Girl, 18, would like to meet oligarch

The publication this week by the Russian magazine Finans of a definitive list of the country's 101 dollar billionaires - the most in any country other than the US - could not have come at a better time for Moscow's beautiful young women. The season for oligarch hunting - 'Okhota na oligarkhov' - is open.

The national sport is supported by the daily paper Kosmolskaya Pravda which has been carrying a series of columns entitled 'School of Seduction: How to force him to marry you'.

Oligarchs everywhere are being targeted, says Tatyana Ogorodnikova in the political weekly Argumenty i Fakty. Ogorodnikova, the pseudonym for the wife of a wealthy businessman, says: "These women study everything about these men: their star sign, their family set-up, what type of woman they like, how they like their women to dress. Then they engineer a chance meeting

in a restaurant, at a party, in a shop.

"These women don't care exactly who will be financing their future - ­ they just want to make sure someone does. And the richer the better."

Nor is marriage or a steady girlfriend any obstacle to the oligarch hunters: Ogorodnikova sees young women trying to inveigle themselves into her husband's circle all the time.

Among the billionaires most ruthlessly targeted by gold-diggers are the country's richest man Oleg Deripaska, happily married to Polina, who is best friends with Dasha Zhukova, girlfriend of the second richest oligarch, Roman Abramovich. The Chelsea FC owner is reckoned to be a "much-coveted bachelor" despite regular coverage in the Russian magazines of his relationship with the former model.

And you don't have to be an oil painting to be targeted - Arsenal's Alisher Usmanov is high on the list - though being an oil magnate certainly helps - vis Vladimir Bogdanov, another prize oligarch. "These young