“Russian billionaire to marry and win a bet”
Herald News Services, Tuesday, March 13, 2007
It is either Russia’s society wedding of the year — or its biggest practical joke.
Mikhail Prokhorov, the country’s most eligible billionaire, is getting married in a $10-million US ceremony on a paradise island. To win a bet. Allegedly.
Russian tabloids are abuzz with rumours that Prokhorov, who is worth an estimated $14.2 billion, is planning a whirlwind marriage on May 3, his 42nd birthday, to honour a wager he made in his youth.
One even named his bride-to-be as the blonde socialite Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian “It” girl whose family is friends with President Vladimir Putin.
Prokhorov apparently intends to fly out 700 of his closest friends for a lavish wedding party on two islands in the Maldives, with unmarried guests housed on Kurumba and married ones on nearby Paradise.
Prokhorov, it was said, would journey to Paradise only after the marriage ceremony. His bet won, the five-day bash would end with an equally swift divorce for a man whose commitment to a bachelor lifestyle of wild parties and women is legendary in Moscow.
The billionaire was arrested by French police investigating a suspected prostitution ring in the ski resort of Courchevel in January. He was released without charge, but the scandal prompted Putin, his wealthy business partner, to insist on a division of assets in their company, Norilsk Nickel.
© The Calgary Herald
