Moscow: It seems economic crisis is weighing really heavy on Russia's biggest businessman, who has been asked to return "moral debts" to help the countrymen survive the blows of recession. This unique demand has been put forward by the President of Russia, Medvedev.
"Nowhere in the world perhaps has the development of entrepreneurship in recent times happened as quickly as in our country. People simply have been getting very rich in a very short time," Medvedev said in an interview on national television on March 15.
"Now it is time pay off debts, moral debts because the crisis is a test of maturity," he said.
Medvedev said the current crisis, Russia's worst economic collapse in a decade, is the time for the top-notch businessmen to embrace social responsibility and put interests of their employees before their own.
"If a person has really become a genuine businessman he can appreciate his employees," he said in comments released by the presidential administration.
"He will perhaps try to put off part of his proposals, part of his ideas or personal consumption, save his staff, pay them salaries, save what he's been doing in recent years."
Many of Russia's richest people earned fortunes through controversial loans-for-shares privatisations in the 1990s and an economic bonanza fueled by high oil and gas prices gave birth to yet more tycoons.