Technology investor Yuri Milner has severed ties with his native nation after condemning Moscow over the Ukraine conflict
FILE PHOTO: Yuri Milner speaks next to Mark Zuckerberg at Genentech Hall on UCSF’s Mission Bay campus in San Francisco, Feb. 20, 2013 © AP / Jeff Chiu
Moscow-born billionaire Yuri Milner has cut his last tie to his homeland, renouncing his Russian citizenship after condemning the country for its military offensive against Ukraine.
Milner completed the process of shedding his Russian citizenship in August, according to an updated fact sheet posted on the website of his Silicon Valley investment firm, DST Global. The 60-year-old father of three moved his family to California in 2014 after living in Israel, where he obtained citizenship in 1999, for nine years.
“My family and I left Russia for good in 2014, after the Russian annexation of Crimea. And this summer, we officially completed the process of renouncing our Russian citizenship,” the billionaire tweeted on Monday.
A number of Russian-born businessmen have tried to distance themselves from their native country amid public outrage in the West over the Ukraine conflict and efforts by the US and its allies to seize the assets of so-called oligarchs with ties to the Kremlin. Milner was among at least seven Russian billionaires who asked US-based Forbes magazine to refrain from mentioning their national origins.
Milner, who has been called Russia’s most influential technology investor, built a fortune estimated by Bloomberg at $3.5 billion. He was an early investor in Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb, and he bet successfully on such Chinese tech companies as online retailer Alibaba and smartphone maker Xiaomi.
In 2018, the US Treasury Department placed Milner on its “Kremlin list” of officials and tycoons with alleged ties to the Russian government. However, he hasn’t set foot in Russia since 2014, and his venture capital firm hasn’t raised any funds from Russian investors since 2011. None of the 80 companies in which DST has invested are based in Russia.
Milner, who was born to a Ukrainian-Jewish father and a Russian-Jewish mother, graduated in theoretical physics from Moscow State University in 1985. Five years later, he became one of the first Soviet students to study in the US, attending the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton School of Business. He worked at the World Bank in Washington from 1992 to 1995.
After Moscow sent troops into the neighboring country in February, DST issued a statement condemning “Russia’s war against Ukraine, its sovereign neighbor.” Milner’s Breakthrough Prize Foundation accused Russia of “unprovoked and brutal assaults against the civilian population.” He and his organizations pledged a combined $14.5 million to humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
“I cannot go back and change history,” Milner told Bloomberg earlier this year. “I cannot change the fact I was born in Russia. I cannot change the fact that we had some Russian funds.”
Unlike the US, Russia doesn’t impose an exit tax on people who renounce their citizenship. Russian bank owner Oleg Tinkov, who was convicted of tax fraud last year and agreed to pay more than $500 million in penalties, allegedly lied about his net worth to avoid the exit tax when he renounced his US citizenship in 2013.
