He was the linchpin. He controlled which foreign companies could register their offices and receive offices. ...[A]ll this property was Soviet proper… - Karen Dawisha

Gref and Kudrin appeared... drawn to Putin... because of his... liberal economic policies and... ability to... get things done in St. Petersburg... when most... were paralyzed by the "alegal" political situation and the total eruption of criminal activity at all levels.

[F]ly-by-night companies were set up. Many of his friends... still around today, were behind those companies. The goods went out, and incomplete or no shipment came back. So millions... were made just in that episode alone.

Smirnov met Putin in 1990 in Germany... He... headed one of the companies... in the [early 1990s] food scandal... millions being stolen; [beginning in 1994] he and Putin sat... on the board of the... SPAG... accused of laundering money for Russian and Columbian organized crime; and he signed over a monopoly position to the Petersburg Fuel Company, which he co-owned with Barsukov-Kumarin. ...Putin ...appointed Smirnov head of Tekhsnabeksport, one of the world’s largest suppliers of nuclear goods and services to foreign governments...