And who is that in the photograph? In the photograph is Oleg Vyugin. A very respected man. Someone who has acquitted himself excellently everywhere it was possible to do so. He holds a Candidate of Sciences degree in Physics and Mathematics. From 1989 to 1993, he was a leading research fellow and head of a laboratory at the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1993, he was appointed head of the Macroeconomic Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. In 1994, he joined the board of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. In 1996, he was appointed Deputy Finance Minister of the Russian Federation, and in 1999, First Deputy Finance Minister of the Russian Federation. During his years at the Finance Ministry, he dealt with macroeconomic and budget policy, as well as management of Russia’s domestic and external debt. In 1999, he moved to Troika Dialog Investment Company CJSC as Executive Vice President. In 1997, he was a member of the Russian government’s commission on economic reform. From 1997 to 2000, he took part in the work of the board of the Federal Commission for the Securities Market of the Russian Federation and the supervisory board of the National Securities Association (NFA). From 2002, he served as First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and oversaw monetary policy. On March 23, 2004, Oleg Vyugin was appointed head of the Federal Service for Financial Markets. He is a member of the board of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, the board of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation, the Council for Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship under the Government of the Russian Federation, the Foreign Investment Advisory Council, the Russian government commission on World Trade Organization matters and Russia’s interaction with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the supervisory board of Vneshtorgbank. He is the author of more than twenty academic publications on probability theory and macroeconomic modeling. In the ranking of the 100 managers of the new generation who have built the best professional careers in economic and public administration since 2000, conducted by the Kommersant publishing house and the Russian Managers Association in October 2004, O. V. Vyugin was named among the top ten politicians. ...Whew... I’m tired even listing all these achievements... At present, Oleg Vyugin is Chairman of the Board of Directors of MDM Bank. But that’s not all. Since Oleg Vyugin is such a respected man, he gets invited to serve as an independent director in various places. Because it is a great honor to have Oleg Vyugin as an independent director. It has a very positive effect on both our own and the international business community. They know Oleg Vyugin very well as a man who champions transparency and efficiency. Oleg Vyugin on a Board of Directors is, so to speak, a signal: "Everything is fine here. Everything is transparent and efficient, because Oleg Vyugin himself has vouched for us. His reputation is on the line, and he values it." And now, attention.
Oleg Vyugin serves on the Board of Directors of Transneft OJSC as an independent director. And so O. V. Vyugin will receive (or may already have received) an official letter. It will not contain anthrax powder, but it will contain a request from one of the shareholders of Transneft OJSC to help obtain at least some information about the 12 billion rubles (about 12,000 metric tons of rubles by weight is not relevant here; approximately hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars at the time) that were siphoned out of Transneft over the past two years as charitable expenses. He, as an independent director, will also be asked to raise at a Transneft Board of Directors meeting the issue of disclosing all documents related to the charitable activities of Transneft OJSC. O. V. Vyugin’s response will be published. If he refuses to reply—which is quite likely—that will also be reported. The maximum response time is one month. In a month, we will find out what one of the hundred “managers of the new generation who have built the best professional careers in economic and public administration,” according to the newspaper Kommersant, really thinks about transparency and efficiency.
People