needs no translation; pafosny, or “trying too hard,” applied sneeringly to clothes and parties; attributy, or “status symbols,” like getting into clubs like Shokolad on a Friday night, when you have to part with $300 before you’re even conducted to your silver seat. That this amounts to nearly a year’s pension for a retired teacher bothers no one but the poor. (Understandably, the retired teacher I am staying with hates the oligarchs. She calls them “olligators” and thinks they are thieves. The reason she, and 90 per cent of Russians, voted for Putin in last year’s election is because she believes that “Putin will gradually take all that stolen money back now, just you wait and see.” But Vera has no power to touch the olligators. And Russia ’s rich set have long ago forgotten the dizzying disparities of wealth that divide them from the people they drive past in the street every day.)

What rich people today are all keen to prove, however, is that they’ve learned a lot since the Nineties, when the Russian rich were a byword for brash vulgarity and crass overspending. Back in those days, rich Russians were called New Russians. They wore raspberry-coloured jackets and blingy jewellery, yelled coarsely into the latest brand of mobile phone, drank too many Dom Perignon, vodka and Amaretti cocktails, drove Mercedes-600s and kept a Jeepload of muscly bodyguards a few yards from themselves at all times. The classic joke about their spendthrift ways went like this. One New Russian says to another, “I just bought an Armani tie for $1,000”. The other looks pityingly at him. “You fool,” he says. “I just bought the same tie – for $2,000.”

No one wants to be a New Russian thug any more. So the same people are learning more sophisticated ways. Whether their social life is on the flashy magazine- and boutique-opening circuit, with the beautiful girls and rich men, or on the more grown-up arts premieres, charity events and socialising-with-ministers circuit, they are likely to tell you that they read great literature and enjoy classical music. The gold-and-chandeliers-with-everything decorative style that used to be mockingly known as Tsarist Rococo has given way to a pared-down Zen aesthetic. Just a few girls go on and on partying at any price (23-year-old Ksenia Sobchak, whose father was the liberal Mayor of St Petersburg and President Putin’s mentor, is the one who comes to mind, though there’s a lot of tutting about her loose ways; it’s high time, the wives say, that she settled down and got married). Most wives of the rich, who used to be happy to spend their days getting their hair and nails extended in beauty salons, are reinventing themselves as biznis-leidis: boutique owners, interior designers or philanthropists running charities. And the two holiday rituals of the year – January, when the entire Russian elite goes skiing for a fortnight at Courchevel, and August, when it descends on the Cote d’Azur to mess about on boats at St-Tropez (or Sardinia) – are, at least in theory, organised around healthy, wholesome sport.

Hence the yacht fever.

Some people, it’s true, just see boats as social markers. As Andrei Fomin, the party organiser, puts it, “in August, in the Mediterranean , a yacht is an essential status symbol. Everyone knows the rules. If a yacht’s less than 50 metres long, it’s not really a yacht. And the crew must be English. You simply can’t have anyone else.”

Others say they like boats less for showing off than for tough, demanding sport. “I would like to distinguish between luxury yachts and my passion for boats,” Rustam Tariko says firmly. TERRRIBLE is moored in Sardinia , where Tariko spends his summers partying with a few hundred of his closest friends to celebrate the purchase of his latest boat. “What I like is fun, sport, sea, entertainment, going out in various weather conditions, reaching France in 15 minutes, racing with Italians – stuff like that. Classic sailing: I really don’t like that very much. But on this kind of boat, people are younger, and there is a kind of natural selection of people who go with you. Fat people is not going with you. Boring people is not going with you. People who are afraid is not going with you. You clean out a lot of people automatically.”

This is sport whose point is pain in the wallet, though. Yachts cost. If you’re buying on the French Riviera, even a smallish motor yacht costs up to 3 million euros and 40,000 euros a year in mooring, insurance and maintenance. A boat twice as big might cost 20 million euros and maintenance a quarter of a million euros a year.

Yet top-dollar Russians have been in the Mediterranean yacht market since the latest Russian boom began in the late 1990s. If you’re Roman Abramovich, the word is that you’re building the biggest yacht of the lot. If you’re Umar Dzhabrailov, the millionaire Chechen hotelier sometimes photographed with Naomi Campbell, you’ve got a huge one already. Yuri Luzhkov, the wheeler-dealing Mayor of Moscow, is a regular guest on Silvio Berlusconi’s Magnum. Olga Rodionova, sultry photo model, boutique owner and wealthy banker’s wife, spends her summers in Croatia , far from the madding Moscow crowd, and says she likes to charter a boat with her family to cruise quietly around the Greek islands for three weeks a year.

