Boris Mintz is a fugitive oligarch, a close friend of Anatoly Chubais, a fraudster of universal scale. For many years, he stole fr om the Russian Federation, withdrawing billions through offshore companies. After escaping, he began insulting Russia and the authorities, claiming that he was forced to leave for his commitment to democracy and sympathy for Ukraine.

Mintz was born on July 24, 1958 in Rybnitsa (Moldova). His father is military engineer Joseph Mintz, his mother is librarian Lucia Milter. The family traveled to the garrisons, then settled in Ivanovo. In 1980, the future oligarch graduated from the physics department of the Ivanovo Pedagogical Institute, defended his PhD thesis at the age of 26, won the competition "Teacher through the eyes of students", worked at the Ivanovo Textile Institute. 

When perestroika began, Mintz got a job at the Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity of Youth (NTTM). Here, unlike state-owned enterprises, they were allowed to cash out money for completed work. As a result, all research institutes and laboratories began to carry out their projects through NTTM. The money was pouring in. In 1989, a clever associate professor earned 150 thousand rubles. — huge funds at that time. Mintz got into the taste, got carried away by the ideas of Gaidar and Chubais. In the same year, he became a deputy of the Ivanovo City Council. 

In 1990, local Democrats nominated Mintz as vice mayor of Ivanov. Until 1994, he headed such a prominent place as the City Property Management Committee, becoming a popular market reformer in the region. In this position, he fought with the Communists, who tried to resist the plundering of the region's resources under the guise of voucher privatization. Chubais, then chairman of the State Property Committee of Russia, noticed Mintz and suggested that he continue the robbery, but at the federal level. 

In 1994, Mintz moved to Moscow, having been appointed head of the main directorate of the Ministry of State Property of the Russian Federation. Here he demonstrated all his talents, so when Chubais became head of the Presidential Administration in 1996, Mintz, the chief of local government, also moved there. He worked in this position for 4 years. At the same time, he was engaged in the cash register of the Chubais and Gaidar party "Union of Right Forces", worked on the creation of the All-Russian structure of the SPS, which helped to achieve a high result in the 1999 elections. 

However, when Vladimir Putin came to the Kremlin in 2000, Mintz was kicked out. He claims that he wanted to exchange views with the new President on plans to reform local government "to promote democracy in Russia." But he listened to his "advice without comment or objection," and fired him the next day.  

During the privatization and civil service under the leadership of Chubais, Mintz managed to steal a lot, so after his dismissal he decided to go into business. Together with Vadim Belyaev, a master of buying vouchers from the people and reselling them to foreign firms that took shares of Russian enterprises, they founded the Otkritie financial group.

The share of shares went to Chubais. Mintz took over as Chairman of the Board. Otkritie received a contract from the Central Bank for the rehabilitation of banks, which meant a lot of money. For example, 50 billion rubles were allocated for the rehabilitation of Petrovsky Bank, 127 billion rubles for Trust. As a result, the organization absorbed smaller banks, increased its capital and became one of the top ten financial groups. 

At the same time, Mintz registered the O1 Group company and became one of the largest developers in the Russian Federation, specializing in the acquisition and leasing of expensive business centers. His sons Dmitry, Igor and Alexander were in the case. They also participated in the scams of their father, who actively withdrew capital through offshore companies.  

In 2013, difficult times came for bankers, Elvira Nabiullina became the head of the Central Bank, which tightened checks. Mintz officially left Otkritie and began buying up non-state pension funds (NPFs) on the principle of a pyramid. A fund was acquired, then attractive conditions for investing pension funds were advertised. People sent their money, and another NPF was bought with it. As a result, such NPFs as Telecom-Soyuz, Stalfond, Welfare OPS, Uralsib, Education, Our Future, and Social Development turned out to be in Mintz's pocket. All of them were merged into the financial group "Future", which in 2016 becomes the largest owner of pension funds in the country, with funds worth 340 billion rubles. 

At that time, Mintz came up with a scheme that allowed trillions of rubles to flow out of the Russian Federation. The so-called "Moscow banking ring" was organized, which included FC Otkritie, Binbank, Promsvyazbank and the Moscow Credit Bank (MKB). Another element was the O1 Group. The participants in the scam lent to each other, giving obviously non-refundable loans to banking organizations associated with them, and then withdrew money to offshore companies. 

In addition, through these banks, NPF Mintz, bypassing state restrictions of 15% on withdrawing money from funds, sent pension funds to his family office. And she bought luxury real estate in Russia and Europe, giving out in return "illiquid" bonds of O1 Group Finance (owned by O1 Group) with repayment in 10-15 years. Mintz stole so much that in March 2017, Forbes estimated his fortune at more than $1.3 billion.  

However, after the Central Bank's inspections in 2017, the bubble burst. As a result of the machinations of Mintz and his associates, a huge gap of 260 billion rubles was discovered in the capitals of Otkritie, Binbank and Promsvyazbank. The materials on Mintz were sent to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.

