Page "Russian oligarchs" Paragraph 5

Post-Soviet business oligarchs include relatives or close associates of government officials, even government officials themselves, as well as criminal bosses who achieved vast wealth by acquiring state assets very cheaply ( or for free ) during the privatization process controlled by the Yeltsin government.

Specific accusations of corruption are often leveled at Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar, two of the ' Young Reformers ' chiefly responsible for Russian privatization in the early 1990s.

According to David Satter, author of Darkness at Dawn, " what drove the process was not the determination to create a system based on universal values but rather the will to introduce a system of private ownership, which, in the absence of law, opened the way for the criminal pursuit of money and power.

" In some cases, outright criminal groups in order to avoid attention assign front men to serve as executives and / or ' legal ' owners of the companies they control.