Wednesday, Dec 24, 2003
Putin to review `illegal' asset selloffs
By Vladimir Radyuhin
MOSCOW DEC. 23. The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, reaffirmed plans to revisit privatisation deals struck in violation of the law, but ruled out sweeping renationalisation.
Addressing the Russian Chamber of Trade and Industry on Tuesday, Mr. Putin challenged a widespread notion that laws governing the selloff of public assets had often been broken in the 1990s because they were "complicated and impossible to comply with".
"The laws were indeed complicated and mazy but it was well possible to abide by them," he said. "Those who wanted to, observed them."
The Russian leader said "there will be no campaign (to revisit privitisation results)," but stressed that those who broke the law would be held to account.
"If five-seven people failed to observe the law, this doesn't mean that everybody did it," Mr. Putin said.
Russia's richest oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is now in prison awaiting trial on charges of privatisation fraud and tax evasion. Mr. Putin's statement is a signal that authorities will continue to crack down `oligarchs', a handful of Kremlin-connected businessman who were awarded huge chunks of oil and metal industry through selloff auctions under the former President, Boris Yeltsin, in the mid-1990s.
Mr. Putin said the Government would push for redistribution of super profits from commodity corporations to the people. The problem "is easily resovled" through export tariffs and natural resource taxes, the Russian President said.
Copyright © 2003, The Hindu.