| Headline: Power – but for what ends? Source: Euromoney Date: September 2000 Author: Ben Aris more on Russia more on central & eastern Europe more from Euromoney September 2000 In his first months as president Vladimir Putin has been gathering together the threads of power. Oligarchs have been curbed, regional governors put in their place and former KGB colleagues given influential positions. How Putin will use his authority remains uncertain. He seems intent on reforming the tax code and the customs administration and is committed to helping small and medium-size enterprises. But a start has barely been made on economic liberalization and the reduction of state intervention. Ben Aris reports
“This is the end of the oligarchs in Russia,” Boris Nemtsov, leader of the Union of Right Forces faction in the Duma, triumphantly declared to a room packed with journalists at the end of July. “The oligarchs are sick of being oligarchs. They want to be law-abiding taxpayers.” The meeting with 21 so-called oligarchs on Friday July 28 marked the end of the first phase of new Russian president Vladimir Putin’s campaign to make Russia great. |