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RUSSIA'S UES CEO: YUKOS CASE UNDERMINED RUSSIA'S INVESTMENT CREDIBILITY

MOSCOW, April 21 (RIA Novosti) - Anatoly Chubais, CEO of Russia's UES (Unified Energy Systems), believes that foreign investors show interest in Russia.

This was the main idea of his remarks published today in the Izvestia newspaper.

At the same time, Chubais added that investors were still worried about the Yukos case.

"I've just returned from the US where I held a road-show, i.e. fifteen meetings a day with potential partners and investors. The first question that 80% of them asked me was about Yukos and Khodorkovsky. It goes without saying that the whole story heavily undermined investors' confidence in Russia," said Chubais.

However, the authorities' policy has been making rather positive signals of late.

"The reduced limitation period on privatization deals, tougher regulation of tax bodies' authority, the president's meeting with businessmen - all these are positive indicators," said Chubais.

Nonetheless, he believes that the positive signals have not outstripped the negative aftertaste yet. "But it is common for the investment community to forget quickly about the bad when it sees a consistent positive policy of the authorities and, most importantly, good prospects.

According to Chubais, there was no point in the Yukos case economically speaking, and it was nothing but detrimental for the economy."

"In this sense, the Yukos story has a far broader meaning. What worries Western investors is the disregard for the interests of minority shareholders who lost huge amounts of money due to the Yukos case.

Western businessmen are hardly concerned whether a country is a democracy or not, whereas lost profits are already a serious reason," Chubais said.

As for the "colored" revolutions in the CIS countries, Chubais said: "Fortunately, a revolutionary scenario is virtually unrealistic for Russia."