RUSSIA - Profile - Yuri Luzhkov.

The mayor of Moscow, Luzhkov, 63, is very popular as he has made the capital a real economic power centre by generating big money from the city's tax base and from leasing real estate. He has repaired Moscow pot-holes, built some new gold-domed churches, parks and housing and has provided a municipal golf course. In the process he has brought Moscow's unemployment down considerably and made the city more livable.

Luzhkov has won a landslide victories in the municipal elections. Considered the undisputed "king of Moscow", the mayor in 1996 was such a strong favourite that he had to help opposing candidates to secure signatures or he would have had no opponents, which would have made his own candidature invalid under Russian law.

Luzhkov has spent his whole political career in Moscow. When Yeltsin became head of the powerful Moscow Communist Party machine in 1987, he asked Luzhkov to join his executive. Despite Yeltsin's later sacking as mayor, Luzhkov survived and in June 1991 was elected as deputy mayor on Gavril Popov's reformist ticket. A year later Popov resigned and Luzhkov took the top post. Although the city council told him to stand for election, Yeltsin as president made him mayor by decree.

Luzhkov opposed hard-hitting reforms, particularly privatisations, and won a compromise for Moscow. That greatly strengthened the city authorities' discretionary powers over privatisation. However, Luzhkov did not have things all his own way. He was accused of corruption and favouritism, notably towards the big banking groups. He once was particularly close to Vladimir Gusinsky, the Jewish president of Most Group who now lives in Gibralta (see OMT). In 1994 and 1995, Luzhkov was tipped as a possible rival to Yeltsin for the presidency and relations with the Kremlin cooled, culminating in a raid by presidential security service officials on Gusinsky's Most Bank which was closely linked to Moscow City Hall. Observers said the spectacular raid was a warning not to overstep the mark. Luzhkov and Yeltsin quickly mended fences and the former was very public in his support for Yeltsin's 1996 re-election campaign.

A small rounded man, Luzhkov has a reputation for getting things done. He had his education in Moscow, after which he rose up in the ministry of chemical industries to become head of its scientific department. At the same time he was a loyal party man, having joined the Communist Party in 1968 and remained in it until it was banned after the failed coup of August 1991. His dedication in 1975 earned him a place in the Moscow Soviet, equivalent to the city council now.

Moscow's petroleum interests include the Central Fuel Co. (CFC), whose CEO and supervisory board chairman is former energy minister and ex-Tyumen governor Yuri Shafranik. Dismissed from CFC in November 1999 and replaced by Ernest Bakirov, president of Moscow Oil Co. (MOC) which took over CFC, Shafranik was reinstated as CFC chairman and CEO in the following month at the behest of Luzhkov and MOC's takeover was cancelled. The predominantly private MOC was set up in early 1999 with Luzhkov's backing and he was elected chairman of its supervisory board in March that year. The Moscow region is the best market for oil products in Russia, having almost 1,850 gasoline retail outlets which are mostly privately owned. CFC has many such outlets as well as the 242,000 b/d Moscow refinery, and its upstream assets include a unit producing 24,000 b/d. CFC, with more than 1.5 bn barrels of oil reserves, is also branching out of Russia. It has a stake in Azerbaijan's offshore Inam block.