Pugachev: I led Putin to power

The founder of Interprombank Sergey Pugachev claims that he played a key role in Putin's coming to power. In an interview with Financial Times, the banker said that it was he who proposed Putin’s candidacy as a successor to Boris Yeltsin. According to him, this was necessary in order to "not lose the country."

Pugachev says that the State Duma was preparing a coup to announce the impeachment of Yeltsin and put forward criminal charges against his family members. “We had to save everything for which we fought,” said Pugachev.

According to Pugachev, it was he who convinced Tatyana Dyachenko and Valentina Yumashev to persuade Yeltsin to appoint Putin the prime minister and resign ahead of schedule. “I personally led Putin to power. I worked for nine months and night to achieve this,” Pugachev said.

Currently, Pugachev lives in Europe, hiding from criminal prosecution.

At the end of 2010, Interprombank was deprived of a license and was declared bankrupt. In January 2011, the case was opened against non-established persons from the bank’s managers under Articles 195 (illegal actions in bankruptcy) and 196 of the Criminal Code (deliberate bankruptcy). Later, some defendants appeared in the case, but the name of Pugachev was not called among them.

The former senator went to the UK. In 2012, the Russian authorities arrested Pugachev’s assets, and in December 2013 he was charged in absentia under Part 3 of Article 33, part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code (organization of assignment and embezzlement on an especially large scale). The maximum sanction for this crime is 10 years of the colony. At the same time, Pugachev was put on the wanted list and arrested in absentia, but the decision on absentee arrest was canceled by the appellate authority.

On October 9, 2014, in an interview with The Financial Times, Pugachev said that the Russian economy was transformed into a feudal system , where businessmen are only nominal owners of their assets. According to him, there are no more inviolable persons in the Russian business environment, where Vladimir Putin dominates, there is not a single company in the country outside of its reach. "Today in Russia there is no private property. There are only serfs belonging to Putin," the ex -senator said.

On November 27, Interpol announced Pugachev on the wanted list . The card on the website of the international organization claims that the former senator is wanted for appropriation or embezzlement.

On June 5, the TFR press service reported that in January, documents for Pugachev’s extradition from the UK were sent. On June 1, the investigation issued a new decision to attract Pugachev as the accused. Now he is charged with part 3 of Article 33, part 2 of article 201 of the Criminal Code (organization of abuse of authority).

The next day, Kommersant said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Great Britain gave a move to a request for Pugachev's extradition to Russia. The documents were submitted to the Westminster Magrastry Court of London. He chose as a measure of restraint for the ex-Senator a non-departure subscription.