Tycoons seize opportunity to clean up image

Russia's oligarchs are using the Beslan massacre to ingratiate themselves with the Kremlin, writes Daniel McLaughlin.

Russia's oligarchs are using the Beslan massacre to ingratiate themselves with the Kremlin, writes Daniel McLaughlin.

One group reviled by most Russians is parading its patriotism and compassion by lambasting another national pariah, as the country's so-called oligarchs rip into Chechnya's rebels following the bloody siege in Beslan.

The tycoons who emerged from the crony capitalism of 1990s Russia have made well-publicised donations to help victims, statements condemning the hostage-takers and even payments to a newspaper to run paeans to the security forces.

It is unusual activity for men who Russians associate more closely with a mania for secrecy and a talent for stashing millions of dollars in Swiss and Cypriot bank accounts.

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Critics attribute it to a pervasive fear that has chilled the billionaires' ranks since the arrest on fraud charges last October of Russia's richest man, Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the multi-billion-dollar tax claim that has driven his Yukos oil firm to the brink of bankruptcy.

After a spasm of outrage as they digested news of his arrest - at gunpoint by masked agents when his private jet landed at a Siberian airfield - his fellow oligarchs have slunk back into the shadows, usually only emerging to admit bashfully to an act of benevolence or patriotism - preferably both.

They have heeded Kremlin implied criticism of Mr Khodorkovsky for not spending enough on social projects, and remember the accusations of treachery aimed at Mr Roman Abramovich when he started dispensing his considerable largesse at Chelsea Football Club rather than at home.

They still have a major image problem with most Russians however, a decade after making a killing from rigged privatisations while ordinary people barely scraped by and periodically lost all their savings when oligarch-owned banks went bust.

Among others, the electricity firm run by Mr Anatoly Chubais - a true hate figure for many Russians as the public face of privatisation - created a fund for the relatives of victims of the Beslan siege and other recent terror attacks blamed on Chechen separatists.

It also made a separate donation to the families of special forces troops killed or injured in Beslan. The TNK-BP oil firm, whose Russian arm is run by two media-shy oligarchs, announced the donation of $250,000 (€205,000) of medical equipment to the hospital in the town.

Even Mr Khodorkovsky himself, court case not withstanding, released a statement from his prison cell.

"One person's hatred plus the indifference of others - that is what blows up apartment buildings, schools, and aeroplanes, and maims our children. No security service in the world would be able to protect an indifferent people or an indifferent society," Mr Khodorkovsky wrote.

An oligarch-owned newspaper sacked its editor after he published graphic pictures of the Beslan siege and criticised officials for lying about the number of hostages involved.

According to Ms Yulia Latynina, a prominent liberal commentator, the oligarchs are willing to go even further to appease Russia's resurgent security services - which are seen driving the attack on Mr Khodorkovsky - and their most powerful alumnus, former KGB spy President Vladimir Putin.

"In a certain newspaper office I was shown a remarkable document. A major oligarchic organisation was offering to pay to have a series of articles published about the Beslan tragedy," she wrote this week, as the security forces faced probing questions about their bungled handling of the stand off and its chaotic climax.

"The oligarchs wanted to put statements like the following into print: 'All of those who took part in these tragic events are heroes. Russia hasn't witnessed heroism like this in a long time. For years the politicians have accused them of the seven deadly sins... But these men did not break; they did not fall'.

"They're all heroes, you see?" she said of the Kremlin's refusal to accept criticism of the security forces or of its own hardline policy on Chechnya. "And anyone who says differently is an accomplice in terror."