THE OLIGARCHS' lot is not a happy one. They have learned "not to be loved" and feel they are almost being "besieged", Vladimir Potanin, Russia's fifth richest man with a fortune of $944m (pounds 515m) complained yesterday. Mr Potanin, whose company Interros accounts for 1.5 per cent of the country's GDP, was speaking as the preparations were under way to restart the trial of his fellow billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky for alleged financial offences. Mr Khodorkovsky was, in many ways, the author of his own misfortune, Mr Potanin said. The former head of the oil company Yukos had used his commercial wealth to gatecrash the political process, and "no government was going to accept that", Mr Potanin said. "If John Brown from British Petroleum started acting this way in the UK, that would be strange," Mr Potanin, 42, declared at the Interros office in Moscow. Speaking at a fact-finding meeting organised by Prince Michael of Kent he added: "It is the same over here. People had invested in his company as a commercial proposition. They did not invest for his political ambitions." But overall, life is unfair to the oligarchy, Mr Potanin, a former First Deputy Prime Minister who had funded Boris Yeltsin's 1996 presidential campaign, insisted. They are being picked on because they are rich. Instead of encouraging their enterprise, the politicians are scoring cheap points by using them as scapegoats for Russia's economic ills, Mr Potanin said. President Putin may know the true worth of the wealth creators, "but if the majority of the people do not like us, then he has to be with the majority. "I must understand why people don't like me. I must learn not to be loved. People live in difficult conditions, I should not blame them for their lack of love for me. Instead of being patient, working hard, they want an easy answer, and the politicians say these are the people taking your money." Mr Potanin is a patron of the arts, as fund-raising co-ordinator for the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and a trustee of the Guggenheim Foundation in New York. His charity, however, does not run to buying the Arsenal football club, he stressed, despite "inaccurate" reports to the contrary in the British media. However, Mr Potanin sees hope for the future. "The students I meet do not suffer from jealousy of success, they do not resent the wealth I have created. When they ask me for jobs, I say it is my role to prepare you so other people would want to give you jobs."