Former prosecutor general Igor Krasnov appointed to chair Russia’s Supreme Court

Russia’s former prosecutor general, Igor Krasnov, has been unanimously elected to chair Russia’s Supreme Court for the next six years by members of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, Russian media outlet RBC reported on Wednesday.

Krasnov’s appointment to the position, for which he outmanoeuvred Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, follows the death of the court’s former head, Irina Podnosova, in July.

Consisting of 170 judges, Russia’s Supreme Court is the court of last resort for cases heard in Russia’s justice system and is overseen by a praesidium of 13 justices. Despite having the power to refer presidential decrees and parliamentary bills to the Constitutional Court for review, the Supreme Court has operated as a rubber stamp institution for years.

The private wealth of its new head has attracted scrutiny from Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which, in an investigation into his finances, revealed that a luxury apartment in Moscow purchased for an estimated 760 million rubles (€7.7 million) had been registered in his infant son’s name, leading commentators to question the provenance of the family’s money given the marked gulf between their lifestyles and their reported salaries.

The former presidential envoy to the Northwestern Federal District, Alexander Gutsan, will replace Krasnov as prosecutor general, following a decree issued by Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

Gutsan, who studied with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and current Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko at St Petersburg State University, has worked in the Prosecutor General’s Office for 30 years, and served as deputy prosecutor general from 2007 to 2018.