Odyssey Moscow: A Former Russian Prisoner Shares His Story

It is dawn on February 14, 2019, and armed agents are raiding Michael Calvey’s Moscow apartment. Twenty-eight years ago, Calvey made a trip from America to the collapsed USSR to look at potential investments. Sensing opportunity, he based himself in Moscow, where he went on to build several billion-dollar funds. Now he finds himself thrown into the notorious Matrosskaya Tishina prison on trumped up charges. As the White House and Kremlin argue about his incarceration, Calvey is caught in a Kafka-esque trap. This is more than the story of just one man’s survival—this is how Russia’s era of hope and aspiration finally died.

As Founder of Baring Vostok, a private equity firm, Michael lived in Moscow for almost three decades, where he learned the language, married a Russian woman, and forged a wide network of contacts. Today, he is Chairman of Baring Ventures, which sold its Russian assets after the invasion of Ukraine. He is a US citizen living in Switzerland and the UK.