FOR 18 years Mayor Yuri Luzhkov presided over and transformed Moscow and its skyline. Not, alas, altogether for the better. The widely deplored "Luzhkov Empire" style of construction, a combination of mock-everything and kitsch, nouveau-riche bad taste gone mad, displaced bulldozed architectural gems and Stalinist monstrosities alike, and left a characterless jumble.
As the city prospered, property developers, including his billionaire wife Yelena Baturina, got very, very rich in Europe's biggest, by far, commercial property boom - Moscow has twice as much office space now under construction as Europe's second-place city, Paris.When Luzhkov, an apparatchik turned populist, who has outlasted two presidents, and defied a third, six parliaments, and 10 prime ministers, was fired last week by President Medvedev the only real surprise was that it had taken so long.
His numerous architectural detractors apart, he has been the subject for years of allegations of planning corruption, of favouring his wife's businesses, and of responsibility for fiddling local elections. TV programmes have claimed he fled the city during the recent smoke episode, and was more concerned about the plight of his precious bees than its citizens. His city has become the epitome of new Russia's tsarist contrasts, oligarchic excess alongside dire want. And legendary traffic jams.
Luzhkov's complaint to Medvedev about an alleged campaign by prime minister Vladimir Putin against him was the final straw, prompting his sacking by the president who has the job in his gift. The next day the federal authorities also announced 24 criminal investigations of city officials, and several cases related to construction.
Prosecutors are now threatening to charge Luzhkov himself and scrutinising, among others, a land deal involving Inteko, the construction company belonging to Baturina, said by Forbes magazine to be Russia's richest woman and worth some €2.1 billion. The property sector is nervous more deals will unravel and that the construction boom will come grinding to a halt under a new less-sympathetic mayor.
Some of the frenetic prosecutorial activity is almost certainly about the Kremlin "persuading" Luzhkov not to launch the new political party he has hinted about ahead of next year's Duma elections and the presidential in 2012. He was, until he resigned from it on Monday, a member and one-time leader of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party of which he was a founder. A still-powerful political foe who must be crushed.