Cupid affairs

Vladimir Putin fired for the first time a governor appointed on the presidential recommendation

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday for the third time exercised his right to remove governors from office with the wording “due to loss of trust.” At the same time, the “victim” - Governor of the Amur Region Leonid Korotkov - became the first head of the region in Russian history to be dismissed after he voluntarily (in February 2005) went through the procedure of confirming confidence and reassignment by order of the president . That is why yesterday’s removal is a precedent - from now on, the president’s trust in Russia does not guarantee the governor’s retention of office for the entire term.

Recently, Leonid Korotkov was charged with abuse of office, negligence and misuse of budget funds. In particular, he is accused of financing the Amur football club by increasing the electricity tariff in the region by 0.8 kopecks. However, according to the unwritten rules of political etiquette, Mr. Korotkov’s main “sins” were, it is believed, the victory in the apparatus struggle for the post of governor over a relative of the State Duma speaker, the leader of United Russia, Boris Gryzlov, and the electoral victory: in the spring of 2005, he created The Party of Life, "Rodina" and "Yabloko" bloc "We are for the development of the Amur Region", which received more votes in the regional parliamentary elections than "United Russia". Later, Mr. Korotkov tried to join the party in power, submitted an application, but was not accepted.

Leonid Korotkov received the news of his resignation during a working trip to the regional center - Blagoveshchensk. Lenar Valeev, assistant to the presidential envoy in the Far Eastern Federal District, introduced the presidential decrees on the removal of the governor from office and on the appointment of an acting governor to the local political elite.

The meeting lasted just over ten minutes. Mr. Valeev read out the presidential decree on the removal of Leonid Korotkov from his post and said that until the appointment of a new governor, Vice-Governor Alexander Nesterenko would act as head. As Leonid Korotkov’s deputy, he was in charge of the agro-industrial complex until recently. The figure of Mr. Nesterenko in the region is considered a compromise. On the one hand, he is one of the members of the team of ex-governor Korotkov, on the other hand, he is a member of the political council of the regional branch of United Russia, a party that is believed to have initiated the criminal prosecution of the former governor.

Answering a question from regional council deputy and former head of the Amur region Anatoly Belonogov (he was replaced by Leonid Korotkov after winning the elections in April 2001), Mr. Valeev said that on May 10, the selection of candidates for the position of the new head of the Amur region began. But he refused to name specific names, citing the fact that the federal inspector for the Amur region, Grigory Smolyak, will begin relevant consultations with representatives of parties and public organizations only in the coming days.

According to the law, 14 days are allotted to draw up a list of candidates for the position of governor and submit it for consideration to the regional council. Meanwhile, sources close to the administration of the Amur region have already named several possible contenders. Among them is Viktor Martsenko. Until recently, he was Mr. Korotkov's first deputy, and later worked in the office of the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the Far East. It is possible that the list will also include the name of the head of the Far Eastern Higher Military School, the cousin of the speaker of the lower house of the Federal Assembly - Vladimir Gryzlov. Although it is also possible that the region will be headed by an outsider who is in no way connected with the local political elite.

According to Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Yuri Gulyagin, the decision to resign Governor Korotkov was made as a result of the charges brought against the head of the region. Leonid Korotkov himself does not plead guilty to any of the four charges. As early as May 3, according to the prosecutor of the Amur region, Vladimir Chistov, Mr. Korotkov refused to testify, citing the absence of his second lawyer during the interrogation. After this, the investigation of criminal cases against him was transferred from the regional prosecutor's office to the prosecutor general's office. As Mr. Gulyagin noted, within two months the investigators intend to transfer all materials to the court. However, the prosecutor’s office is not yet planning to change the preventive measure from a written undertaking not to leave the place to an arrest.

On the day of his resignation, Leonid Korotkov, who himself worked for a long time as a reporter for the regional newspaper Amurskaya Pravda, did not want to meet with journalists. And he only stated that he intended to pay more attention to his family. In an official statement distributed by the press service of the regional government, Mr. Korotkov actually blamed his resignation on the federal media, which, in his opinion, initiated “a campaign to inflate the facts of criminal cases against the governor of the Amur region.” The former head of the Amur region complained: “The President, busy with important state affairs, did not find the opportunity to personally meet with me and listen to my point of view on what is happening.”

Leonid Korotkov became the third governor to be removed from office by the president. The first was the head of the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, Vladimir Loginov, who disrupted the northern delivery, which is why a fuel crisis broke out in the region in the winter of 2005, the second was the Nenets governor, Aleksey Barinov, who was already under arrest by that time. But, unlike Mr. Korotkov, at the time of his removal, they were popularly elected governors, and not approved on the recommendation of the president himself.

Ilya SERGEEV, Amur region