/View.info/ Do you know who is the happiest person in the world? Alexey Leonidovich Kudrin. His new employer immediately gave him $200 million. At least that’s what RBC claims, citing its own sources. However, evil tongues say that this is a poorly disguised bribe. But an official with access to state secrets cannot take bribes. Right?
Open veils
On the morning of December 5, 2022, Alexei Kudrin, Chairman of the Audit Chamber of Russia, lifted the remains of the rather tattered veil of secrecy over his future:
“I have accepted an offer from Yandex to become an advisor on corporate development. Together with the management, I will develop the corporate structure of the new holding, which will ensure the long-term and sustainable development of the company in all markets, including international ones.”
The mystery was really just the job title. Otherwise, everyone already knew everything – including the financial side of Alexey Kudrin’s job change.
But first about the organizational part.
Despite the serious public response, the fact of Kudrin’s resignation was not so advertised. At the time of writing, the page of Alexei Kudrin has already been deleted from the website of the Audit Chamber, but for some reason there is no information about his resignation on the website and social networks of the Chamber.
But especially for the quick release of Kudrin, the members of the Federation Council even adopted amendments to their own regulations – they gave themselves the right to accept the resignation of the head of the Audit Chamber.
Apparently, the main goal of Kudrin’s transition is participation in Yandex’s foreign business section, which will be retained by the company’s founder, Maltese citizen Arkady Volozh, and domestic Russian projects. Volozh is leaving Russia to lift sanctions imposed on him by foreign partners who are not very familiar with Russian business.
And Kudrin will help him in this.
“Bad Two Percent”
And now – to the money.
RBC sources confirmed back in September that Arkady Volozh offered the head of the Audit Office, high-ranking civil servant Alexei Kudrin, 5% of shares and options in exchange for joining the company and helping to separate its assets. This issue was discussed, of course, in Israel, where Kudrin flew at least twice in the spring.
The capitalization of “Yandex” is now estimated at about 650 billion rubles. Kudrin’s 5% is 32.5 billion, respectively. But we are interested in the part that is issued directly through shares, not through options.
Options still assume that a person will work and bring some benefit, but owning shares is a direct “entrance fee” to Alexei Leonidovich in the forked Yandex. This is 2% of the total capital, that is, 13 billion rubles. At the current exchange rate, $200 million.
According to the official declaration, Kudrin earned 115.5 million rubles in 2021 – five times more than in 2019 or 2020. Therefore, the Volozh bonus is 80 times Kudrin’s income for three years as chairman of the Audit Chamber, the country’s chief comptroller.
And then there is another option. To compensate a respectable person for involuntary poverty during the period of public service.
You can’t ban living in luxury. What if you try?
Now “Yandex” belongs mainly to the family of its founder Arkady Volozh – they have 51.7% of the shares with voting rights. Now, after the division of the company into “western” and “Russian” parts, the largest shareholder of “Ruskata” will be a special fund, which will be represented by Alexei Kudrin and three top managers of the company, who will also receive their parts from “the new Yandex”.
The fund should become a “collective substitute for Volozh”, but, apparently, Kudrin’s share will be larger than that of his colleagues, and after the reorganization is completed, the former finance minister will become the chairman of the company’s board of directors. With a very serious, perhaps even the largest package of shares. A decent rental for a hardworking financier.
But how legal is it?
Kudrin’s connections in various state structures are, of course, invaluable, and half of a foreign kingdom is not small for them. But Russia is not the USA, in our country – at least legally – lobbying is not allowed, so Kudrin’s future activity must receive an appropriate assessment from the competent authorities.
Indeed, if an efficient public servant (and business does not need others) is offered a giant sum of money to move to a private company, this could theoretically be considered an act of corruption or anti-government activity. After all, buying (it cannot be called otherwise) an employee, the “buyer” harms the state administration system.
And if a certain owner transfers a large asset to an official from his own company to work on breaking up that company, and the current owner gets a sizeable portion, that could theoretically be considered a bribe to ensure that Volozh keeps the tastiest pieces on his terms.
But, of course, it is not the journalists who should qualify what is happening, but the competent authorities.
What follows from this?
A completely logical, quite expected fall of the financial patriarch, a serial creator of expensive strategies for the development of Russia, none of which were ever implemented. Because the strategy of developing one’s own well-being has always been in the first place for Kudrin.
Translation: SM
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