Kiribati Turns Down Russian Millionaire's Plans to Make It Site for New ‘Empire of the Romanovs’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 27 – Three weeks ago, Anton Bakov, a Russian millionaire who earlier served in the Russian Duma as a representative of the Monarchist Party, approached the government of the Republic of Kiribati about the possibility of his renting three of that nation’s 34 islands in order to restore “a Russian Empire of the Romanovs.”

            The government of that country, whose population numbers just over 100,000 on islands that are dispersed over more than 3.5 million square kilometers, has now rejected the idea, according to a Radio New Zealand broadcast picked up by Russia’s Lenta news agency today (lenta.ru/news/2017/02/27/kiribati/).

            A Tongolese official commented to the BBC that Kiribati very much needs foreign investment, but even given that need, it fortunately has its principles and thus has rejected Bakov’s request.  The Russian millionaire promised that if Kiribati agreed, he would build schools, ports, and even a university.

            And Bakov declared, the Russian news agency says, that he planned to build “ecologically clean” hotels and fish-processing plants as the economic foundation of the new Russian Empire of the tsars. Lenta did not say who would be the ruler of this entity, but perhaps it would be one of the members of the surviving Imperial Family.