Anatoly Chubais, the former head of the Russian state nanotechnology corporation Rosnano, has denounced the criminal prosecution of the company’s former top managers as “repressions” and “a mockery of the law.”
The statement (.pdf) appeared on Chubais’s website in May, though neither the date of signing nor the date of publication is indicated, the Russian outlet Ekho notes, having been the first to flag the document.
“Over the past year and a half, my colleagues and employees of Rosnano have been hit by a barrage of criminal and civil proceedings, accompanied by arrests, searches, questioning, and property claims,” Chubais said. “Just recently, the first verdict in a criminal case was handed down — our colleague and comrade Boris Galkin was sentenced to nine years in prison […] The total amount of claims filed has exceeded the astronomical sum of 25 billion rubles.”
Investigators’ allegations against the former managers of Rosnano primarily concern the company’s projects between 2010 and 2020. At that time, it was headed by Chubais.
Among other things, the investigators claim that during the implementation of the Plastic Logic project — a flexible tablet for schoolchildren — some of the funds were embezzled.
The case involves Rosnano’s executive director Boris Podolsky, managing director for finance Artur Galstyan, and director of accounting methodology, taxation, and reporting Marina Kasenkova. They have been charged with abuse of official authority.
The case also involves former general director of the company Plastic Logic Boris Galkin. In late April, a court found him guilty of embezzlement. The case also involves deputy chairman of the Rosnano board Yury Udaltsov and other top managers of the company — Nikolai Tychinin, Irina Rapoport, and Oleg Kiselev. They have been charged in absentia with fraud and placed on an international wanted list.
In addition, Rosnano is attempting through the courts to recover from Chubais and the company’s former executives the losses that Rosnano incurred during the implementation of the Plastic Logic project.
Chubais attributed the prosecutions to Rosnano’s “new management,” who over five years in charge “have not built a single factory and have brought no nanotechnologies to the country.” That management, he said, has merely “turned Rosnano into a corporate raiding outfit that is destroying not only technologies, but also people’s lives and fates.”
Unfortunately, I cannot stop these repressions, nor can I protect the colleagues and comrades who have fallen under them. I do not know what criminal proceedings are currently being prepared, whose homes will be searched, who will be arrested. I can only firmly state that all these charges are a mockery of the law, and not one of those accused has done anything unlawful.
Anatoly Chubais led Rosnano for 12 years — from 2008. He resigned in December 2020 and served as the Russian president’s special representative for relations with international organizations. Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in March 2022, Chubais resigned and left Russia.
After Chubais’s departure, Vladimir Putin referred to him as “some Moshe Izrailevich” and said that “a massive financial hole” had been discovered in “the nanotechnology structure he had headed for many years.”
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