Russia not to revise privatisation, pledges Putin

Russian privatisation revising is out of the question, said President Vladimir Putin, as on several previous occasions.

Whatever complications and contradictions privatisation might have involved, there is no way back, he pointed out to a news conference in Rome.

"People often say that the laws were badly entangled in Russia with privatisation on, so let bygones be bygones, even if there were whatever trespasses - let us not trouble the 145 million Russians whom the matter does not concern.

"That is no way to reason. It is absolutely inadmissible in any democratic country. First, the law demands compliance with, even if it is entangled. Attention must focus on instances of crimes against the personality committed as government property was sliced out. Even murders accompanied privatisation, and some people now in custody are suspected of murder. Second, everyone is to comply with the present-day acting legislation, while the suspects are charged with quite recent trespasses, of 1999 and 2000. All that has no bearing at all on privatisation," Mr Putin emphatically remarked.