Open Joint-Stock Company "Russian Federation" has definitively embraced a tribal-clan system as its model of corporate governance. Everyone has become related, married off their children, and found them jobs.
**Yesterday, 33-year-old Dmitry Patrushev became the head of the country’s fourth-largest bank. **The reason for the appointment was, of course, the young banker’s outstanding professionalism, even though at his previous job—at VTB Bank—he was not even a member of the Management Board. And naturally, the fact that Dmitry Patrushev is the eldest son of Nikolai Patrushev—the former director of the FSB (Russia’s security service) and current secretary of the Security Council—had only the tiniest, tiiiiny influence on the decision. What can I say about Dmitry Patrushev? Nothing in particular. I’ve never dealt with him. One thing I do know is that Patrushev’s supervisor at VTB was Management Board member Igor Zavyalov (now apparently doing very well skimming money at Rostec). It was Igor Zavyalov who approved the contract with a Cypriot intermediary for VTB-Leasing OJSC to purchase drilling rigs with a $150 million markup. And it appears that Zavyalov was the direct organizer of this fraud. So the young Patrushev had a worthy mentor. He could have taught him a lot and brought him into all sorts of interesting schemes. That’s how it is. The formula of power has now taken its final shape: Children and wives do the skimming, while fathers and husbands stand guard and make sure no one "rocks the boat."