# Loans-for-Shares The scheme that made the Russian oligarchs. Facing a fiscal crisis and a 1996 re-election campaign it expected to lose, the Yeltsin government in 1995 pledged controlling stakes in oil, nickel, and metals enterprises as collateral for loans from a handful of politically connected banks, then defaulted — transferring the assets to the lenders at prices far below value. The banks that ran the auctions were frequently the same entities bidding in them. Loans-for-shares is the historical hinge for two later stories. It is the origin of the [[Russian Oligarchy]] as a political class, and it is the legal pretext for its undoing: the wartime seizure campaign analyzed in [[Russian Deprivatization]] rests substantially on prosecutors asking courts to void 1990s privatizations as unlawful, with the Constitutional Court holding in October 2024 that no statute of limitations constrains such claims when brought on anti-corruption grounds. > [!note] Stub > Minimum-viable page created to support the [[Russian Deprivatization Timeline]]. Expand with the individual auctions, the 1996 election bargain, and the Chubais-era reform debate.