Mikhail Kasyanov
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| Mikhail Kasyanov | |
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| In office May 7, 2000 – February 24, 2004 |
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| President | Vladimir Putin |
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| Preceded by | Vladimir Putin |
| Succeeded by | Viktor Khristenko |
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| Born | December 8, 1957 (age 49) |
Mikhail Mikhailovitch Kasyanov (Михаи́л Миха́йлович Касья́нов) (born 8 December 1957) was the Prime Minister of Russia from January 2000 to February 2004.
Kasyanov is considered aligned to the 'family' allied to Boris Yeltsin and the Russian oligarchs who built business empires under his government. The arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky highlighted the split within the Kremlin between the family and the forces allied with the security forces and military called siloviki.
In 2006 Kasyanov stated his desire to run for President of Russia in 2008.[1]
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[edit] Political career
The last member of the Russian government closely associated with Yeltsin, Kasyanov was dismissed, along with the entire Russian cabinet, by President Vladimir Putin on 24 February 2004.
During his term as the Deputy Minister of Finance, Kasyanov earned a nickname "Misha Two Percent." [1] Allegedly, he has demanded a two-percent kickback for authorizing government-backed loans to private enterprises. The allegation was never explored beyond rumors. Nevertheless, the nickname stuck throughout his tenure as Prime Minister.
On the first anniversary of his dismissal (24 February 2005) Kasyanov gave a press-conference where he said that he might run for president in the 2008 elections. His bid has been very tentatively supported by billionaires Leonid Nevzlin [2] and Boris Berezovsky [3] (both in exile after corruption indictments against them in Russia) and former chess champion Garry Kasparov. On March 3, 2007, Kasparov and Kasyanov spoke to thousands of supporters against Putin's government at Saint Petersburg Dissenters' March. [4]
[edit] Investigation
On July 11th, 2005, the Russian Office of Public Prosecutor announced that it is investigating a privatization of two houses that were formerly owned by the government. According to the allegations first made by the journalist and State Duma member Aleksandr Hinshtein [5], two luxury government houses have been put up for sale in 2003 by Kasyanov's decree. The public announcement that had to be made by the law was published in an obscure magazine "Zhil'yo i reformy" with low circulation, at first it was believed that all of that issue was bought by somebody and that issue never went on public sale, but later investigators have said that they looked through every pre-auction issue of that magazine and the announcement was never published at all. [6]
The lack of announcement is legally considered to be sufficient ground for the government to sue for the return of the property. Competitive bidding was also required by law, so three companies participated in the auction, but all of them were registered at the same address. The winning bid was millions of dollars lower than the market value of comparable properties (the property value was appraised at US$27,127,167 and the winning bid was US$346,100). The winning company OOO Ameliya passed its rights for the house to a losing company, OOO Art-group. There was a 49-year-term lease for that property signed in 1996 and owned by an oil company Evikhon, and that could have explained the low sale price, but one week after the auction Evikhon sold the lease to OOO Art-group for $720,000. The owner of Evikhon, Shalva Chigirinsky, said that they didn't know anything about Kasyanov's eventual ownership of the house and that "the government asked us to return the houses, so we did, after getting back the rent we've already paid". [7]
In February 2005 Kasyanov and his wife, Irina became the owners of OOO Art-group (at the time of the auction it was owned by two companies, OOO Nord-Vest and OOO TekhnoInkom, both managed by some unknown woman Yelena Romanova, it is not clear who was really behind those two companies). [8] Another neighboring house has been sold at similarly low price to a billionaire, Mikhail Fridman. Fridman has said that he wasn't surprised at the low price of the house he bought because of the Evikhon's 49-year lease, and that he's not aware of the details of the sale as it was handled by his corporation's legal department. [9] Kasyanov has issued a statement saying that he didn't own any companies when he was a prime-minister and that all of his business dealings after he was dismissed have been legal, but he did not deny any of the specific easily verifiable facts of the case or that he co-owns OOO Art-group with his wife. According to later allegations made by Khinshtein, Kasyanov bought OOO Art-group using the loan given to him by Fridman, and one of Fridman's companies won the government-conducted tender to manage the Sheremetyevo International Airport a week after the houses auction, allegedly with some Kasyanov's involvement. Fridman has dismissed those allegations and maintains that none of his companies ever gave any loans to Kasyanov. [10]
On January 17, 2006 the Moscow Court of Arbitration has ruled that the house bought by Fridman should be returned to the state as not all the appropriate procedures have been followed during the privatization [11]. However, the court also refused to call the privatization contract legally null and void (in that case Fridman's company wouldn't even get the money they paid for the house back), so it's unlikely that the prosecutors would have enough evidence of Fridman's involvement to indict him personally in the criminal court.
On February 2, 2006 the same court has made similar ruling about the house bought by Kasyanov, he would also have to return it. [12]
On March 1, 2006 two government officials who were responsible for the auction, former deputy minister of property relations of Russia, Nikolai Gusev, and the director of Federal State Unitary Enterprise "VPK-Invest" (who officially was managing the houses before the auction), Ramil Gaisin, were indicted for "appropriation of managed property committed by an organized group on particularly large scale". They weren't arrested, they are currently released on their own recognizance. According to the prosecution, they currently don't have enough evidence to indict Kasyanov. [13]
On April 12, 2006 Kasyanov said in an interview [14] that he bought the house as a businessman using borrowed money to develop a hotel on the property. However, he did not give the reason for the low price he had to pay to buy the house (he paid exactly the same price that the company that won the auction paid for the house - 11,100,000 rubles [15]) - the reasonable explanation is that the company was just the front for him in the first place.
On March 16, 2007 another court judgement has been made re-affirming that he will have to return the house and will also have to pay the government 108,135,000 rubles in damages for using the property illegally (approx. USD 4,150,000 or €3,130,000). Kasyanov is planning to appeal. [16]
[edit] Timeline
- 1981-90: Engineer; Leading Economist; Senior Specialist; Head of Section, Department of Foreign Economic Relations of the State Planning Committee of the RSFSR.
- 1990: appointed Head of Section, Sub-department of Foreign Economic Relations of the State Planning Committee of the RSFSR.
- 1991: Deputy Head, Sub-department, then Head, Sub-department of Foreign Economic Relations of the Ministry of Economy of the Russian Federation.
- 1992-93: Head, Consolidation Department of the Ministry of Economy of the Russian Federation.
- 1993-95: Head, Department of Foreign Credits and External Debt of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation and Member of the Board of the Ministry of Finance.
- 1995: appointed Deputy Minister of Finance.
- 1999: appointed First Deputy Minister of Finance.
- May 1999: appointed Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation.
- January 2000: appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.
- May 2000: Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.
- February 2004: Sacked by President Putin along with the entire cabinet.
[edit] External link
- "The Empire of Freedom", op-ed by Mikhail Kasyanov in Kommersant, August 29, 2006.
| Preceded by Vladimir Putin |
Prime Minister of Russia 2000–2004 |
Succeeded by Viktor Khristenko |
| Prime Ministers of Russia since 1990 |  |
|---|---|
 Ivan Silayev • Oleg Lobov* •  Boris Yeltsin • Yegor Gaidar* • Viktor Chernomyrdin • Boris Yeltsin* • Sergei Kiriyenko • Viktor Chernomyrdin* • Yevgeny Primakov • Sergei Stepashin • Vladimir Putin • Mikhail Kasyanov • Viktor Khristenko* • Mikhail Fradkov* denotes acting |
