State-owned Development Bank, also known as VEB, has been entrusted by the Kremlin to distribute a $50 billion rescue package

Russian billionaires became fabulously rich in the 1990s during the so-called loan-for-shares schemes when they lent money to the state and got stakes in prized firms as collateral. The state never paid back the loans, allowing future tycoons to become owners at a fraction of the real value."Today, it's almost like a reversal of the shares-for-loans scheme," said Kavanagh at UralSib.The idea of another round of property nationalization or redistribution now seems appealing even to some rich.
"Why did Deripaska get the money? I don't understand why?" said banker Alexander Lebedev, a former Soviet spy who was once stationed in London at the Soviet Embassy.
State-owned Development Bank, also known as VEB, has been entrusted by the Kremlin to distribute a $50 billion rescue package, helping Russian companies to refinance a total of $120 billion of Western loans by the end of 2009.The first round of payouts has already been approved.VEB disbursed $2 billion to Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group to help it pay back a loan to Deutsche Bank and rescue Alfa's 44 percent stake in Russia's No. 2 mobile phone firm, Vimpelcom, which was used as collateral with the bank.Fridman joined Oleg Deripaska, Russia's richest man, who this week became the first billionaire to get state support in refinancing his foreign debts.VEB has said no company would get more than $2.5 billion, but Deripaska's aluminum major, United Company RUSAL, received $4.5 billion to pay back debt to foreign banks, which it amassed to buy 25 percent in mining giant Norilsk Nickel."It is possible that neither Alfa nor UC RUSAL will find fresh cash to repay the VEB loans, and the state could eventually get the stakes in both Norilsk Nickel and Vimpelcom," analysts from UniCredit Aton said in a note.