‘Mayor is richest Russian official’

The controversial mayor of Moscow,savaged over his handling of Russia's wildfire crisis...

The controversial mayor of Moscow,savaged over his handling of Russia’s wildfire crisis,has the highest family income of any Russian state official,according to a new rating published today.

Yuri Luzhkov topped the list with a family income of 30.9 billion rubles (USD one billion) last year,the Russian edition of Forbes magazine said,despite a relatively modest declared income in 2009 of 7.98 million rubles (USD 2,59,000 dollars).

A populist figure in a flat cap with a hobby of beekeeping,Luzhkov has led Moscow for 18 years.

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Now 73,with his current term ending next year,he has faced a squall of criticism over his failure to return promptly from holiday this month to deal with the wildfires in the Moscow region that left an acrid smog over the city.

Luzhkov initially refused to return from holiday,with his aides earning ridicule in the tabloid press by denying there was any crisis in the city.

When he finally did show up a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies: “But of course this should have happened earlier…. The absence of the mayor clearly did not help the necessary decisions being made on time,without delays.”

Luzhkov’s wife,Yelena Baturina,heads a construction and real estate empire and is listed by Forbes as Russia’s richest woman with an estimated fortune of USD 2.9 billion.

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The Luzhkov family has a history of enmity with Forbes Russia — Baturina’s company won libel action against the magazine over a feature about how she acquired her wealth published in 2006.

The Forbes Russia rating,published in the September issue of the magazine,is the first to focus on civil servants,lawmakers,and the heads of state corporations.

President Dmitry Medvedev last year ordered officials to declare both their own incomes and property and those of their spouses in a new move to crack down on corruption.