Billionaire Condemns Party He Led as a Kremlin ‘Puppet’

By Ellen Barry and Andrew E. Kramer

The New York Times

MOSCOW — It has been a long time since a Russian billionaire attacked the political system. In the past, it has not ended well.  

On Thursday, Mikhail Prokhorov described Russia's party system as an elaborate sham orchestrated by a “puppet master” within the Kremlin walls. By the time he finished, Mr. Prokhorov seemed to have gambled with the most valuable asset a Russian businessman can have — good relations with the Kremlin and its most important occupant, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. 

Mr. Prokhorov’s comments were prompted by the public meltdown of Right Cause, a pro-business party that was restarted this spring in hopes of winning the loyalty of disgruntled elites. The party had all the hallmarks of “pocket opposition” — Kremlin-sponsored projects that cast themselves as antigovernment but steer clear of challenging Russia’s leaders. 

Until now, Mr. Prokhorov had denied that Right Cause was operating in this way. But the party deteriorated into rancor this week, when party members voted to oust Mr. Prokhorov over his staffing decisions and leadership style. 

Mr. Prokhorov blamed micromanagement from the Kremlin for the debacle. He reserved his harshest words for Vladislav Y. Surkov, the deputy head of the presidential administration.

“I am not willing to take part in this farce,” he told an auditorium full of reporters, calling on his supporters to “leave this puppet Kremlin party.” 

“In this country there is a puppet master who long ago privatized the political system, who has long misinformed the Russian leadership about what is going on in the political system, puts pressure on the media, and tries to manipulate citizens’ opinions,” he said. “This puppet master is named Vladislav Surkov.”

There are precedents for this kind of confrontation. Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon who was financing a true opposition party, is serving a 13-year sentence for embezzlement. Vladimir A. Gusinsky and Boris A. Berezovsky, whose media outlets criticized the government, fled the country to avoid prosecution. 

Mr. Prokhorov is different, having survived a decade under the conditions dictated by Mr. Putin, and his steely calm suggested that he had calculated the risks to their molecular weight. 

Still, talk has centered on what, if anything, Mr. Prokhorov stands to lose. His reputation? His access to Mr. Putin? His $18 billion? 

“For Putin, it would not be a very interesting — or a very useful — situation, to have to send one more oligarch to the gulag on some invented pretext like tax evasion,” a political commentator, Dmitri Oreshkin, told the radio station Ekho Moskvy. “It was based on that understanding, it seems to me, that Mr. Prokhorov uttered such tough words.” 

He added, “This suggests that within the elite, real conflicts are coming to a head that will, one way or another, spill out into public view.” 

The Kremlin offered no official response to Mr. Prokhorov’s comments, but an official from President Dmitri A. Medvedev’s administration described Mr. Prokhorov’s actions with contempt. 

“One can understand the condition of Prokhorov, whose comrades have kicked him out of Right Cause,” the official told the Interfax news agency. “Apparently his strange announcement is connected with his spiritual suffering over his own mistakes and bad luck.” 

It would be wrong to say Mr. Prokhorov has joined the opposition. 

As many commentators noted, his remarks stopped before they became truly dangerous. He did not accuse Mr. Medvedev or Mr. Putin of wrongdoing, instead suggesting that they were being misled by Mr. Surkov, who is considered the main architect of Russia’s “managed democracy.” 

He also hastened to tell reporters that he planned to take his complaints to Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin, rather than encourage his supporters to take to the streets. “What kind of conflict with the Kremlin can it be if he says, ‘I will now go and complain to the czar’?” said Vladimir S. Milov, a former deputy minister of energy and a leader of street protests here that are often broken up by the police. 

Mr. Milov, like many other liberals, said Mr. Prokhorov had proven an ineffective party leader, apparently unable to pivot from his corporate management style. In the process, they said, Mr. Prokhorov squandered a great opportunity. “This is the death of our project,” said Leonid Gozman, a former co-chairman of the Right Cause. 

Mr. Prokhorov is the third oligarch to be affiliated with the Right Cause party and its predecessors. Besides Mr. Khodorkovsky, there was Yevgeny Chichvarkin, the owner of a chain of mobile phone stores, who mulled a leadership role in Right Cause before fleeing to Britain in 2008, claiming political persecution. 

As for Mr. Prokhorov, the retribution, if any, will probably be less severe, several of his former allies said. Irina Y. Yasina, a journalist, said the authorities could effectively remove Mr. Prokhorov from public view by blacklisting him on state television. 

“He can say anything he likes on Echo of Moscow or to the Western press, but he will disappear from the view of the voters,” she said. 

Until this year, Mr. Prokhorov had shown no interest in politics. 

Starting as a jeans trader, he went into banking in the early 1990s and became one of the original oligarchs, the extraordinarily rich industrialists who saw themselves as the modern Carnegies and Rockefellers. Their role shifted after Mr. Putin became president, when those who defied the Kremlin found themselves facing prosecution, often on murky charges of tax evasion or environmental violations. 

Mr. Prokhorov has come under government pressure in the past. 

He was arrested at a French ski resort in 2007 on suspicion of making prostitutes available to guests, and spent several days in jail. Though later cleared of all charges, Mr. Prokhorov immediately began negotiating the sale of the Norilsk nickel mine and smelting complex in Siberia. 

The sale closed, serendipitously, at the peak of the market the next year, meaning Mr. Prokhorov entered the global recession mostly in cash. 

In 2010, he closed a deal that made him majority owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, becoming the first overseas owner of a National Basketball Association franchise. In the same transaction, Mr. Prokhorov acquired 45 percent of Barclays Center, the team’s arena being built near downtown Brooklyn.

Vladimir Solovyov, a talk show host, said Mr. Prokhorov “can stay rich” but might never be admitted back into the circles of real power. “He has cash, he has his basketball team, it’s not like tomorrow he is going to wake up” in prison, Mr. Solovyov said. 

“But I’m not sure that it will be that easy for him to open the door to Putin’s office and discuss future projects,” he said. “That is not going to happen.”