IT’S ONLY WORDS…

When it comes to such promises, however, Russian politicos, tend to have… let’s call it a credibility problem. Take, for example, Anatoly Chubais, the reform icon who was tapped earlier this year by President Yeltsin to be Russia’s liaison with Western lenders. In an interview published last week in Kommersant Daily, Chubais, who negotiated the IMF loan in July, let it slip that Russia last spring lied to the West about its true financial state in order to secure the multi-billion-dollar loan and to prevent an economic collapse. Russia, he said, “conned” the international community, but added that it was justified. The first tranche of the IMF loan, worth US$4.8 billion, disappeared in a matter of weeks last summer after the government, then headed by Sergei Kirienko, mounted a doomed effort to prop up the ruble. With friends like these…