Russian-born Nobel Prize winner Andre Geim - who was rejected by a leading Moscow institute before heading to the west - has dismissed overtures from the Skolkovo innovation centre.

The émigré physicist said plans to lure him back home to work at Skolkovo were "completely insane" and claimed the high-profile innovation centre was doomed to failure.

"Are people over there completely insane?" Geim raged to Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei. "I do not hold Russian citizenship, I am a Dutch national and I'm not interested in Skolkovo anyway.

"Do [the Russian authorities] think they can just offer everyone a bag of gold and invite them?"

Years of frustration

While Skolkovo fund chief Alexei Sitnikov was extending a public invitation to Geim and his fellow prize-winner Konstantin Novoselov, the scientist was listing his grievances against the land of his birth.

Speaking to Russia's Channel 1 TV he complained of being denied a visa to visit Russia after renouncing his citizenship and lashed out at the poor state of Russian science.

He said that graphene, the matarial he nad Novoselov created, could have been developed in Russia too, but "the chances of its creation were 1 out of 1000 compared to what could have been done abroad." It is the reason why the physicist decided to leave Russia, he said.

"In England I understood that in six months you could what in Russia would take 10 or 20 years in the 90s. And for a researcher who needs equipment, money for research, the working conditions here and there were so different, that there was not even a question of staying or not," he raged. "Staying in Russia would have been like spending my life tilting at windmills," Geim concluded.

"Silicon Skolkovo" will never work

Geim is also sceptical about the attempt to create "a second silicon valley" at Skolkovo.

"I think that 'Silicon Skolkovo' will never work. For me it sounds the same as if they started creating electro-vacuum Skolkovo in 90s, when the ship had sailed from vacuum lamps to transistors. The same is happening here," he said.

While Geim understands and welcomes Russia's determination to invest in science, he fears that bureaucracy means the government's ambitions will prove quixotic.

"There are some prospects, but the same money could be invested in prominent academies, institutes, science academies," thinks the scientist.

He said that investment in science now sounds as yet another "slogan, rather than effective investment."

"There are already places in Russia, like Chernogolovka in the Moscow region, there are other cities - why build a new city?" he said.

Stolen Prize

Scandalous scientist Viktor Petrik, the inventor of wonder-filters that he claims make radioactive water drinkable again, says that he should have received the Nobel Prize that was given to Geim and Novoselov.

In his interview to "United Russian portal" (run by United Russia), he said that has documents that prove that the prize for discovery and explanation of graphene's properties was awarded illegitimately, arguing that he made this discovery years before Geim and Novoselov.

The scientist called it a "shameful page of the history of the academy of sciences". He insists that he was the one who discovered graphene and patented it in 54 countries, including the USA, and the two scientists merely examined it further.

Russia's academy of sciences called Petrik's work "anti-scientific" in a review earlier this year.