Russian Ex-Oligarch: Businessmen Are Serfs in Russia

A former close associate of Vladimir Putin has said Russian businessmen were all now “serfs” who belonged to the president, with none of the country’s companies beyond his reach. Sergei Pugachev, who was once so close to Mr Putin that he was known as the “Kremlin’s banker”, made the comments in his first interview since the state seized his multibillion-dollar ship building empire in 2012. Speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Pugachev warned that there were no longer any “untouchables” in a Russian business landscape increasingly dominated by Mr Putin. The Russian economy, he argued, had been transformed into a feudal system where businessmen were only nominal owners of their assets. “Today in Russia there is no private property. There are only serfs who belong to Putin,” he said.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ab541ee8-4e4c-11e4-bfda-00144feab7de.html#axzz3FemCqhxH