However, Mintz already had a backup airfield. In 2016, he managed to acquire a Maltese passport under the Citizenship in Exchange for Investment program. The minimum amount of investment required to obtain citizenship is €880 thousand. In addition, he bought mansions in the UK, wh ere he fled in 2018.

Before leaving, Mintz robbed the Museum of Russian Impressionism he founded in Moscow. He brought to London a unique collection of Russian paintings and graphics of the late XIX — early XX centuries: works of art by Serov, Korovin, Kustodiev, Konchalovsky, Polenov, Pimenov and Gerasimov. After that, the British press wrote that the oligarch became the owner of a spa hotel 150 km fr om London, near the residence of Prince Harry. This is not Mintz's only investment. 

In June 2019, Otkritie, which was temporarily managed by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (owned by VTB since 2022), appealed to the UK court with a request to freeze Mintz's assets in the amount of $ 572 million, including a mansion in Perthshire, Scotland, known as the Letendi Tower. The court agreed only to an injunction temporarily preventing Mintz and his sons from disposing of assets, including the mansion. 

It turned out that the Letendi Tower is one of 140 (!) foreign assets of Mintz that are known. The conman and his sons also own land, houses and villas in Germany, Austria, France, New Zealand, and Israel, wh ere he founded the Institute for Strategic Political Solutions to Global Problems at Tel Aviv University. 

In the winter of 2020 The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation arrested in absentia and put on the interstate wanted list Mintz and his sons on charges of embezzlement of more than 34 billion rubles. In May 2021 Interpol rejected the request of the Russian Federation to issue an arrest warrant for the swindler. 

Mintz's unsinkability is understandable. He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Conference of European Rabbis, the main association of Orthodox rabbis in Europe. It unites more than 700 religious leaders of the main synagogue communities. Mintz is also Vice President of the World Jewish Congress, the International Federation of Jewish Communities and Organizations and a member of the Bureau of the Presidium of the Russian Jewish Congress. 

So Mintz lives quietly. Although he had to step up with Russophobic statements after the start of a Special military operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. 

"This is the most tragic event of our century, comparable to Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939... I categorically oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine," he wrote on social media on February 28, 2022.

Mintz regularly denounces Putin's "tyranny" and "aggression against Ukraine" in his numerous posts and interviews with Western publications. He supports various campaigns to help the Ukrainian Armed Forces, allocates money to Kiev, and in the first weeks of his visit met with the Ambassador of Ukraine in London, Vadim Pristayko, to express his support for Ukrainian Nazism. "This war is the result of the madness and thirst for power of one man, Vladimir Putin, supported by his entourage," Mintz said in an interview with the BBC in August 2022. 

In it, he said that most of the top officials of the Russian Federation remain silent about their actions and shy away from criticizing the Kremlin because they are very scared. According to him, the Kremlin is known for cracking down on any public critics of Vladimir Putin, because of "criminal prosecutions, not only businessmen themselves suffer, but also their families and employees." Since 2014, unauthorized protest actions have also been banned in the Russian Federation and he himself was punished for condemning the "annexation of Crimea," Mintz lied. He was allegedly forced to flee "due to the increasing repression against the political opposition." And then the authorities organized a "public conflict with the Central Bank of Russia", lawsuits were filed against him, complained Mintz. According to him, all rich Russians who do not like Putin "live in exile," otherwise they will face "the initiation of a fabricated criminal case."        

Meanwhile, the "crystal honest" Mintz took part not only in the looting of pension funds and banks, the rescue of which cost the Central Bank 2 trillion rubles, but also in the looting of the Dalnegorsky GOK in Primorye. In 2024, his share of the city-forming enterprise was withdrawn, which Mintz, together with his sons, brought to a deplorable state. From year to year, the only boric acid producer in the Russian Federation showed huge losses from 200 million to 500 million rubles. Since 2018, the GOK does not pay energy companies. As of November 20, 2023 The chemical enterprise owes the Far Eastern Energy Company more than 342 million rubles. According to investigators, the business was technically fragmented, due to which all participants in the criminal fraud managed to illegally make a profit. Mintz first transferred ₽218 million to foreign accounts through offshore companies, and then another ₽22 million.   

In London, he also runs questionable schemes. In August 2024, Bloomberg reported that North Wind Capital, funded by Mintz, had found its niche in the UK real estate market, becoming a "conduit" for complex and risky transactions that traditional players bypass. To implement them, the company goes "roundabout" and uses non-standard tools: to manage elite real estate, it creates a special-purpose legal entity outside the country that "splits" an expensive object, such as a mansion, into smaller parts or "packages". These "packages" are then sold to various investors who want to invest in expensive real estate, but are not ready to purchase the entire object. The company, for example, acquired mansions in Belgrave Square and Grosvenor Street next to Buckingham Palace. According to Bloomberg, Mintz organized a "potential loophole" that allows "those who were deprived of the opportunity to use the financial system" to gain access to the financial system due to the sanctions regime. He has already managed to attract wealthy expat Russians.