**Gennady Melikyan’s appointment was seen by the market as a signal of continuity. “Supervision, on the one hand, must punish, and on the other, keep the system stable. And only people who have grown up within this system understand that fine line of stability. That is why it seems to me that, of all the options, the appointment of Gennady Melikyan is the most logical,” Dmitry Eropkin, president of the Rossiysky Kredit bank, told Kommersant. In turn, Alexander Shokhin, president of the RSPP (Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs), noted that Gennady Melikyan is “an energetic, professional person who sees things through to the end, and in this respect the Central Bank’s decision to appoint him head of the supervisory bloc is absolutely justified and correct.” **http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.html?docId=706699
I know nothing about the late Kozlov. But his successor, Melikyan, is a crook and a thief with corruption written all over him. And below is an interesting text from the Kommersant forum about Kozlov. It may be lies, of course. For those who are interested. Another view. Oh, brave Falcon? Was it in battle with enemies that you bled to death? The point is that A. Kozlov was in fact a top-class specialist in moving money out. In the crisis-ridden autumn of 1998, it was A. Kozlov who devised a scheme for the “clean” transfer of business from the sinking MENATEP bank to a bridge bank (that is, a duplicate bank created alongside a failing major bank in order to save its assets). The scheme was magnificent: all funds are withdrawn from the bankrupt bank into the bridge bank, while depositors get the proverbial three-finger salute. The leader in driving down the ruble on “Black Tuesday” was Menatep bank, owned by M.B. Khodorkovsky. Before the last theft from Sberbank in 2003—US$150 million transferred to Liechtenstein—as part of creating “substantive supervision,” Mr. Kozlov dismissed Vinogradov, the head of the Central Bank’s bank inspection department, and appointed his own man from Sberbank to the job so that no one would start asking questions too early about the missing millions. And indeed, no one did! 3. Information from the Arbitration Court. According to RBC Daily on 14 October 2003, the construction company LINN failed to repay Sberbank US$120 million out of a US$150 million loan. The chances of recovering the remaining US$30 million are also close to zero. For several years, LINN’s managers submitted fictitious invoices to Sberbank, while the funds were transferred to accounts of firms registered in Liechtenstein. LINN was building the Tsarev Sad multifunctional complex in central Moscow, opposite the Kremlin, using Sberbank loans. Sberbank specialists were supposed to check every invoice for work performed and every cost estimate, yet they raised the alarm only after the financing had been completed. Sberbank did not secure a timely court order to freeze the company’s financial operations. It is baffling that Russia’s largest bank, having allocated substantial funds for the construction of Tsarev Sad, did not monitor how those funds were used. Did Sberbank really manage to issue a loan to a construction company with virtually no collateral and then fail to track what happened to a US$150 million loan? Extending such a credit line falls into the fourth risk group—one of the highest in banking. Sberbank’s interests in the arbitration court are represented by Igor Dubov, an employee of the law firm Yakovlev & Partners. As for Igor Dubov of Yakovlev & Partners, who supposedly represents Sberbank of Russia’s interests, in our opinion he, together with partners from the Central Bank, did everything possible to ensure that the US$150 million remained in Liechtenstein forever. I.A. Dubov previously worked at the Central Bank as deputy head of the legal department; he was appointed there before the 1998 default, at a time when the Central Bank’s deputy chairmen included the same A. Kozlov and S. Aleksashenko, under former Central Bank chairman S. Dubinin. When V. Gerashchenko returned, I.A. Dubov and A. Kozlov had to leave the Central Bank. The Central Bank receives reports on banks’ financial stability every month, it holds a controlling stake in Sberbank, and its top executives sit on Sberbank’s board of directors. So we are entitled to ask: where was the country’s head of banking supervision, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Mr. A. Kozlov, with his much-publicized new approach to “substantive” supervision “with reasoned judgment,” instead of the law—and where did the US$150 million go? So that no one would ask questions about the missing millions, Kozlov dismissed Vinogradov, the head of the inspection department, and brought in Mr. G. Melikyan from Sberbank to replace him.