In April 1992 Vinogradov declared his support for Moscow's Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and the city government, defending them from accusations of corruption. The declaration was endorsed by other figures on the financial scene, including Vladimir Gusinsky, Leonid Nevzlin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who formed an influential economic group known as PPI, which Vinogradov led from 1993. Although one of Yeltsin's supporters in the years after the October 1993 crisis and an adviser to the Economics Ministry, Vinogradov criticised the government in 1995 of following too rigid an economic policy and said that the conflict in Chechnya was damaging the economy.