"A fundamentally new bank"

The composition of the Board of Directors of the Development Bank was approved

Yesterday, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov held the first meeting of the Supervisory Board of the Development Bank , of which he is legally chairman. There were eight participants in the meeting, including the prime minister: Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Naryshkin, ministers Alexei Kudrin, German Gref, Viktor Khristenko, Igor Levitin, Vladislav Putilin, VEB Chairman Vladimir Dmitriev. The ninth, Rosatom head Sergei Kiriyenko, was absent, as Mr. Fradkov said, “for good reasons.”

Mikhail Fradkov immediately determined the scale of the event: “We are talking about a fundamentally new Development Bank.” “We need to use the joint resource of government agencies, business, and public-private partnerships, focusing on the main areas that will be provided for in the memorandum on the bank’s financial activities,” the prime minister said. First of all, this means support for exports, small and medium-sized businesses, and investment projects.

Although the first meeting of the supervisory board was planned to be devoted to organizational issues - the appointment of members of the bank's board, as well as the head of the internal control service, regulations - Mr. Fradkov could not resist and from the very beginning set a fast pace for the work of the “fundamentally new bank.” Speaking about the memorandum, he noted that the project has not yet been sufficiently developed.

Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Naryshkin, following the results of the meeting of the supervisory board, stated that there was no substantive dispute over the memorandum. “Today we discussed the technology of its preparation, not the content,” he explained. And the head of the board of the Development Bank, Vladimir Dmitriev, said: “Work on the memorandum is now in full swing. After its approval, apparently on July 12, the bank will begin its activities in full, although it is fulfilling its current obligations.” Including being an agent managing pension money. These functions, as Mr. Dmitriev said, the bank reserves for itself “until the government makes a different decision.”

Yesterday the full composition of the Board of Directors of the Development Bank was approved. Eight of its nine members are former VEB managers. The head of the board is Vladimir Dmitriev. The first deputy is Nikolay Kosov, the chief accountant is Vladimir Shaprinsky, as well as Sergey Lykov, Anatoly Zabaznov, Alexey Smirnov, Anatoly Ballo, Pyotr Fradkov.

Only one person completely new to VEB joined the board of the Development Bank - Sergei Vasiliev, senator from the Leningrad region. Mr. Vasiliev has long been known in Moscow. Since 1991, he headed the working center for economic reforms under the government of the Russian Federation, then became deputy minister of economics, and in 1997-1998 served as first deputy head of the government apparatus.

Vera KUZNETSOVA