A Kommersant interview of little-known businessman Oleg Shvartsman has caused a real storm in Russian business.
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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Shvartsman's Political Career Damaged after Kommersant Interview
// Business community reacts to Oleg Shvartsman’s candid interview
Businessman Oleg Shvartsman’s interview in Kommersant on Friday has caused a storm in the Russian-speaking part of the Internet. It has taken its toll on Mr. Shvatsman’s political career and may affect his business, according to analysts. His business partners, party mates and Russian tycoons who were mentioned in the interview, Alisher Usmanov, Anatoly Chubais and Farkhad Akhmedov, came out with comments on Mr. Shvartsman’s controversial confessions.
By Friday afternoon Oleg Shvartsman’s interview was in top 3 most-discussed topics in Yandex.blogs.ru. But the popularity did him no good. Russian state arms exporter, for example, said in a statement that it “has never had or plan to establish any relations with Social Investments Corporation or with FinansGroup and, consequently, has not given any powers to the abovementioned organizations to act on the behalf of Rosoboronexport.” Israel-based financial group Tamir Fishman said in a press release: “The only thing that links Tamir Fishman, the Fund and Mr. Shvartsman is his minority stake in the company controlled by Tamir Fishman Capital Fund.” Tamir Fishmann added that it “has no relation to the statements attributed to Mr. Shvartsman”. One of the most common reactions to Oleg Shvartsman’s Kommersant interview is a mixture of surprise and admission that the things he said are not that unreal.
Head of RAO UES of Russia Anatoly Chubais made it quite clear in his comment: “Intentionally or not, Mr. Shvartsman told the truth. It is the truth about unavoidable diseases of such type of social and political systems as ‘sovereign democracy’. These are not local and occasional things but they are deep rooted both on the regional and federal levels. What is more, the fact that Mr. Shvartsman’s confessions were published in Kommersant shows that everything is not lost. It’s very important how both the society and authorities are going to react to them.”
First Deputy CEO of Alfa Bank Oleg Sysuev described the interview as “very serious, truthful and scary”. Quoting President Vladimir Putin he said that “there are lots of idiots who want to rub shoulders with United Russia – and in this case – to do good turns to those in power”.
Senator Farkhad Akhmedov, co-owner of Nortgaz, said he was not surprised about the content of the interview. “It’s just an article,” he said. “He merely voiced something that everyone suspected.” But he described Mr. Shvartsman in blunter terms calling his methods “fascist” and state socialism “utopia”. “People like Shvartsman must be snubbed out of business community,” he said. Mr. Akhmedov promised to ask the Prosecutor’s Office to “probe into the circumstances of the case” because if “businessmen are stuck in their holes, there will be as many Shvartsmans as snow in the Arctic”.
Not only has Mr. Shvartsman’s reputation suffered but his political career has been badly damaged as well. Head of the Federal Politician Council of the Civil Force party Alexander Ryavkin sacked Oleg Shvartsman from the party’s supreme council following a request by party leader Mikhail Borshchevsky. Mr. Barshchevsky said in an interview with Kommersant that they had no idea of Mr. Shvartsman’s dubious dealings. But former member of the party’s Political Council Maria Arbatova told Kommersant that Mr. Shvartsman had come out with similar statements several months before. Anatoly Chubais, meanwhile, believes that Mr. Shvartsman’s party should not have shown him the door. “At least there was one “honest man’ in the Civil Force,” he said.
Member of the board of Russian Venture Company Konstantin Remchukov said in an interview with the Ekho Moskvy radio station that his company may decide to review the decision to provide a 980 million loan to Finans Trust. He said Mr. Shvartsman’s company had filed all the documents one day after the deadline.
Kommersant’s editorial office also wanted to know an opinion of its major shareholder, Metalloinvest holding owner Alisher Usmanov. “My stance has always been not to interfere with the staff’s work and all the more in the choice of features or interview,” he told Kommersant. “I think that it’s not journalists’ fault. Their job is to do research to find information that would be interesting to the readership even if it has an air of something too sensational about it. If there are no other reasons why this piece was run at that time and in that size, I’m going to have nothing against Kommersant’s staff. As for the interviewee, I know nothing about this person and I can’t and don’t want to comment on what he said before all this information is closely examined and facts are checked.”
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 03, 2007
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