And the party girls – the beautiful, blonde, long-haired, long-legged, pert-breasted, Botox-enhanced, Barbie-doll wonders of Moscow society, who live in unimaginable luxury in heavily-guarded villas on the outskirts of town and never seem to do a day’s work to support themselves – spend half their lives on yachts.

Uliana Tseitlina, perhaps the most mysteriously financed of these lovelies, who lives alone in a hugely desirable home containing a good thousand dollars’ worth of orchids and roses on the day I visit, a whole roomful of jewelled shoes, a roomful of furs, a roomful of bags and clothes, a bathroom or two full of whippy back-view photos of bare-bottomed girls, a lot of blonde leather sofas, a basement full of home cinemas, bubbly swimming pools and jacuzzis (but no tropical fish in the tanks around the pool, she sighs: so passé, “so New Russian; the bubbles are more beautiful by themselves,”) went on the yacht to end all yachts last summer.

“ I was a guest on the Christina, which belonged to Onassis originally and then a couple of years ago it was renovated completely, and they did a fantastic job. They preserved whatever was valuable there – like the swimming pool where Marilyn Monroe danced with Onassis, and what’s-her-name, the singer, Callas, and all those people. It wasn’t just beautiful, there was history in it too. They put all the best out, crystal, table, silver, the best of everything, a fantastic crew, a huge deck, and it moved very smoothly, and the only thing was that it cost $100,000 a day. I would say it was the nicest boat I’ve seen. But I’ve been in lots of others.”

The Mediterranean boat people aren’t the market that Western boat-builders at the Moscow Boat Show are out to capture, though. What interests them is the secondary boating business developing on the outskirts of Moscow itself – on the rivers and reservoirs of a city whose winters might be long and snowy enough to have defeated Napoleon’s advancing armies, but whose summers are usually long, dusty and burning hot. Old Soviet leisure facilities and sports centres are being snapped up and done up in grand style by the rich. There are already half a dozen lesser yacht clubs on the same reservoir as Burevestnik. And everyone and their aunt seems to have plans for more riverside real estate.

“ If you come to Moscow in summer, you’ll see San-Tropez, no less!” laughs Yelena Gushina, the wholesome wife and daughter of the bosses of Gutabank, who keeps herself busy running charity funding to a state-of-the-art medical clinic. Her eyes open wide: “because there are so many boats here … I think that Moscow is a river city. It has canals, rivers, artificial lakes. In the next two years, Moscow will be where people come to see perfect, beautiful motorboats: they’re the new rich man’s toy.”

“ Our family are not such public people,” she adds. “We are more interested in sport: windsurfing, skiing and boats. I think a 12-15 metre motorboat is best for Moscow, because you can drive yourself, and speedboats are interesting, and it’s easy to stop somewhere for a party.”

Yelena’s not too keen on the big boozy boat parties at Burevestnik. Instead, her family likes to visit 95 degrees, a designy, arty riverside restaurant whose tree-trunk verticals are all slightly skewed. Boating should be casual, but stylish, she adds. “When you have a nice boat, you always want to put on something glamorous. Maybe not expensive, but linen trousers, a nice white teeshirt, a dark blue sweater: yacht fashion.”

Compared with the lavish spending of other members of the Moscow elite, this is restraint indeed. But whether it will soften the hearts of the disgruntled masses, struggling on low wages and pensions in modest flats, is another matter altogether.

Nor is it clear whether Marie Antoinette-style simplicity will actually catch on among the status-conscious Russian rich. Uliana Tseitlina only tosses her blonde curls, wiggles her black toes in their peep-toed mules, and laughs when I ask her about boats in Moscow . “Yes, there are all these yacht clubs here, and they’re quite popular in summer time,” she says dismissively. “Well, there is no actual sea here to sail in, but people bring big ocean-sized boats to sit around in. And sometimes they just manage to move on that little river, enough to turn around.” She gives another tinkling, contemptuous laugh. “I guess they’re waiting to celebrate their wealth and prosperity.”

ENDS