Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters
It sure is a tough time to be a Russian billionaire. Gennady Timchenko, a mega-rich friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been forced to sell his private jet, according to Reuters news agency, after complaining that U.S. sanctions made it impossible for him to use the aircraft. Oil trader Timchenko has been described by Putin as one of his closest associates. He bought the $60 million Gulfstream G650 jet in 2013, according to aircraft registration records, but data obtained by Reuters shows that he sold it in 2016 after bemoaning U.S. sanctions against him. In 2014, the U.S. government, in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, put him on its sanctions list. “My Gulfstream cannot be used because the company won’t supply it with spare parts, and the pilots don’t have the right to use the navigation, the built-in maps,” he was quoted as saying by Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency. A representative for Timchenko told Reuters that the businessman and his companies “have had no relation to the aircraft you mentioned already for several years.”