While you’re waiting for the US election results — ever wonder how Donald Trump will fare if he loses the election and doesn’t pay off any Russian mobsters he happens to owe? On Monday, Russian gangsters gave us a sample of how they do business with oligarchs who don’t pay.
The BBC reports that early Monday morning, armed and masked intruders broke into the family estate of Vladimir Marugov, an oligarch who was called the Sausage Tsar of Russia due to his ownership of the Ozyorsky and the Meat Empire sausage factories. (Sausage is a big deal in Russia: a widely derided change to the government-approved recipe for kolbasa has been said — no doubt partly in jest — to have contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.) Marugov had been involved with a big property dispute with his ex-wife Tatyana Marugova, and was rumored to have many debts and financial difficulties.
When the intruders broke in, Marugov, 54, happened to be relaxing in his estate’s banya (a standalone Russian sauna) with his girlfriend Sabina Gaziyeva, 36. (You can see photos of Marugov along with his uncommonly beautiful ex-wife and girlfriend in Will Stewart’s article about this in yesterday’s Daily Mail.)
The intruders tied up Marugov and his girlfriend, demanded cash from Marugov, shot him with a crossbow, and tortured him for an hour. The girlfriend managed to escape through a window and called police, but the gangsters fled before police arrived. Marugov died due to blood loss. Police have arrested suspects but have not named them.
That’s how things are done in Russia when you don’t pay up, and Mr. Trump might want to think twice before taking up residence there.