Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin lifted some of the blame from commercial banks for allegedly triggering last month's ruble crash, saying Friday the banks did what could be expected from market players.


"Banks acted as they should have done, adjusting their moves to market laws," Interfax quoted Chernomyrdin as telling heads of 19 major commercial banks at a meeting at the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange.


"But I cannot keep silent about the fact that neither the Finance Ministry nor the Central Bank activated their regulatory levers in proper time. Instead of a smooth take-off, there were jerky shifts in gear," Chernomyrdin said.


Russia's banking system came under fierce attack from a special commission set up to investigate the so-called Black Tuesday crash on Oct.11, when the ruble fell to new lows against the dollar.


The commission included top officials from an array of governing bodies, including the Federal Counterintelligence Service, the Interior Ministry, the State Property Committee, the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank.


In a report to the Security Council, it named several banks that it said had profited most from the ruble's fall. The council in turn recommended that the Central Bank investigate the banks' activities to decide whether they had taken part in "illegal speculation" and could lose their licenses to trade convertible currencies.


Banks have protested the moves, saying the Security Council's recommendations on the ruble crisis contradicted the principles of a market economy.


Earlier this week, the powerful Association of Russian Banks denied that banks were responsible for the crash, saying that they were only acting on behalf of their clients when they placed bids for dollars on Black Tuesday.