Thank you, dad!

Yuri Kovalchuk is pleased with the heir

Is it possible to call the St. Petersburg group in the Mother See anything other than having almost all the power in the country? The latest appointments no longer surprise anyone... However, the last of them, perhaps, stands out against the general background: 28-year-old Boris Kovalchuk was appointed head of the government department for national projects.
It is quite possible that the candidate is endowed with outstanding administrative talents. Nevertheless, such a high appointment at such a young age (this position corresponds in rank to a deputy minister) is extremely rare. The question arises by itself: isn’t the decision dictated by the name of Boris Yuryevich? After all, both his father Yuri Kovalchuk and his uncle Mikhail Kovalchuk are considered one of the most trusted and closest people to Vladimir Putin.
55-year-old Yuri Kovalchuk, honorary consul of Thailand in the northern capital of the Russian Federation, chairman of the board of directors and largest shareholder of Rossiya Bank, met Putin 15 years ago. Then Vladimir Vladimirovich, being the first deputy mayor, oversaw the Leningrad Association of Joint Ventures (ASP), where Kovalchuk was deputy chairman of the board. Putin’s old friend Vladimir Yakunin, now the president of Russian Railways OJSC, was also involved in ASP affairs at that time. In the mid-1980s, Yakunin headed the foreign department at the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, where Yuri Kovalchuk, a graduate of Leningrad State University, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, then worked in the directorate.
With the help of Putin, Kovalchuk and Yakunin revived Rossiya Bank, which was created in 1990 by the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU. According to the information and research center "Panorama" under the leadership of Vladimir Pribylovsky, in the early 1990s, among the shareholders of this bank were commercial structures, in which such well-known persons as the brothers Andrei (now the Minister of Education and Science) and Sergei (president FC "Zenit") Fursenko, Vladislav Reznik (chairman of one of the State Duma committees), Alexey Alexandrov (senator from the Kaluga region) and others.
In 2000, politician Ivan Rybkin, who was then running for president of the Russian Federation, publicly stated that, they say, Yuri Kovalchuk and his brother Mikhail (also a physicist by training, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, former director of the Institute of Crystallography, since last year - director of the scientific center “Kurchatov Institute”) are allegedly “responsible for Putin’s business, controlling serious financial flows in the interests of the president.” True, Mr. Rybkin did not provide any concrete evidence. But this only strengthened the opinion of the Kovalchuk’s extreme influence.
We can talk for a long time about the older generation of the Kovalchuk labor dynasty. Regarding the current appointee, the son and nephew of his father and uncle, it is known that Boris Yuryevich graduated from the law department of St. Petersburg University and headed the non-profit partnership “League of Honorary Consuls”. In 2003, he became a member of the audit commission of Rossiya Bank.
A joke immediately comes to mind: the president of a large company calls his employee and tells him: “You came to us a year ago as a simple clerk, a month later you became the head of a department, six months later - the head of a department, and as of yesterday you are the vice president of the company. What do you say to this? - “Thank you, dad!”
Probably, now Kovalchuk Jr. could rightfully repeat these words of gratitude and address them not only to dad.

Vladimir MAKSIMOV
Photo INTERPRESS

Help "Novaya"
The St. Petersburg group in Moscow already includes the president of the country, the heads of both houses of parliament, two out of three deputy prime ministers, six out of seventeen ministers (including defense, finance and economics), thirteen heads of federal services and agencies (including the FSB, tax and antimonopoly service), chairmen of the Central Bank and the Accounts Chamber. And also - the chairman of the Supreme Arbitration Court and his first deputy, two judges of the Constitutional Court, two dozen deputy ministers and heads of services and agencies, the deputy head of the presidential administration, two assistants to the president, three plenipotentiaries and the head of the presidential affairs, top officials of Gazprom, RAO UES ", Russian Railways, Svyazinvest and many lower-ranking executives, of whom there are countless numbers.