Gulf Funds Sniff Profit as Putin’s Trash Czar Looks to Lenin - Bloomberg

Gulf Funds Sniff Profit as Putin’s Trash Czar Looks to Lenin - Bloomberg:

After decades of dumping trash in landfills across the country, Russia is plotting a waste-disposal revolution that its “rubbish czar” compares to the Bolshevik transformation of the nation with electricity after the 1917 takeover.

It’s a five-year plan that has some Gulf monarchies sniffing profit for their sovereign wealth funds by investing -- albeit modestly so far -- in a garbage-processing program that Russian officials view as a new lucrative industry for the country.

“This is on the same scale as the electrification of the country that happened under Lenin” during the early Soviet years, said Denis Butsayev, head of the state-run Russian Environmental Operator that’s in charge of most of the project, in an interview in his 51st-floor office overlooking the Moscow City business district. President Vladimir Putin signed an order creating the company in January.