Russian rich takeover France
A RUSSIAN billionaire politician crashed his black Ferrari on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on Sunday. Suleiman Kerimov, currently in a critical condition in a Marseilles hospital, is one of thousands of New Russians who own residences along the Riviera.
A billionaire who made his money in gas, silver and banking, Kerimov has a playboy reputation: he recently paid Christina Aguilera and Shakira $1m each to perform at his 40th birthday party.
He was apparently driving to his mansion in Antibes: the French press reported that his private jet landed at Nice airport half an hour before he crashed. Kerimov was badly burned while his passenger, Tina Kandelaki, a Georgian TV presenter and model, suffered slight burns and has flown back to Moscow.
Ten years ago it would have been unthinkable to imagine a member of the state Duma from Dagestan driving a Ferrari through Nice. But since the Russians started coming to the south of France in the late 1990s, they have made the Riviera their own.
As I took a stroll along La Croisette in Cannes last week, passing by Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent and Escada, I heard more Russian spoken than French. A statuesque girl in a leopard-print coat and Chanel pumps screamed into her mobile behind a curtain of expensively straightened hair.
A preppy family dressed like something out of a Ralph Lauren advert discussed the weather. A Penelope Cruz lookalike teetered along on the arm of an ancient, expensively dressed man with an extraordinary comb-over. All were speaking Russian.
Russians are now the second biggest property buyers in France after the British). Last year the Monte Carlo branch of Louis Vuitton announced that high-spending Russian customers had 'made their season'. Roman Abramovich's three mega-yachts are customarily moored at Monte Carlo or Cannes (Kerimov, another yacht owner, is said to be a friend and business associate of the Chelsea FC owner).
Nice airport has information signs in Russian and the biggest selection of Russian language press I've seen outside Moscow, with copies of Russian versions of Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar and FHM (of which Kerimov's friend Tina is a former cover girl) next to Kommersant, Russia's FT, and Pravda.
Outside the Ritz Carlton in Cannes is a huge posterboard advertising Bodyguard, a security agency. Round the corner a Franck Provost beauty salon was doing a brisk trade in blow-dries and manicures: the salon also has a chain in Moscow. At my hotel, just off La Croisette, the receptionist was assuring a guest that a Russian-speaking colleague would be arriving soon. Most of the hotels are recruiting Russian speakers, she told me later. They lose business, she said, if they can't provide it in Russian.
Meanwhile, back in Moscow, questioned by the press about the car crash, Tina Kandelaki at first denied being in the South of France, saying she had been in bed all weekend with mumps.
Later she admitted to a Russian news agency that the story of mumps was a ruse to deflect speculation about her relationship with Kerimov. Where her husband Andrei Kondrakhin, another wealthy Russian businessman, was while she was in Nice, she did not say. ·
