Leaving to Come Back: Russian Senior Officials and the State-Owned Companies

Summary:

When Dmitry Medvedev announced in late 2014 that the presence of ministers and other officials should be sharply increased on the boards of public companies, observers were surprised, considering that four years before the former President started a campaign to remove them from the very same structures.

This change of trend is symbolic and finally closes the debate about state ownership management in Russia. In the crisis context in early 2014, the Kremlin decided to make a bet on mobilizing all resources under its control by sacrificing the program aimed at increasing the transparency and openness of management of Russia's state companies. The result of this has been the gradual replacement of independent businessmen on the supervisory boards of state-owned companies with government officials—both members of “Putin’s clan” and the chiefs of other sectors of government-owned industries.

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