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Russian tycoon seeks to reassure U.S. investors
Copyright ) 1998 Nando.net
Copyright ) 1998 Reuters
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (January 10, 1998 11:31 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net)
- Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky said on Saturday foreign investors
were wrong to fear that his country could backslide in its transition
from communism to a market economy.
"I think that not only in America but in Europe and other countries ...
there is no comprehension that the processes that took place in Russia
are irreversible, and that is definitely a barrier to growth in Russia,"
Berezovsky said through a translator at a conference at Harvard
University.
Arguably Russia's most powerful businessman and a former member of
President Boris Yeltsin's Security Council, Berezovsky said the
misunderstanding impeded foreign investment and led to higher risk
premiums.
On the other hand, he said, Russians are wrong to be be suspicious of
foreign capital, fearing that it will leave the country at the first
sign of market trouble and lead to instability.
"In America you are not afraid when the Japanese buy half of Rockefeller
Center," he said.
But while the economic transition putting industries and properties in
private hands is irreversible, the threat of a coup is very real in
Russia, as it is in many countries, Berezovsky said.
"Nobody can be safe from that," he added.
Executives of Russian oil and gas companies told the conference their
firms would have to attract billions of dollars from Western banks,
securities markets and companies to upgrade pipelines and equipment.
"YUKOS is absolutely interested in a strategic partnership with a
foreign company," said Vasily Shakhnovsky, the chairman of YUKOS Oil,
Russia's second-largest oil company.
Shakhnovsky said YUKOS was in talks with Amoco Corp. of the United
States and within the year would form a partnership with a foreign firm.
Berezovsky went out of his way to disagree with billionaire financier
George Soros, who criticized First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais
on Friday at the conference.
Soros said Chubais, who was popular in the West for his leading role in
reforming the economy before he lost much of his power in a Cabinet
shake-up in November, was "tainted" by scandal.
Chubais raised eyebrows by accepting a $90,000 advance for a book from a
publisher linked to a firm that was victorious in two controversial
sales of big state companies last year.
"That Chubais organized the theft of Russian property -- I think that
that is wrong, and it is unjust," Berezovsky said, referring to the
hostile interpretation of the deal. He said Chubais should be commended
for his reforms, which had transferred state property to private hands
without bloodshed.
Berezovsky's defense of Chubais surprised some of the hundreds of people
at the conference. Berezovsky's television and media empire vigorously
attacked Chubais during the scandal, and he played a role in removing
Russia's Finance Ministry from the reformer's control.
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