[1] The scheme helped with "fundraising" for Yeltsin's 1996 reelection campaign and restructuring freshly-sold companies at the same time (in order to outweigh communist sympathizers as one source speculated).
[2][note 1] The scheme was primarily overseen by Anatoly Chubais who was linked to USAID program managed by head of the Harvard Institute for International Development (H.I.I.D).
To make companies whose shares were sold by the government profitable, the new investors sought to restructure them and install a western-style management approach by eliminating communist bureaucracy.
Initially dreamt up by Vladimir Potanin of Oneximbank, this privatization scheme was backed by Chubais but also by Kremlin conservatives like Soskovets, who was the one to get Yeltsin's signature on it.
In 1995, facing severe fiscal deficit and in desperate need of funds for the 1996 presidential elections, the government of Boris Yeltsin adopted a "loans-for-shares" scheme proposed by banker Vladimir Potanin and endorsed by Chubais, then a deputy prime minister, whereby some of the largest state industrial assets (including state-owned shares in Norilsk Nickel, Yukos, Lukoil, Sibneft, Surgutneftegas, Novolipetsk Steel, and Mechel) were leased through auctions for money lent by commercial banks to the government.
Fearing that the population might soon have a change of heart and turn its back on reform, Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, the chief Russian architects of the process, decided to accelerate it, selling off state resources and enterprises at little or no charge.
"Much of the second wave of privatization that did take place—in particular, the "loans-for-shares" scheme, in which major Russian banks obtained shares in firms with strong potential as collateral for loans to the state—turned into a fraudulent shambles, which drew criticism from many" A "less cynical" interpretation was proposed by Professor of political science and international studies, Russell Bova, who offered as an alternative, that Chubais may have been motivated by concerns that privatization would fail, that in the face of mid-1990s economic difficulty, the country might revert towards a Communist resurgence if progress was not maintained, and that in light of these concerns, the long term political goals of democratization and asset distribution from state hands to private ownership might have been deemed more important than possible short term gains from the asset sales: "[I]f that meant undervaluing State assets then so be it".