[jahewson]

Sort of. The Russian government still owns a majority stake in Gazprom and Putin's conquests have been under the banner of moving corrupt private oil companies back into the public hands of Gazprom. So it's really a landgrab by the state, which happens to own a private company. But it was the US's policy of rapid "shock" privatisation which resulted in the unmanaged sell-off of the original state assets in the 1990s and the creation of those oligarchs. It's like selling USPS for $1m - that's not privatisation, it's madness.

[RobertoG]

I agree that Russia is a very extreme case, but it would be difficult to find any place in the world where privatization was not done in the benefit of a few friends of the people in power.

Mexico and Carlos Slim comes to mind for instance.