Several former top executives of the state-owned nanotechnology company Rusnano have left Russia after a criminal case was launched against former Rusnano CEO Leonid Melamed. The current CEO of the company is Anatoly Chubais, a former deputy prime minister and once a central figure in Russian politics.
The news agency RBC reports that Dmitry Zhurba, Rusnano's former financial director, has departed for Great Britain, where Andrey Malychev, the company's former deputy chairman is already living. According to RBC, board member Yakov Urinson is currently residing in a former Soviet state somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Andrey Rappoport, the former first deputy chairman of Rusnano’s executive board and former president of the Moscow School of Management at Skolkovo, has also left Russia. Yuri Udaltsov, deputy chairman of the executive board and head of Rusnano’s venture capital investment division, is currently on a business trip in Europe and is unlikely to return to Russia anytime soon, RBC says.
“They are pushing people out. I like the bravery of those in power who say ‘If you don’t like it here, then leave.’ Well, we’ll leave, but who will you be left with?” RBC’s source is a businessman working in Anatoly Chubais’s state corporation Rusnano. The conversation took place at a beach cafe in central Europe.
Leonid Melamed, former Rusnano CEO, was detained in connection with a fraud case on July 1. He is currently under house arrest.
Rusnano is currently headed by headed by former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, who is famous for implementing free market reforms in the 1990s under the Boris Yeltsin administration.
On July 10, it was reported that Chubais testified in the Melamed case. Earlier, the company announced that it will not suffer any consequences due to the criminal case.