RUSSIA: President Vladimir Putin flagged a crackdown on corruption yesterday as a key plank in his campaign to win a second term as Russian leader in March's elections, with a statement to send another chill through the cowed ranks of the country's tycoons.
A senior financial investigator reinforced Mr Putin's promise by pledging a series of investigations into the murky privatisations of the 1990s that created the super-rich so-called oligarchs, such as jailed oil baron Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man.
Mr Khodorkovsky's arrest at gunpoint last October marked an escalation in a fight between Russian magnates and prosecutors backed by Mr Putin's former KGB colleagues, who have gained great political power since he became president in 2000.
"We need accurate and realistic measures to fight and, above all, prevent corruption," Mr Putin told cabinet ministers at the first meeting of a presidential council to combat corruption.
"Corruption is demoralising society," he said.
"The authorities have often loudly proclaimed the need to fight corruption created entire programmes for it and taken some pretty strong steps but, unfortunately, they haven't had much effect."
He named Prime Minister Mr Mikhail Kasyanov as head of the new council, hours after the pro-business head of government was quoted as criticising law enforcers for their campaign against Russia's biggest businessmen.
Investigators accuse Yukos - the oil giant formerly owned by Mr Khodorkovsky - of avoiding payment of billions of dollars in tax by misusing certain Russian regions where "offshore" tax rules apply.
"If legal methods to optimise tax dues are declared illegal retrospectively, in my view that is wrong," Mr Kasyanov told the Vedomosti newspaper.
Pro-Kremlin parties exploited widespread loathing of Russia's oligarchs to dominate last month's parliamentary elections. Mr Putin's supporters now control more than two-thirds of the legislature, and he faces little opposition in the presidential poll.