RUSSIA’S rich have been out in force doing what they do best — spending money conspicuously. Some of the world’s most luxurious brands and services worth $600 million (£316 million) were sold at Moscow’s Millionaire Fair over the weekend.

Almost 40,000 Russians, double the number last year, attended the four-day festival devoted to extravagant excess. Those with cash to burn were spoilt for choice.

Beautiful girls paraded the world’s most expensive telephones at the Goldvish stand, including one model encrusted with 2,000 diamonds for the oligarch who has everything.

Ilgar Rustamov, a sales director, said that there were just three in the world, at €1 million (£670,000) each, and one had already been sold to a Russian.

“There has been a lot of interest. People want to know when and where our phones will be available,” he said. “Those who have money desire to be different and to show their superiority.”

One young woman examining a gold and diamond phone, a relative bargain at €25,000, was less impressed. “It’s too heavy, I would not want it in my bag,” she said.

Thoroughbred racehorses at $1 million each paraded inside the Krokus Expo Centre, within view of a Bugatti Veyron sports car priced at €1.3 million.

“We have sold one in Russia, but I can’t tell you who bought it,” said Karsten Jacob, Bugatti’s assistant marketing director. “We have just entered the Russian market and we expect quite a few customers.”

Business was brisk at the helicopter stand, offering models costing between $500,000 and $2 million. Anna Shelgumova, marketing manager at Aviamarket, said it had sold 82 in the past two years.

“We are waiting for the law to change because it is illegal to fly over Moscow right now. Then a lot more people will buy,” she said. “Many of the new buildings in Moscow have helipads. It will be so much more comfortable for rich people to fly between the city and their country houses.”

Property was a popular purchase, including an island off Panama sold as a tax haven for $25 million. Closer to home, four of nine houses in a development in the Rublevsky district of Moscow went for between $3.5 million and $8 million.

Russia officially had no millionaires 20 years ago but now it boasts at least 88,000 as well as 33 billionaires. Yves Gijrath, the founder of the fair, said: “Russians are the biggest spenders in the world, along with Arabs, and the Russian market is now in the top three of every luxury brand’s hitlist.”

Not everyone was impressed by the extravagance. “I would refuse to take most of the things here even if they were offered,” said Nadezhda Verkhovtseva, a professor at Moscow State University. She added that Russia had transformed too quickly, so tastes had not been formed. “It lacks finesse.”

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