Deputy Goes After Kokh, for a Day.

(From The Moscow Times)

A State Duma deputy from Yabloko briefly put his party in the unlikely position of pushing for the revision of privatization results last week by filing a formal request to the Prosecutor General's Office to investigate the privatization of Norilsk Nickel, a core enterprise of Vladimir Potanin's Interros empire.

In a letter filed Thursday, Alexei Melnikov requested that a criminal investigation be reopened against Alfred Kokh, the head of the State Property Committee when Norilsk Nickel was privatized in 1995 and currently the campaign manager for the Union of Right Forces, a party that competes with Yabloko for the support of liberally minded voters.

Even though Melnikov withdrew his request Friday -- the same day it made the front page of the Vedomosti business daily -- observers and party colleagues were left wondering what prompted the attack.

Melnikov has been one of the fiercest defenders of key Yukos shareholder Platon Lebedev, who was arrested in July over an old privatization case. Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, seen as the real target of the case against Lebedev, has funded Yabloko.

Melnikov explained his action by saying he was responding to Kokh's declaration in early August that as head of the election campaign for the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, he planned a determined effort to try to steal votes from Yabloko.

"It was my personal initiative. I did it without a previous agreement with the Yabloko leadership," Melnikov said Friday in an interview.