RUSSIA: Russia's big spenders flock to Millionaires' Fair.

Millionaires, billionaires, politicians, and the showbiz elite were some of the tens of thousands of visitors to the second Millionaire Fair held over the weekend (October 28-29) in Moscow. Eager to cash in on Russia's growing number of millionaires, businesses lugged their pedigree stallions, vintage cars and designer furniture to an exhibition hall for the show on the outskirts of the Russian capital. This is the second time Moscow has hosted the Millionaire Fair, which was first held in Amsterdam in 2002 and will now also being staged in Cannes in France, the Belgian city of Kortrijk, China's Shanghai and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The fair featured 250 stands touting every luxury items that might appeal to Russia's rich, hungry to splash out. One of the stands was Swiss-made Goldvish, offering the world's most priciest mobile phone made of gold and diamonds. "Goldvish is the most exclusive cell phone world-wide. It is a solid 18 karate golden cell phone, with and without diamonds. And prices are starting from eighteen thousand five hundred euro till one million," said Michael Morrant, CEO of Goldvish Luxury Communications. A Bugatti Veyron, the most expensive, and probably most polluting car on the planet was sold for 1.4 million US dollars. 19th century horse carts, hummers and helicopters were also on sale, while gold-layered table ware or decorative porcelain proved a big hit among the visitors of the fair. "I think this is the most expensive and the best piece of porcelain on sale today. It is the princess on the pie based on Andersen's fairy tale," said saleswoman Evgeniya Moskaleve. The Cuban cigars, Martini drinks, and impeccably dressed sales girls inside the Moscow exhibition hall contrasted sharply with the run-down suburbs that surround it. Almost a fifth of Russia's 142 million people live below the poverty line. However, the wild capitalism of the 1990s and then high world oil and metal prices have brought huge wealth to an elite tier of "New Russians". Moscow has 25 billionaires and the country has 88,000 millionaires according to the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. That compares to the average Russian income of about 5,000 USD a year. But residents of villages and small towns, where unemployment is high, earn even less. Organisers estimate the fair has attracted some 10,000 visitors every day, fulfilling the event's unofficial tagline "Millionaires of Russia unite!" in an ironic nod to an old revolutionary call for the world's working proletariat.

ITN Source | November 4, 2006

Tags:. .compares. .below. .ironic. .average. .income