Zee Beam News

21.03.2005 11:52 MSK MosNews - The situation in Russia today can be described as Stalinism, Leonid Nevzlin, a core Yukos shareholder and a longtime business associate of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, told the New York Times on Sunday. The longtime business associate of the imprisoned oil tycoon spoke out from self-imposed exile in Israel, denying criminal charges by the Russian authorities and saying the accusations against him are a continuation of a Kremlin campaign of intimidation. "The situation in Russia today I would describe as Stalinism," Leonid Nevzlin said in a interview at his home in Herzliya, in the Tel Aviv suburbs. President Vladimir Putin "enjoys the absolute power of one person, in that he uses the law enforcement system and the lack of free press" to intimidate Russia's business elite and to renationalize Yukos, once Russia's largest private oil company, he said. Yukos has been torn apart in a struggle between the Kremlin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky that has shaken Western confidence and helped drive oil prices to record highs. It has also prompted Russia's business elite to re-evaluate the Kremlin's commitment to capitalism, and consider whether the leadership is seeking something akin to state control of the economy's commanding heights. Yukos' main production unit Yuganskneftegaz was auctioned off last year to pay off extensive back taxes, but two remaining production units continue to pump a total of 600,000 barrels of oil a day — and Nevzlin is now the controlling shareholder in the company after Mr. Khodorkovsky transferred his stake in January. Leonid Nevzlin estimates his net worth in the "hundreds of millions, but not billions" of dollars. "We're trying to learn to live without the pipeline of oil," he said of himself and other shareholders. Nevzlin said the Russian judicial system "is using illegal methods and taking hostages" among former Yukos employees. A British judge on Friday rejected Russian government claims seeking the extradition of a Yukos accountant and a lawyer who fled to London. In the interview Nevzlin for the first time publicly made the accusation that there was an element of anti-Semitism behind the Kremlin's campaign against him and other Yukos executives, some of whom are also Jewish. He joined a number of prominent Russian billionaires who have either fled to or established dual citizenship in Israel, including Vladimir Gusinsky, now a media tycoon. "Putin is surrounded by anti-Semites," he said, "from the prosecutors all the way to the FSB," the successor intelligence agency to the KGB. Nevzlin said he intended to sue in European and U.S. courts on behalf of other shareholders over the seizure of Yukos' assets. "When we start shaping the new board of directors, we will represent the interests of all shareholders," he said, hinting that Western pension funds and other foreign investors may sit on the new board. He declined to identify any candidates. Property rights in Russia "do not exist in the western sense," he said, adding, "All kinds of rights in Russia are selective." He said he would also finance political opposition candidates running in the 2008 presidential elections, including the chess champion Garry Kasparov and former Prime Minister Mikhail Kazyanov. "There is the possibility of a liberal, democratic structure in Russia," he said. "But it will take tremendous work to create it, and only if the will of the electorate coincides."