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Putin's economic adviser abruptly resigns
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-28 08:46
An outspoken economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin announced
Tuesday that he was resigning, saying he could no longer work in a government
that had done away with political freedoms. The government later said Putin
signed a decree dismissing him.
Andrei Illarionov, the lone dissenter in a Kremlin dominated by Putin's
fellow KGB veterans, was stripped of his duties as envoy to the Group of Eight
leading industrialized nations earlier this year. However, he had remained
Putin's economic adviser.
Illarionov made the move after harshly criticizing the Kremlin's course last
week, when he said that political freedom in Russia has steadily declined and
that government-controlled corporations have stifled competition and ignored
public interests.
"It is one thing to work in a partly free country, which Russia was six years
ago. It is quite another when the country has ceased to be politically free," he
said Tuesday, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right,
speaks with his top economic adviser Andrei Illarionov in the
Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, April 9, 2004.
[AP/file] | Illarionov, who has also criticized
what he says is a return to inefficient state control of the economy, complained
that he was no longer able to speak his mind.
"I considered it important to remain here at this post as long as I had the
possibility to do something, including speaking out," he said, according to
ITAR-Tass. "Until recently, no one put any restrictions on me expressing my
point of view. Now the situation has changed."
Illarionov, 44, a liberal economist, had worked in the Russian government in
the 1990s and became Putin's adviser in 2000.
Several hours after Illarionov spoke, Putin's press service said the
president signed a decree relieving the adviser of his duties.
Viktor Chernomyrdin, a longtime Russian prime minister who is now ambassador
to Ukraine, said Illarionov's criticism of the government was unfounded.
"There was so much malice in him, he was being overly negative," Chernomyrdin
said, according to the Interfax news agency. "It was a mistake to keep him in
the Kremlin for so long."
But Yevgeny Ikhlov, who leads the group For Human Rights, described
Illarionov as "the last liberal in the government" who dared to expose the
authorities' crackdown on political freedoms.
Illarionov increasingly fell out of favor after he became a vocal critic of
moves to restore state control over the strategic energy sector, in particular
lambasting the effective nationalization of the Yukos oil empire of jailed
tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2004 as the "swindle of the year."
Illarionov said he had a number of reasons for his decision to resign but
said that his main concern was the development of an increasingly
state-controlled economy, with major public companies run by self-interested
bureaucrats.
"Six years ago when I came to this post I dedicated my work to increasing
economic freedoms in Russia. Six years on, the situation has changed radically,"
he said.
"This is a state model with the participation of state corporations, which
although they are public in name and status, are managed above all for their own
personal interests," said Illarionov.
Russia's biggest carmaker Avtovaz on Thursday elected a new board with top
managers representing the state, cementing control of a key company after
parallel moves to increase the state's hold on the energy sector.
Under Putin, Russia has moved to snap up chunks of the strategically
important oil sector and the state now controls around 30 percent of the
national oil industry.
Last December the biggest oil fields of Yukos 錕斤拷 once Russia's No.1 producer 錕斤拷
were transferred to the state to reclaim billions in disputed tax bills. This
year, the giant gas monopoly Gazprom bought the privately held OAO Sibneft oil
company.
Illarionov said last week that after state-owned Rosneft took over OAO Yukos'
main subsidiary, Yuganskneftegaz, the unit's revenues dropped and costs
soared.
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