(Adds comments on crisis, presidential elections)
BONN, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Russian reformer Boris Nemtsov, who
lost his government job last weekend, on Tuesday blamed acting
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin for Russia's financial
crisis.
Nemtsov told a German news magazine that outgoing prime
minister Sergei Kiriyenko's four-month government had from the
outset been "a hostage" of the profligate borrowing of
Chernomyrdin's previous administration.
"Chernomyrdin never even tried to cut spending. He used
credits like a drug," Nemtsov told the news weekly Stern. "A
huge pyramid of debt built up. Sooner or later either the
country had to explode or the financial system had to collapse."
Russian President Boris Yeltsin turned on Sunday to
Chernomyrdin, who served him for five years until last March,
after making Kiriyenko the scapegoat for an effective rouble
devaluation and the imposition of a debt moratorium.
Nemtsov, the 38-year-old former governor of Nizhny Novgorod,
said that Chernomyrdin, 60, was the wrong man to put Russia back
on track.
"If Chernomyrdin says now that he can save the country, it
is just a joke," he told Stern in an interview released ahead of
publication on Thursday.
Nemtsov defended the record of the short-lived Kiriyenko
government, saying it had been right to throw money at the
defence of the rouble.
"If we hadn't tried everything, experts throughout the world
would have said 'you gave up too easily'," he said. "Actually it
didn't go too badly. There was no panic, no collapse."
Nemtsov pointed out that the rouble had actually fallen only
around 10 percent in value following the de facto devaluation at
the start of last week. He said many banks would go bust, but
healthy ones should survive.
He said the three-month partial debt moratorium would help
the government to clear a wages backlog, but more needed to be
done to fight systemic tax evasion in Russia.
"I believe we should simply lock up 10 high-profile tax
evaders. Everyone would understand that," Nemtsov said, pointing
his finger at Russia's powerful finance elite.
"The oligarchs bought assets at rock-bottom prices under
Chernomyrdin. If they don't pay any taxes now we should break up
their empires."
Nemtsov also said he did not believe that Yeltsin would seek
a third term in presidential elections in 2000.
He said either Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov or Krasnoyarsk
regional governor Alexander Lebed would win power, but did not
comment on whether he himself would seek the office.
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