How Leukemia Changed a Tycoon's Priorities

Leukemia can sneak up on you from behind or maybe jump out from behind a bush. That is figuratively, of course. You don’t expect it to jump out at you from the pages of your newspaper, but that’s what it did for me when I was reading about a disaffected Russian tycoon.

I didn’t feel any pity for Russian tycoon Oleg Tinkov when I read retribution by President Vladimir V. Putin’s administration was swift after the tycoon criticized the war in Ukraine.

A blood cancer connection

But I did feel that his having acute myeloid leukemia made him a little more human and relatable to me. And interestingly, according to the story, the leukemia helped him in unexpected ways.

According to the Times, “He said that his illness — he is now suffering from graft-versus-host disease, a stem-cell transplant complication, he said — might have made him more courageous about speaking out than other Russian business leaders and senior officials.”¹

Leukemia and other big challenges

In May 2020, you wouldn’t say the leukemia was the least of his problems, but you would say that he had other pretty big challenges.

A former cycling team owner, he was written up in the cycling publication VeloNews, like so:

“Flamboyant former team owner Oleg Tinkov confirmed reports he’s been diagnosed with leukemia. The diagnosis comes as the 52-year-old Russian billionaire, currently living in London, is trying to fend off an extradition order to appear before a U.S. court for tax fraud for under-reporting income, according to U.S. tax officials.”²

Tidying-up after a diagnosis

After diagnosis, many of us have had to quickly tidy up whatever projects we were pursuing at work and at home. I remember, after my 2003 diagnosis, going into the newspaper office and trying to finish stories that I had started. It sure was hard to concentrate.

Tinkov got to deal with his “stuff” in a cushier setting than my newspaper office.

As VeloNews reported, “A London court has set a $25 million bail and imposed a curfew that he must stay within his $8.5 million apartment overnight.”²

Poor baby, right?

The story continued, “With regards to questions from the United States on my past taxes, my lawyers are working on that, while I use my strength to fight my true enemy,” Tinkov said of the March 2020 diagnosis.²

You can really go down a rabbit hole with this kind of thing.

A big headline announced, about a year earlier, “Arrested Billionaire Banker Tinkov Switches Focus to Cancer Foundation.” The Tinkoff Bank founder told The Moscow Times "he no longer has the motivation to do business.”³

I'm not sure what this means, but he said he "nearly died twice" but now has an "80%" chance of survival. I can kind of guess, though, because I feel like I nearly died at least once, when I went into a coma and had life-threatening complications from my last stem cell transplant.

Changing priorities to research blood cancer

Meanwhile, the Tinkov family set up a charitable foundation for blood cancer research.
"I am dedicating a huge amount of my money to it... I would like to fundamentally change the hematology and blood cancer system in Russia," he told the independent Moscow newspaper. Having undergone a bone marrow transplant in July, he said he plans to work with the centres (British spelling) for bone marrow transplants.³

Nothing like a little blood cancer to show you what's important.