Putin's men 'lined pockets' from state funds
By Will Stewart in Moscow
Last Updated: 2:25am GMT 04/01/2008A former aide to Vladimir Putin has accused the Russian president's circle of lining their pockets from state funds.
The state's institutions have become the tools of Putin's circle, claims former aide Andrey Illarionov
Andrey Illarionov, a market reformer and Putin's economic advisor until his resignation two years ago, alleged that the Russian government's £75 billion Stabilisation Fund, created in 2004 to cushion the budget from a fall in oil prices, was being exploited by members of the ruling elite for their personal benefit.
He gave no details of how this allegedly occurred.
"The Stabilisation Fund, in the form in which it was created in which monies were accumulated, has ceased to exist. It has died. This is now a fund for increasing the personal wealth of specific individuals," he claimed in a radio interview.
"In the current conditions, the creation of organisations or funds like this simply increases the personal wealth of persons who have chanced to find themselves at the top of the Russian power structure."
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Illarionov, president of the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis and a fellow of the Washington-based Cato Institute, claimed that the circle around Putin and his chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev, were increasingly adopting "the aggression of the street rabble" to stay in power.
He cited flawed elections and alleged "velvet re-privatisation" - or forcing down the value of ex-state assets before putting them into the hands of loyalists - as examples of this "aggression" linked to a "moral decline" among the ruling elite.
The state's institutions have become the tools of Putin's circle, he claimed.
"At the moment for many of the people who are in power, there is almost no other means left to them but to escalate violence and aggression in order to remain in power.
"They are not stupid people and they understand that the peak of their popularity has passed and that they will have to resort to the kind of violence seen in the past few weeks.
"The country has entered one of the most dangerous phases in its history, when almost all the institutions of a modern state have been destroyed and there is nothing that can be used as a support in a crisis."
He insisted, though, that Russia's present direction was a "deviation".
"This option is a dead end - and will come to an end. It will end much more quickly that many people think," he said. [read the rest]
posted by: jrtelegraph
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