They were supposed to prop up the banking system (especially
SBS-Agro) and the ailing and sharply devalued ruble. Instead, they
ended up in the bank accounts of obscure corporations - and, then,
incredibly, vanished into thin air.
The person in charge of the funds in 1998 was none other than
Mikhail Kasyanov, Russia's current Prime Minister - at the time,
Deputy Minister of Finance for External Debt. His signature on all
foreign exchange transactions - even those handled by the central
bank - was mandatory. In July 2000, he was flatly accused by the
Italian daily, La Reppublica, of authorizing the diversion of the
disputed funds.
Following public charges made by US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin
as early as March 1999, both Russian and American media delved
deeply over the years into the affair. Communist Duma Deputy Viktor
Ilyukhin jumped on the bandwagon citing an obscure "trustworthy
foreign source" to substantiate his indictment of Kremlin cronies
and oligarchs contained in an open letter to the Prosecutor General,
Yuri Skuratov.
The money trail from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to Swiss
and German subsidiaries of the Russian central Bank was
comprehensively reconstructed. Still, the former Chairman of the
central bank, Sergei Dubinin, called Ilyukhin's allegations and the
ensuing Swiss investigations - "a black PR campaign .
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