.. a lie."
Others pointed to an outlandish coincidence: the ruble collapsed
twice in Russia's post-Communist annals. Once, in 1994, when Dubinin
was Minister of Finance and was forced to resign. The second time
was in 1998, when Dubinin was governor of the central bank and was,
again, ousted.
Dubinin himself seems to be unable to make up his mind. In one
interview he says that IMF funds were used to prop up the ruble - in
others, that they went into "the national pot" (i.e., the Ministry
of Finance, to cover a budgetary shortfall).
The Chairman of the Federation Council at the time, Yegor Stroev,
appointed an investigative committee in 1999. Its report remains
classified but Stroev confirmed that IMF funds were embezzled in the
wake of the 1998 forced devaluation of the ruble.
This conclusion was weakly disowned by Eleonora Mitrofanova, an
auditor within the Duma's Audit Chamber who said that they
discovered nothing "strictly illegal" - though, incongruously, she
accused the central bank of suppressing the Chamber's damning
report. The Chairman of the Chamber of Accounts, Khachim Karmokov,
quoted by PwC, said that "the audits performed by the Chamber
revealed no serious procedural breaches in the bank's performance."
But Nikolai Gonchar, a Duma Deputy and member of its Budget
Committee, came close to branding both as liars when he said that he
read a copy of the Audit Chamber report and that it found that
central bank funds were siphoned off to commercial accounts in
foreign banks.
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