Each year, Forbes publishes a list of the richest people in the world. And, according to the 2017 list, Bill Gates possesses the prime position for the 4th year in a row, followed by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Warren Buffett, investor, and the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.
Yet there are a few unusual people, apparently as sonorous or richer than these top 3 including ‘the’ Bill Gates, who never arrived on any accounts of billionaires.
We at Corporate Bytes welcome you to dissolve the legends and speculations about their wealth and their trail to it. Here’s the list:
#01 Vladimir Putin
Figures released during the legislative election of 2007 put Putin’s wealth at approximately 3.7 million rubles (US$150,000) in bank accounts, a private 77.4-square-meter (833 sq ft) apartment in Saint Petersburg, and miscellaneous other assets.
Putin’s reported 2006 income totalled 2 million rubles (approximately $80,000). In 2012, Putin reported an income of 3.6 million rubles ($113,000).
#02 Kim Jong-un
Kim Jong-un (Chosŏn’gŭl: 김정은; Korean pronunciation: born 8 January 1982–84 or 5 July 1984) is the Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) and supreme leader of North Korea since 2011. Kim is the second child of Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) and Ko Yong-hui. He is the first North Korean leader to have been born after the country’s founding. Before taking power, Kim was rarely seen in public, and many of the activities of Kim and his government remain unknown. Recent estimates put Kim Jong Un’s wealth at roughly $5 billion.
#03 Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi was a Libyan revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He governed Libya as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977, then as the “Brotherly Leader” of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. He was initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism but later came to rule under his own Third International Theory. The Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend that deceased Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi had “secretly salted away more than $200 billion in bank accounts, real estate and corporate investments around the world before he was killed.
#04 The Rothschilds
As a forebearer of debatable existence and part of a conspiracy theory, The Rothschild family is a wealthy family descending from Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a court Jew to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of Frankfurt, who established his banking business in the 1760s.
Although the family wealth has been divided among many descendants and heirs throughout the years, the Rothschilds still rank among the wealthiest lineages in the world. It is estimated that the Rothschild family controls more than $2 trillion worth of assets.
#05 John D. Rockefeller
By the time Rockefeller died in 1937, his assets equalled 1.5% of America’s total economic output. To control an equivalent share today would require a net worth of about $340 billion dollars, more than four times that of Bill Gates, currently the world’s richest man.
