“Onexim’s current investment strategy is not about geography, but rather liquidity and maintaining a smart portfolio," Razumov said. The company’s focus is on assets where it has controlling stakes and a strong management role, he said. A spokeswoman said Prokhorov spends most of his time in Russia and doesn’t own a home in the U.S., staying in the Four Seasons hotel when he’s in New York.

Prokhorov Fortune

The Kremlin has said that neither he nor his companies have faced any pressure.

Prokhorov, 51, got his start in business selling jeans in the twilight of communism and built his fortune in the 1990s with Vladimir Potanin, an acquaintance who worked in foreign trade. The pair started a bank and later bought control of Arctic metals giant GMK Norilsk Nickel in a controversial privatization auction.

The partnership ended bitterly in 2007 after Prokhorov was held on suspicion of facilitating prostitution during his lavish annual holiday party in the French Alpine resort of Courchevel. He and about two dozen guests were detained after early-morning raids at their luxury hotels and Prokhorov spent two nights in jail. He was never charged, but Potanin used the scandal to push to split their holdings.

Norilsk Stake

Highlighting the Kremlin’s reach, Putin intervened at Prokhorov’s request when Potanin tried to force him to accept a knock-down price for his Norilsk Nickel stake, according to people involved in the talks. In the end, Prokhorov wound up with nearly $10 billion in cash and other assets after the split.

In 2010, Prokhorov, a 6-foot-8 basketball fanatic, bought an 80 percent stake in the Nets, becoming the first NBA owner from outside North America. Promising to bring the team to the championship within five years, he pumped money into new players -- and soon started hanging out with celebrities like Jay Z and Beyonce.

Back in Russia, he tried to keep in the Kremlin’s good graces. He moved his legal residence to a remote Siberian town so his hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payments would help the impoverished region. When the Kremlin was touting Russia’s high-tech prowess, he backed a hybrid-powered car. Putin took it for a test drive, but the project was later scrapped. He mounted a deliberately doomed presidential campaign that lent a much-needed veneer of competitiveness and legitimacy to Putin’s 2012 re-election.

“He thought he could play a good game,” said Yevgeny Chichvarkin, an acquaintance of Prokhorov who fled to London in 2008. “The Kremlin would like him and he’d get additional protection for his businesses.”