NIZHNY NOVGOROD. Feb 27 (Interfax) - The state should make small businesses free of bureaucratic custody and extortions, candidate for the Russian presidency Dmitry Medvedev said.

"We should take tough measures in order to make small business free of present-day excessive custody," Medvedev said at a meeting with his electorate in Nizhny Novgorod on Wednesday.

"This custody is linked to simple extortion, when dozens of small structure control small business, and it should pay to each of them, rather than to any philanthropic desires," Medvedev said.

If earlier these were illegal exactions, now oversight agencies managed to "adjust" themselves in the right manner and extort money on legal grounds, the candidate for the Russian presidency said.

"One should make various effort to bring our small business out from the shadow [of this bureaucracy]," he said.