Vladimir Putin has been ranked number 3 in the Forbes list of the most powerful people in the world, President Medvedev comes in 43rd, after Deputy Prime Minister, siloviki chieftain and Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin at number 42. (See the editor’s choice for Russia’s top seven.) Forbes has got a special feature on the politician the Russian press apparently call ‘the scariest person on earth’.

There is little solid information about the man. Like many of Putin’s cronies, Sechin is a St. Petersburg native. In the 1990s he worked in city government. Before that, it’s widely believed he was a spy; Moscow sources confirm that he was a member of the GRU, the KGB’s foreign-intelligence arm. His duties may have included working in Angola and Mozambique, probably as a translator. An American who worked directly with Sechin in the 1990s said Sechin showed utter loyalty to Putin–a fact that is key to his current standing.

Sechin’s reputation is of a fearsome protector of the interests of the Russian state, particularly in the oil sector–like his chairmanship of $68-billion (2008 sales) state oil concern Rosneft. He is widely assumed to be a secret shareholder–though, like his presumed work in intelligence, this has never been proved. Sechin did not respond to several requests for comment.