What Private Eye has failed to investigate is how Chernukhin has been able to import and invest a fortune in the UK, with the imprimatur of the British Government, financial regulators, and banks – a fortune whose origin when he was a state official in Moscow Chernukhin declines to explain....
On the say-so of Kasyanov and Kudrin, Chernukhin supervised VEB’s takeover of most Russian pension fund contributions; management of Soviet-era debts owed to Moscow by states like Czechoslovakia and Vietnam; and bail-out loans for companies designated by Kasyanov, Kudrin, or Putin as politically valuable; these included state media companies. When Kasyanov began to threaten Putin with political competition, he was dismissed from the prime ministry in 2004. At the same time Chernukhin was fired from the chairmanship of VEB. He then moved to London.
The High Court papers and media reports indicate that he took with him and then spent at least £150 million acquiring personal and commercial assets. As he did that, Chernukhin was sheltered by the British Government which granted him British citizenship. In 2006 Moscow reporters were asking in print where Chernukhin’s money had come from. “Why”, wrote Semyon Goncharov of KM.ru, “don’t the British authorities ask the Russian oligarchs the question: where, thanks to what, and at the expense of whom did they get their fortunes?… As for Vladimir Chernukhin, the British authorities may have been embarrassed to ask him where the former deputy Minister got 135 million dollars to buy the office building of Midland Bank, because his official salary is clearly not enough to collect such money.”
Chernukhin was asked last month to clarify the appearance of this discrepancy and to account for the origin of his wealth in line with the current British statutes. He refused to reply....
Dances with Bears
PRIVATE BLIND EYE – HOW THE LAST BRITISH INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST TURNS ONE ON RUSSIAJohn Helmer
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