Chubais gets the smackdown

Chris Doss itschris13 at hotmail.com
Thu Sep 19 17:45:38 PDT 2002


Putin aide attacks Chubais over UES reforms AFP September 19, 2002

Russian President Vladimir Putin's top Kremlin economic advisor fired another broadside Thursday at the chairman of Russia's giant electricity monopoly UES, Anatoly Chubais, suggesting he should resign.

The "lack of professionalism" and "incompetence" of UES management was a "national shame," Andrei Illarionov was quoted as saying by Interfax at an economic forum in the Siberian city of Irkutsk. "In a similar situation, and in any other country, the company's management would have been forced to resign," Illarionov said.

While a year ago Russia's government supported Chubais wholeheartedly, it now had "more reservations and is watching very closely what is happening in the company," he added.

Illarionov said that Chubais' reform plan of UES reflected the interests only of the company's inner management rather than those of investors and the company as a whole.

UES stock has fallen sharply in recent months.

Illarionov has attacked Chubais on repeated occasion, criticized a controversial reform of the electricity monopoly that was nevertheless approved by the government last year.

Chubais, 47, was a close aide of former president Boris Yeltsin and a powerful power broker in the 1990s, devising a series of controversial privatizations of state-owned companies following the fall of the Soviet Union.

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