Elon Musk is the richest man on the planet, but he believes Putin is much wealthier.
When he passed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in late 2021, the Tesla CEO reclaimed his status as the world’s richest person.
During a recent interview, Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Insider’s parent company, Axel Springer, asked Musk how he felt about being the world’s richest man.
Musk retorted that he believes Putin is wealthier. Nobody knows how much money Russian President Vladimir Putin has or where it is stored, so nobody knows how much money he has. Putin is said to own a $1.4 billion Black Sea castle and a $4 million Monaco condominium.
Some have suggested that Putin is the world’s richest man, with billionaire Bill Browder stating in 2017 that he believes Putin “has acquired $200 billion in ill-gotten gains.”
Following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States and Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia, Putin’s senior allies, and Putin himself. During Musk’s conversation with Döpfner about Putin’s invasion, the Tesla CEO stated that Putin must be stopped.
Billionaires have a disproportionate influence on the world economy, politics, and philanthropy. According to Forbes, there are 2,755 billionaires in the world. The wealthiest of them are members of an even more elite club with even more influence. Many of these billionaires are the founders of technology behemoths, with a sizable portion of their fortune still invested in the businesses they founded.
They can, however, borrow against that wealth to avoid selling stock, delaying (or eliminating) taxes on unrealized capital gains for themselves and their successors in the process.
3 Multi-billionaires can also make use of a plethora of tax deductions to offset reported income, resulting in some of the people on this list paying no income tax in recent years.
With a net worth of $223 billion as of February 28, 2022, Elon Musk, the co-founder and CEO of Tesla, is the richest person on the planet. Behind Musk is Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon, who has a net worth of $178 billion. Musk, LVMH Chair and CEO Bernard Arnault, Google co-founder Larry Page, and L’Oreal heir Francoise Bettencourt Meyers were among the billionaires who saw their wealth grow the most in 2021.
Except for Arnault, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, and Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, seven of the top ten billionaires made their riches in technology.