The man who designed Russia’s rainy-day fund to protect against swings in commodity prices says the country’s state oil company shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the money. OAO Rosneft (ROSN) , headed by Igor Sechin , a long-time ally of President Vladimir Putin , asked last month for more than $44 billion from Russia’s Wellbeing Fund to finance investment after sanctions closed capital markets for the company. The request runs totally against the spirit of the reserve, designed to hedge against dependence on energy exports, said Alexei Kudrin , who was finance minister for more than a decade until 2011. Investing the fund’s $81.7 billion in oil and gas defeats the purpose, as does concentrating so much of the money in one place, said Kudrin, who charted Russia’s path through the 2008 financial crisis when oil crashed to less than $40 a barrel. He envisaged one of the fund’s […]