Many moons ago

0The gamblers are mostly older men still wearing their work suits but with ties pulled low. And the air is thick with cigar smoke and tension. 02br
00Cutting a swathe through the heavy atmosphere, greeting staff and friends with a regal kiss and smile, is the big boss. 02br
01b00Cut-throat world02b00 02br
00He owns a string of casinos and fruit machine arcades which he says were recently valued at more than £500m ($984m). 02br
00It is a gambling empire which he has built from scratch over the past two decades, right through the period of Russia's wildest post-communist days. 02br
00Quite how he has survived this cut-throat world is a mystery, especially as he is not even Russian, he is British. 02br
00Pulling hard on a cigarette, Michael Boettcher tells me how he left London in the late 1980s, having lost all his money in the property crash. Now he is the proud employer of 6,000 people. 02br
00Many moons ago, he says, when he first starting working in a casino in the west, he earned £12,000 ($23,600) a year. Now, he whispers, he makes that every couple of hours. 02br
00He estimates the Russian gambling industry as a whole pulls in as much as £4bn ($7.8bn) a year. 02br
02br
00As we wander through the casino together, he takes time out from much kissing and greeting to emphasise the apparent altruism behind his enterprise.02br
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01font00What is the meaning of 'many moons ago' here? Has it got anything to do with the Moon? I doubt it very much.02font02br
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