MARSEILLE, France -- Russian billionaire and parliamentarian Suleiman Kerimov was in critical condition in a French hospital on Monday after his car crashed and caught fire on a Mediterranean coast road, a hospital spokesman said.
Kerimov was being treated in a Marseille hospital after his black Ferrari sports car crashed on Saturday on the chic Promenade des Anglais, a boulevard which runs along the sea front in the city of Nice, a police spokesman said.
He did not say what had caused the crash.
"He's in a critical condition," said a hospital spokesman in Marseille, adding that Kerimov had suffered burns. "He is on artificial respiration."
Kerimov, 41, is worth $7.1 billion according to Forbes magazine, whose annual survey of the world's richest people put him at No. 72, and made him the 11th richest Russian.
He was born in Russia's southern region of Dagestan near the troubled region of Chechnya and owns big stakes in gas monopoly Gazprom and Russia's largest bank, Sberbank.
He also controls the Russian silver mining firm Polymetal, which plans an initial public share offering in January.
Polymetal declined to comment on Monday when asked whether its plans might change as a result of Kerimov's crash.
Kerimov leapt into the top league of Russian billionaires in the late 1990s, several years after he started to borrow aggressively from banks to buy shares in state companies, betting that the value of his investments would rise over time.
Married with three children, he is regularly linked by Russian tabloids to some of Russia's most famous young women.
Russian media reported last year that he paid $1 million to fly pop stars Shakira and Christina Aguilera to Russia to celebrate his 40th birthday.
Police said a young woman was in Kerimov's car at the time of the crash and suffered less serious injuries. Her name was not released.
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