MOSCOW, June 22 (RIA Novosti) – The head of Russia’s second-largest bank, the state-owned VTB, spoke Friday against an amnesty for jailed entrepreneurs backed by President Vladimir Putin.
“I have never met anyone who was unlawfully jailed for economic crimes,” Andrei Kostin told Dozhd television channel.
Russia needs to tighten economic legislation, not soften it, Kostin said. He added an amnesty would do nothing to improve Russian investment climate.
Putin backed on Friday the proposal to amnesty thousands of jailed Russian entrepreneurs, urging the parliament to pass a law on it before August.
Up to 10,000 people may be released from prisons, and several times as many have ongoing criminal cases against them closed, Russian business ombudsman Boris Titov said Friday. He said last month, when he first pitched the idea of an amnesty, that up to 110,000 jailed businessmen may be granted parole.
About 3 million businessmen were convicted of various crimes in Russia over the past decade, according to governmental statistics from last year. Many representatives of the entrepreneurial community have said criminal persecution in Russia is routinely abused for extortion or as an illegal means of resolving business disputes.
Russia ranked 112th of 185 economies in the 2013 Doing Business report by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation.
