Yuri Ilyich Skuratov
Yuri Ilyich Skuratow ( Russian Юрий Ильич Скуратов ; born July 3, 1952 in Ulan-Ude ) is a Russian lawyer, politician , professor of law and former attorney general of the Russian Federation (from 1995 to 1999). He has been president of the Fund for Legal Methods of the 21st Century since 2007.
resume
Work at university and as advisor to the interior minister
He graduated with honors from the Sverdlovsk City Law Institute in 1973 . There he worked for his postgraduate lecturer and eventually became dean of the Faculty of prosecutors. In 1987 he defended his dissertation on constitutional problems within administrative law.
In 1989 he became head of the Committee on Legislative Initiatives and Legal Issues in the Central Committee of the CPSU . From 1991 to 1992 he was an advisor to the then Interior Minister Viktor Barannikow (see Council of Ministers of the USSR 1991 ). In 1993 he was appointed director of the Scientific Institute on issues of legal certainty within the Attorney General's Office ( Russian НИИ проблем укрепления законности и правопорядка при Генеральной прокуратуре ).
Federal Prosecutor of the Russian Federation
From 1995 to 1999 he was Attorney General of the Russian Federation. After the Russian speculative bubble with short-term government bonds ( GKO bonds ) burst on August 17, 1998 , Skuratov initiated an investigation into 780 state officials. They were suspected of abusing their positions and of contributing to the national crisis through insider speculation and corruption. Anatoly Chubais and the daughters of President Boris Yeltsin were among the suspects .
Mabetex affair
Since April 1998 Skuratow has been working specifically with the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office . At that time, Federal Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte signed a memorandum in Moscow on cooperation between the Swiss and Russian judicial authorities. The reason was evidence of billions of US dollars that had flowed from Russia into Swiss accounts and, according to Del Ponte, were related to the corruption of high Russian officials. On January 22, 1999, the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office had the offices of the Swiss company Mabetex searched. Documents were found confirming the suspicion that the company had paid bribes for construction contracts from the Russian state. The seized documents included credit card receipts for Boris Yeltsin and his daughters Jelena and Tatiana , as well as documents from an account held by the Banca del Gottardo, for which the Kremlin administrator Pavel Borodin was authorized to sign and which allegedly amounted to a million dollars had been transferred to Yeltsin's account in Budapest. However, these details were only made public in August 1999 through a report in the Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera . Shortly after the house search, Mabetex ran into financial difficulties; the company requested a debt restructuring moratorium, which was rejected by the court.
Problems with Yeltsin and video affair
In January 1999, Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff called Skuratov and showed him a video showing a man who resembled Skuratov on a bed with two prostitutes. Skuratov was asked to resign even though he was investigating the Yeltsin government for accepting foreign bribes. The video was out of focus and Skuratov called it a fake. The identity of the man in the film has never been established by a court of law. Nevertheless, Skuratov announced his resignation on February 1, 1999. He justified this with "health reasons". The Federation Council , which according to the Russian constitution has to vote on such waivers, rejected his waiver with the instruction that he should testify before the council first.
The day before Skuratov's appearance before the Federation Council, the station Rossija 1 (at that time still under the name RTR) showed the video recording in its evening program. Nevertheless, the Federation Council voted in favor of Skuratov remaining as Attorney General, after which he returned to his work. Boris Yeltsin appealed against this decision, but Yeltsin was not allowed to dismiss the attorney general without the approval of the Federation Council. The video recording was then shown again on Russian state television. Skuratov did not follow Yeltsin's direct requests to vacate his seat. The video is an attempt at blackmail to prevent him from investigating corruption allegations, said Skuratov.
According to the Russian Internet newspaper Kasparov.ru, the video was handed over to the station Rossija 1 by a person who resembled the then FSB boss Vladimir Putin . A short time later, Putin said in a television interview that the video was "authentic" and that it was indeed Prosecutor General Skuratov on the video.
On April 2, Yeltsin suspended Skuratov on the grounds that he was suspected of having paid for the services of prostitutes by people against whom criminal proceedings were underway. Skuratov then accused Yeltsin of violating the constitution. On April 21, the Federation Council voted again against the dismissal of Skuratov. This time, however, he remained suspended. After Yeltsin again failed to get approval from the Federation Council on October 13, the case was referred to the Russian Constitutional Court . The court ruled on December 1, 1999 that Yeltsin could suspend the attorney general on the basis of the allegations; however, Yeltsin should not ignore the decision of the Federation Council. On April 19, 2000, the Federation Council followed a proposal by the meanwhile new President Vladimir Putin to finally dismiss the public prosecutor General Skuratov, who was on leave.
Skuratov ran in the presidential elections in 2000 and landed one of the last places with 0.43 percent of the vote.
Individual evidence
- ^ Paul Klebnikow : The Godfather of the Kremlin - Boris Berezovsky and the power of the oligarchs . Munich 2001 ISBN 3430154758
- ↑ http://www.newsru.com/arch/russia/22Aug2001/skuratov.html
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated November 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Neue Zuercher Zeitung, March 11, 2000
- ↑ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E6D71230F937A25753C1A96F958260
- ↑ a b c d e Julia Ioffe: How State-Sponsored Blackmail Works in Russia . In: The Atlantic , January 11, 2017.
- ↑ a b c Celestine Bohlen: Russian Panel to Review Prosecutor's Scandal . In: The New York Times , March 19, 1999.
- ↑ Путин в Москве . ( kasparov.ru [accessed September 9, 2017]).
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. TV documentary "The Putin System" at minute 32:40
- ↑ Yeltsin breaks constitution. Skuratov. In: Spiegel Online. April 7, 1999, accessed January 12, 2017 .
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
- New York Times New York Times - Collection of articles on the Skuratov affair
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Skuratov, Yuri Ilyich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Скуратов, Юрий Ильич (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian politician, legal scholar and attorney general |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 3rd July 1952 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ulan-Ude |