Balzac had a word for it

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."

That phrase is often attributed to Balzac, but in fact what Balzac actually said was:

"Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oubli, parce qu'il a t proprement fait."

which, translated, is:

"The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account, is a crime that has never been found out, because it has been properly executed."

This might perhaps be applied to many rich men or woman, of course.  But it's particularly linked with sudden and dramatic acquisition of great wealth.  The modern-day example of this is the rise of the Russian oligarchs.

But surely, when great wealth is acquired in situations where the laws of the country have broken down and anarchy reigns,  the normal laws of polite civilised liberal behaviour cannot really be applied.  For instance, it's easy to criticise from an expensive  property in liberal old Hampstead,  and take that greatly favoured piece of real estate known as 'the moral high ground', when you have legitimately earned your money from one of the noble professions, and/or most likely inherited some of it, too.   For such people it must be difficult to put themselves in the place of men with no professional background, no family with money, with nothing in fact but their brains, who started off from zero in the violent and chaotic conditions of post Communist Russia.

Lev Cherney, brother of Michael, another successful man we will meet later, who came up the hard way,  said to my mind perfectly reasonably:

"Very often the most likely to succeed in these stormy oceans are not the picture-perfect, clean-shaved, deep-tanned, well-built and fashionably attired yachtsmen under the immaculate white sails - but unpleasant-looking ugly skippers in command of a pirate ship."
He added: "One should not be appalled. These are the laws of intial capital acquisition, applicable everywhere."

Note the last sentence.  "These are the laws of intial capital acquisition, applicable everywhere."

In other words, he agrees with Balzac.

So, next post, let's look at a striking example of someone who has soared close to the sun from a standing start  - and ask, will he yet burn his wings?  I'm talking, of course,  about that well known friend of Nat Rothschild and  Lord Mandelson, the  aluminum King himself, Oleg Deripaska.

More next time . . .