By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Aug 6 2005 (IPS)

State prosecutors have launched a criminal case against former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov barely six months after he hinted that he might run for presidential elections due 2008.

He has been charged with illegally appropriating a state villa – a 12-hectare property that once belonged to Mikhail Suslov, the leading communist ideologue consulted by former president Leonid Brezhnev. The villa is worth about 28 million dollars.

The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper has reported that Kasyanov also owns another property on a five-hectare plot worth 40 million dollars.

The accusations against Kasyanov were first made by Duma (parliament) deputy Alexander Khinstein, member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. He has long been keen to prove that Kasyanov has a shady financial background and that he abused office when prime minister.

Khinstein says that before Kasyanov left his post he used front firms to buy a state villa in Troytse-Lykovo, the western district of Moscow, at an undervalued price. Investigators from the general prosecutor’s office have seized all documents related to acquisition of the villa.

Kasyanov says he bought both properties legally.

“I have no doubt that the systematic libellous campaign to discredit me, which is based on lies and fact jugglery, is part of the general strategy by those in authority to completely clear the political field,” Kasyanov said in a statement quoted by Russian newspapers.

Kasyanov said Putin’s policies are failing. “The results of his policy are apparent – growing public alienation and uncertainty over the future, slowing economic growth against the backdrop of record high export prices, and Russia’s declining international image,” he said.

“Creating conditions for a real political process whereby the situation in the country would be publicly discussed from various points of view, with freedom to choose among them, this is the goal for which I will continue to work,” Kasyanov added.

Kasyanov also denied other accusations. “I did not establish any commercial organisations or own stock or interest in any companies during my office. The business I have been doing since my resignation strictly complies with the law,” he said in his statement. Under Russian law the prime minister cannot run his own business while in office.

Kasyanov, who was fired by President Putin in February 2004, had often publicly criticised Putin for stifling democratic freedom. He has now been urging the opposition parties to forge an alliance to challenge the pro-Kremlin United Russia party in the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

In the months before he was sacked, he had defended many of the country’s wealthiest businessmen, including Yukos billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was sentenced to nine years in prison in May this year.

The investigation into his dealings is widely seen as a warning to Kasyanov to stay out of politics.

A recent opinion poll suggests that he has lost his political standing in his year outside office. The share of respondents with a positive opinion of Kasyanov has dropped from 25 percent to 13 percent in relation to an earlier survey. The number of those with a negative attitude to him has increased from 10 percent to 13 percent.

The poll by the Public Opinion Foundation involved 1,500 respondents. An additional poll in Moscow involved 600 respondents.

Alexey Makarkin, deputy director- general of the independent Centre of Political Technologies says that while Kasyanov’s rating is low at present, but he has great potential.

“The former prime minister was well known,” he told IPS. “He was regularly on television for four years. Pensions were paid on time and benefits were maintained when he was prime minister.”

Makarkin said Kasyanov will exploit this “achievement” in his election campaign. “Besides, he was a man of business, which suffered terrible fears during the Yukos saga.”

He could also gain support from outside of business, he said. “Officials have been frightened by administrative reforms, the redistribution of power between the centre and the regions, and the forthcoming reform of local government,” he said.

There was no such radical change under Kasyanov, he pointed out. “But he also has weaknesses: he helped strengthen the oligarchic system, which the majority of voters did not approve of.”

But the West sees him as a man with whom it is possible to do business, and one who stands for the market and for democratic change, Makarkin said. “He is also a consensus figure for left-wing forces, which do not view him as a reformer or opportunist. Indeed, he did not advocate a policy of reforms at any cost.”

A Russian expert at the U.S. embassy said the case against Kasyanov could be closely linked to politics. “The Kremlin authorities could have fought abuse of office when Kasyanov was still prime minister. But raising all these questions against him now indicates the removal of a threat that his opposition party poses to the United Russia party,” he told IPS.

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