The Quiet Tycoon

What is life like for a man who is worth $4 billion and controls as much oil as ExxonMobil? My profile of Vagit Alekperov, the president of Lukoil, is the cover story of this week’s New York Times Magazine. The article looks at the new rules of the game for oligarchs in Putin’s Russia and explores why Alekperov is doing well while his rival, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has been in jail since October.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.