Vladimir Putin has asked well-known entrepreneur Sergei Pugachev, who is widely regarded as a businessman with close links to the Kremlin, to contact the ruling body of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs to consider what might be done to retrieve Russian capital from offshore zones and reinvest it in the domestic economy.

This is easier said than done: the Russian authorities are in no position to achieve that objective by purely economic methods, something Putin himself as much as admitted when he addressed Wednesday's meeting of the Commerce and Industry Chamber. This being so, Putin hinted that offshore zones could be closed down because that was what the fight against international terrorism required.

But there is yet another method - as could be seen from what a Pugachev aide said after his boss' meeting with the president. According to him, the oligarch would like to take overall responsibility for a government "plan", under which Russian oligarchs could be "amnestied" if they agree to help retrieve Russian money from offshore zones.

In that case, Pugachev would see to it that oligarchs behaved accordingly, and be held accountable to him if they failed to "fulfill" the plan.

Meanwhile, other Russian oligarchs were viewing the situation in an entirely different light. A source well versed in the affairs of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs told Gazeta.Ru that if Pugachev had indeed been appointed "chief of tax amnesty," his mission was bound to fail because the oligarchs simply ignored him.

"Nobody would even talk to him," the source said.