You really are perfectly positioned to almost share with the audience. You've spent a lot of time with oligarchs. You spent a lot of time researching what's going on and this was a handful of years ago and that's obviously how you created this book. But what i want to ask you is right now: what do you think americans maybe are getting wrong, and maybe we just don't understand culturally of what's going on, because the main thing we're seeing is hang on, there's putin, he invaded it seems like a bad situation.

I'm reading stories of like yachts and jets getting tracked but like beyond that. What would you think that the average american is currently getting wrong? Well, i don't think people realize who these russian oligarchs are. First of all, we're sanctioning these multi-billionaire russians and - and it's not just that they own yachts and planes and soccer teams. This group of of oligarchs put putin in power.

So these guys were a group of of men in the 1990s. When the soviet union collapsed, they were handed uh, the resources of russia, so a group of men, one was handed the aluminum business. One was handed the oil business, one was handed, you know, media, and these guys ran russia. This was when yeltsin was president, so yeltsin was sick and he was drunk all the time and they decided they needed to replace him.

So they went off to the middle of russia and they found this low-level kgb agent who worked for the mayor of saint petersburg and the only reason they knew him is they'd help the oligarchs set up a car dealership in saint petersburg. He was that low level and it was vladimir putin and they thought this was in control - he's a nobody, we're going to bring him to moscow. So the oligarchs that we're talking about today, plucked him out of st petersburg, moved him to moscow, set him up and eventually, as president um and he turned the tables on them. He invited all the oligarchs to stalin's old house, and this is a place where there's like bullet holes in the walls where they used to line people up, and he sat the oligarchs down at a table and he said you've all made a lot of money.

You can keep all of your money, but from here on out you stay out of my way and any of the oligarchs who resisted died. They were either found hanging in their bathroom or they fell down an elevator shaft or one fell out of a helicopter. Um are the oligarchs okay, when that happens, when you just fall into the helicopter yeah. So now, all of the oligarchs who didn't resist are the ones that are around today and they're, essentially putin's cash register when he wants something they give it to him.

If he needs a billion dollars to build his palace, they send him a billion dollars, and so they basically made a deal with the devil. They had put putin into power, but putin became the biggest oligarch of all. So the situation we're in right now, whereas this group of men who once ran russia, are now running around in yachts and planes um, but we're sanctioning them we're taking away their yachts, we're taking away their planes we're grabbing their bank accounts as much as we can. We're ruining their lives to some extent um and the question is: can they now do what they once did and change the leadership in russia um two weeks ago? I would have said absolutely not i mean these guys are terrified of putin.

They they die if they stand up to him, but we're starting to see cracks, form we're starting to see them speak out um. You know they have nothing to gain from the war in ukraine, the oligarchs, don't they don't want a return to the old soviet union. They hated the soviet union, they only came to power and wealth when the soviet union fell, but putin wants to return to the soviet union so there's they have nothing to gain from this situation and everything to lose. So i do think the sanctions on the oligarchs is actually a very powerful way of sticking it to putin, um and we'll see what happens with it.

But i think you know if people read my book, i went very in depth. I spent you know six months hanging out with these guys and clubs and bars and soccer. You know owners, boxes of soccer teams and and then doing some fairly dangerous things to write this story. Um, so you'll get a real feel of who these guys are um.

If you can find the book it actually is not that easy to find anymore um because it came out a while ago and then it just kind of disappeared, everybody bought it out. So hopefully there will be a copy here and there i'm sure there might be a resurgence like after this, like recent debacle, uh, like you were with these old, like i guess, as a human being like, were they scary in the way that hollywood? They have a lot of stories about. You know these guys, um, i don't know which one you want me to tell i i i was once walking in new york with this oligarch and we were walking through columbus circle, new york and there were a bunch of college kids like just being very loud Behind us and the oligarch turns me, this is a very powerful man who i know had been involved in some serious things in the past and he's like this is very annoying. You know the kids were being really loud and i was like well yeah.

It's new york everyone's having a good time and he's like, shall i do something, and there was this moment in his eyes he was a hundred percent serious. It was like the scene in jaws where the eyes turn into like white, so you're, like oh, my god and and i was like no no everything's fine everything's on he calmed down, but i knew in that moment we were inches away from something horrible happening. Um and there were moments like this all the time i was at a meeting and uh. This very large bodyguard, came up behind me and just shoved something into my back pocket and he's like.

Don't look, don't look, and this was right when people were getting polonium, poison and you know i'm like oh crap, i'm gon na die now and i didn't look. I get back to the hotel room and i take it out and it was a computer like key card, a memory card and i'm like i don't know what this is no way. I'm not gon na stick it in my computer, so i had to fly back to boston. I made sure there was a lawyer waiting for me in the airport um because i didn't know if i was going to be grabbed by the state department.

I had no idea what was on this thing and i fly back and it ends up being and when i used it, it had thousands of pages of depositions from this trial, all the way up to putin and the kremlin. Like all of this crazy information that ended up in the book, um that somebody wanted me to have um - and it was like thing like that, but then i guess the biggest story was there's a scene in the book, and this oligarch tells me this story where Roman abramovic and boris berezovsky, two very big oligarchs, wanted to buy an oil refinery in siberia, so they flew to siberia and they met with this russian general who controlled it and they said. Will you sell it to us and he laughed at them he's like i'm? Not going to sell it to you, so they flew back to moscow and that night that old man went swimming in the iroquois river and drowned his bodyguard, who was the only witness, got into a bar fight and died. So i write this scene and i call up the oligarch and i'm, like you know, reading the scene back it.

It makes it seem like you guys, had this man killed and he's like. Yes, it does seem that way and i was like well, you know. Do you want me to change it? Is that okay? Is that what you wanted me to say and they're like? Oh, it's fine! I was like how is it fine that it seems like you had this man and he's like well, when you think about russia in the 1990s, don't think about america in the 1990s think about america in the 1890s and in the 1890s, if a rival businessman disrespected You you shot him, and so he he says that you know that's how that's the world we lived in right um, so it was story after story like that, where you're just kind of in this really weird world, these are hard men who grew up in a Very difficult place, they were outsiders, they were bandits, they were black marketeers who took enormous power and they they had no problem with dealing with their enemies. That way.

Um and that's who we're talking about you know. So we see them now in yachts and airplanes and living this life, but but these are tough men um, and so you know we'll see what happens going forwards with these guys. You.