Lonely at the Top for Russia's Billionaires

[dArKeR]

In this Russian election year, there's no more inviting target.


Disdained as "oligarchs" by politicians across the political spectrum, Russia's small class of big-business billionaires contains the most reliably unpopular figures in public life. More than 70 percent of people polled say they dislike them, and nearly 60 percent say they are not good for Russia.

Since the summer, Russian law-enforcement agencies have targeted the biggest private business of all, oil giant Yukos. A series of investigations have landed one billionaire in jail, led to charges last week against a second and raised speculation that Yukos chairman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, could be next.

While Western governments and stock market analysts fret that the attack on Yukos could harm Russia's economy, the election-year investigations have been sending a different message to voters. For them, according to opinion polls and political analysts, oligarch-bashing is simply good politics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2704-2003Oct22.html

[emad]

1. Hard to sympathise with some of the dumbasses like

Roman Abramovich, who has made spectacular effort to court UK publicity by pouring some $200 million into the UK's Chelsea Football Club.

The sustained campaign of sanitisation of some of these Russian mafia thugs during the last three years is typical of the Bush 1 masterplan to continue covering up cold war atrocities by promoting plausible post-USSR scenarios with supposedly 'clean' players in the energy market.

They're all rent boys for the oil industry

[LeftistGorilla]

2. cry baby billionaires...

and I hate chelsea too...