President Vladimir Putin said that he is not aware of any threats to the security of the former rector of the Russian Economic School (NES) Sergei Guriev, and explained his move to Paris by the fact that the economist’s wife lives in France.

Regarding the fact that the head of our school of economics went to Paris - his wife lives in Paris and works. Nobody threatened him, he constantly goes to see her,” Putin said at a press conference following the Russia-EU summit held in Yekaterinburg on Tuesday.

At the same time, Putin noted that he “recently learned” Guriev’s name and does not know whether the ex-rector has “any sins before the law, ” Interfax reports . According to the president, Guriev, if he has not violated anything, is not in danger. "100%. And then, he is engaged in economic activity - let him do it where he wants and where he likes best,” he commented on the economist’s departure.

“If he wants to live - he is a free man - in Paris, let him live in Paris. No one is persecuting, no one is scaring,” Putin stated. “If he wants to come back, let him come back,” he said.

The famous Russian economist Sergei Guriev has been abroad since the end of April. Various sources reported that he could leave all posts and emigrate to France, where his wife, economist Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, has been working for several years. Guriev himself did not confirm the rumors. But on May 28, Sberbank reported that Guriev refused to run for the bank’s supervisory board, and on May 30, the NES board of directors accepted his resignation from the post of rector.

After this, Guriev gave several interviews to Russian and foreign media, in which he explained his departure by fears of being arrested in the “YUKOS case.” He said that investigators interrogated him several times about the examination of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s verdict, in the development of which he participated, conducted searches of him and seized all his electronic correspondence for five years.

Putin named the reason for Guriev’s departure