Denis Grishkin / Vedomosti

Vekselberg’s assets include a stake in Swiss tech conglomerate Oerlikon.

President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that he appointed billionaire Viktor Vekselberg as a chairman of the Russian section of the coordination council to oversee the creation of the Skolkovo innovation center.

The plan, which the Kremlin has pushed as its answer to Silicon Valley, has become a key point in Medvedev's program to diversify the economy through investment in innovation.

"Certain consultations regarding who exactly could handle such a job have been held. I've made a decision that Viktor Feliksovich Vekselberg will chair the Russian part of the coordination body we'll create," Medvedev said at the meeting of his commission to modernize the economy, held in the Siberian oil town of Khanty-Mansiisk.

The announcement came as Vekselberg, who was visiting the region with Medvedev and other business leaders, said TNK-BP planned to sell its stake in the Kovykta gas field to state-owned Rosneftegaz for $700 million to $900 million by the end of this year.

The decision ends a decade-long battle for control of the asset, which Gazprom had been seeking to acquire. 

To work effectively, the new innovation center in Skolkovo needs assets, but it also needs a distinct administration system, "which largely depends on us," Medvedev said, according to a transcript of comments posted on the Kremlin web site.

"We've started all this not for the sake of building a certain number of cottages or creating normal production conditions, laboratories there. That's all important, that all is infrastructure. The main thing is that people show up there," he said.

"The new technologies that we create are not toys for eggheads, they're something else entirely. They'll help cut costs, raise enterprises' revenue, improve labor conditions and the environment," Medvedev said, adding that they would thereby improve the quality of life for all Russians, he said.

Given the scale of the project, Russian businessmen must be interested in creating the innovation center no less than the government, Medvedev said.

He did not specify why he selected Vekselberg, who has major holdings in Russia's power and energy sectors as well as a minority stake in United Company RusAl. The billionaire's holding company, Renova Group, is also the largest shareholder of Swiss technology conglomerate Oerlikon.

Vekselberg likely got the nod because of his reputation as an investor in technologies, particularly in Europe, said Sergei Guriev, rector at the New Economic School.

Among the other candidates for the position were Onexim Group chief Mikhail Prokhorov and Alfa Group chairman Mikhail Fridman, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Monday.

"Apparently, Viktor Vekselberg has provided the most promising concept for this research center's development," Guriev said, adding that Oerlikon might be among the foreign firms invited to join the innovation center.

"I'm sure that the question is not only Oerlikon, though. It's also a matter of real foreign business, including high-tech U.S. and European companies that don't want to be with Vekselberg now but that will want to invest in Russia," Guriev told The Moscow Times.

Vekselberg, 52, came in at No. 113 in Forbes magazine's worldwide ranking of billionaires earlier this month, with an estimated fortune of $6.4 billion. He is also the world's largest private collector of Faberge eggs, which he has repatriated to Russia.

Vekselberg also financed the return of 18 Orthodox church bells that had been at Harvard University since the Soviet government tried to sell them as scrap medal in 1930, ending a long-running dispute over their ownership.

The list of candidates to chair the international segment of the innovation center's coordination commission will be created in the next month or two, Vekselberg said.

"There's no candidate as of today, but there's an understanding that we want to see a competent person with experience commercializing innovations," he told reporters.

Medvedev repeated a pledge Tuesday to attract well-known scientists to work in the innovation hub, which the Kremlin hopes will help diversify Russia's economy away from raw materials.

Before inviting scientists to take part, the commission must find people who would solve organizational issues, Vekselberg said, adding that the creation of the legal framework for the project was also crucial.

"If we need to make legislative changes, we'll pass them," Medvedev said, ordering the government to propose possible options.  

Medvedev said Friday that the centrally planned attempt to re-create California's innovation hub, Silicon Valley, would be built in the Moscow region town of Skolkovo. The selection, which would put it near the Skolkovo business school, raised some eyebrows for eschewing existing technology parks to construct a new supermodern town from scratch.

The new town will have focus on Medvedev's five priorities for modernization: energy, information technology, telecoms, biotechnology and nuclear technology. The project will be financed in part by dipping into the government's 10 billion ruble ($340 million) modernization and innovation budget, Vladislav Surkov, first deputy head of the Kremlin administration, said Friday.

Renova could not be reached for comment Tuesday.