http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/77de73aa-5346-11e1-aafd-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1mEvIUTrw
February 9, 2012 6:06 pm
Putin pushes levy on ‘dishonest’ privatisations
By Catherine Belton in Moscow
©Getty
The imminent return of Vladimir Putin has changed the tone and shortened fuses on both sides
Vladimir Putin has reopened the legacy of Russia’s chaotic privatisations of the 1990s, calling for tycoons to legitimise “dishonest” fortunes with a one-off windfall payment.
“We need to close the problems of the 1990s, of what, speaking honestly, was dishonest privatisation,” Mr Putin told tycoons meeting at a congress of Russia’s big business lobby.
“We need to establish the social legitimacy of private property itself and social confidence in business.”
Mr Putin, who is seeking to return to the presidency in elections in March, painted the move as a way to close questions over the legitimacy of the fortunes made by some Russian businessmen when vast swathes of the economy were sold off at knockdown prices in the 1990s.
But businessmen and investors said the move could cast fresh doubt on property rights, increasing uncertainty just as Mr Putin is pledging to improve the investment climate. Mr Putin did not specify how any payments would be levied or how many companies would be affected. He said only that the question would be further discussed.
“This opens an enormous can of worms that stretches right back to the beginning of the post-Soviet period,” said Roland Nash, chief strategist at Verno Capital, the Moscow hedge fund.
“The assumption is that property rights have already been established, so going back and questioning that is going to increase uncertainty. The question is how would you establish credibility for this and where would it stop?”
Mr Putin’s announcement appeared clearly aimed at shoring up support before elections by addressing a process still seen by the vast majority of the population as unfair. Russian state TV channels this week aired a documentary attacking the fortunes of the oligarchs and hailing Mr Putin’s efforts to curb excesses.
But if Mr Putin does go ahead with the move, critics said it could prove impossible to levy any such payment without undermining property rights across the country.
“This is the worst thing that the prime minister could do for the investment climate,” said Sergei Aleksashenko, the former deputy central banker. “Putin apparently just said that no property can be considered legal unless he considered it so.”
“To review some of the [privatisation] results now would destroy the legitimacy of all property rights in the country,” said Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire who is running against Mr Putin for the presidency. “The problem is fundamental – everything that was done then was legal even if it wasn’t just.”
Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, defended the call, saying that big business had called for some mechanism to be established itself. But he was unable to give any more details.
Alexander Shokhin, the head of the big business lobby known as RSPP, played down the call, telling the Financial Times he believed Mr Putin was “talking about a symbolic fee which would demonstrate the readiness of business to legitimise”.
He added: “This will be discussed together with big business. Putin at the same time set the task of improving the investment climate so this can’t be done in a way that investors feel their rights are being infringed.”
But Anatoly Chubais, Russia’s former privatisation tsar and current head of Rusnano, a state corporation, told reporters he believed such efforts would prove impossible.
“I don’t know one example of a legitimate solution to this problem. I’m convinced that it will be impossible to do this in Russia,” he said, adding that he believed the issue would disappear after the elections.
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