Nets Owner Mikhail Prokhorov Plans to Give Away $17B if He Wins Russian Presidency

New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov desperately wants to be Russia’s next president. He pines for the position so much so, in fact, that he issued a bold proclamation during a recent interview on a state-run television show:


“I’ll sell everything, all my assets when I become president and donate almost all of the money to charity,” Prokhorov said (via Bloomberg).


Almost?


Well, you can’t expect the third-richest man in Russia to become a pauper after becoming the most powerful figure in all the land. He needs to retain a smidgen of his wealth to pay bills and maybe go out once in a while. You know, for the essentials. And in Prokhorov’s world, the essentials run him around $1 billion.


“I’ll need something to live on,” Prokhorov insisted.


Of course he does.


Still, giving away $17 billion of the $18 billion that the metals companies boss has amassed over a lifetime isn’t too shabby an offer. Too bad it’s contingent on something has virtually no shot at coming to fruition. Nearly all polls have current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin earning a decisive victory at this point in time, and that’s unlikely to change before Election Day.


As per Bloomberg:


A Jan. 28-29 poll of 3,000 likely voters showed Putin winning 46 percent of the March 4 poll, followed by Zhirinovsky and Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov at 9 percent, Prokhorov at 5 percent and former Putin ally Sergei Mironov at 3 percent, the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation, known as FOM, said on its website today, without giving a margin of error.


Ouch. Sorry, charities.


It’s the thought that counts, right?


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