Berezovsky famously boasted how he was part of a small coterie of so-called oligarchs who owned 50 per cent of Russia's wealth.

Most of Armenia's so-called "oligarchs" (government-connected entrepreneurs who enjoy de facto monopoly on lucrative forms of economic activity) are now affiliated with the RPA.

The so-called oligarchs who dominate the nation's energy, banking, natural resources and media industries are mostly still in place, though they are not quite as swaggering as they used to be.

Menatep, now virtually insolvent, is part of an industrial empire overseen by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of Russia's prominent financiers, or so-called "oligarchs."

Like all the other so-called oligarchs, he made his billions in the dirty plunder of Russia's riches in the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet Union's disintegration.

The central bank's proposed bailout would offer a special deal to bankers, including the so-called oligarchs who frequently built vast financial empires around banks that have since fallen on hard times.

Along with Russia's other so-called oligarchs, Mr. Berezovsky helped finance Mr. Yeltsin's re-election in 1996.

Mr. Putin's strategy toward the so-called oligarchs has been more controversial.

He called one of these so-called oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky, "the Godfather of the Kremlin," in both a magazine article and a book.

So, it is said, do some banks controlled by industrial behemoths - so-called oligarchs - whose businesses benefit from foreign trade and Western credit, such as oil exporters.