Putin Reaches Out to Oligarchs

In an odd Kremlin meeting that was both a scolding and a pep talk, President Vladimir V. Putin tried to patch up relations with Russia’s captains of industry Friday, exhorting them to support his economic program and stop using their media outlets to “politicize” legal actions against big business.

Arrayed around an enormous table in an ornate Kremlin hall, 21 business leaders listened impassively as Putin tried to put to rest concerns that he had launched a war against them. And he reminded them, sternly and somewhat cryptically, that they have both exacerbated the country’s economic problems and influenced the recent realignment of power.

“You must remember that you built this government to a great degree yourselves through political and quasi-political structures you control,” Putin said in remarks broadcast on television. Citing a Russian folk saying, he continued: “It’s no use blaming the mirror [if you have an ugly face]. Let’s talk specifically and openly about what can be done so relations can become completely civilized.”

The president pledged not to reverse Russia’s controversial privatizations of the 1990s, in which valuable state enterprises were sold at fire-sale prices to insiders--rigged auctions in which most of the so-called oligarchs at the table made their fortunes.

In return, Putin asked them to support his plans to streamline taxes and gain Russian admission to the World Trade Organization. And he got that support, as well as an unusual promise to uphold Russia’s “state” interests.

“The most important task for business is to preserve and increase the national wealth, to ensure the improvement of living standards,” the business leaders said in a statement released afterward. “In pursuing their own goals, business must not forget the tasks facing the country as a whole. Companies and banks who uphold the state’s interests while conducting their affairs will enjoy guaranteed support and wide-ranging help from the president.”

Since Putin was inaugurated in May, Russian law enforcement bodies have opened several investigations into oligarchs, fueling speculation that the new president was fulfilling a vague campaign promise to destroy them “as a class.”

But the raids were primarily aimed at two men--Vladimir A. Gusinsky and Vladimir O. Potanin--known to be rivals of other oligarchs with close Kremlin ties: Boris A. Berezovsky and Roman A. Abramovich.

It has not been clear who was behind the raids and what their goal was. But in Russia, where the government exercises enormous direct and indirect influence over investigators and judges, few have doubted that the raids were ordered for political reasons.

The Kremlin meeting Friday shed little new light on the situation. But even if the discussion failed to answer all their questions, it was clear that the oligarchs were at least grateful for the president’s attentions.

“It was said clearly that there would be no revision of the privatization results in this country. And both the president and the government are in effect the guarantors of this,” said Viktor Vekselberg, director of the Siberian-Ural Aluminum Co. “It was also made clear that the recent tendency to use law enforcement bodies to solve situations connected somehow to competition between big businesses is inadmissible.”

This week, investigators unceremoniously dropped the charges against Gusinsky, who runs a media conglomerate that has been especially critical of the Kremlin. He quickly left the country to join his family in Spain. Potanin said Friday that he has received assurances that investigation of his business affairs will be nonpolitical and strictly by the book.

Boris Y. Nemtsov, a pro-market politician who organized the meeting, couldn’t say why three of the country’s most famous oligarchs--Berezovsky, Abramovich and Gusinsky--weren’t invited.

“They were on the list we provided to the Kremlin,” Nemtsov said at a news conference. “But since the meeting took place in the Kremlin, it was the president and his administration who took the decision, and the meeting took place in the format you saw today.”

Despite the oddities, Nemtsov proclaimed the meeting a huge success, saying it marks “the end of the oligarchy.”

“The oligarchs are tired of being oligarchs,” he said. “Everyone agrees that it’s time to play by the same set of rules. This is the real beginning of a new epoch. Business doesn’t want any special treatment. They want to be law-abiding. . . . What business wants is clear, straightforward rules.”

By calling the moguls to the Kremlin, Putin continued a tradition begun by former President Boris N. Yeltsin. But Yeltsin tended to call in a smaller number, about a half-dozen top bankers or the heads of large energy suppliers, who were the big moneymakers at the time.

By contrast, Putin’s list of 21 was a motley group of industrialists; there were only a few bankers.

“The number of large companies has grown, and they have become more diverse,” said Yakov S. Pappe, senior analyst with the Institute for Economic Forecasting. “By inviting more than Yeltsin did, Putin has stressed that he will pay more attention to the new, rising sectors of the economy--computers, telecommunications, mobile communications, the mass media, etc.”

Mikhail G. Delyagin, director of the Institute for Globalization Problems, noted that the conciliatory noises coming out of the Kremlin on Friday contrasted sharply with the implicit threat in the wave of tax raids.

“What Putin and his administration did was a primitive two-step move. First the authorities showed that they were sort of crazy and ready to rub out anyone,” Delyagin said. “Then they backed off and said: ‘Well, maybe we overdid it a bit, but at least you have seen what we are capable of. So why don’t you guys start playing by our rules and pay as much in taxes as we tell you. Or else. . . .’ ”

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Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.