The rector who played by all the rules

Vladimir Mau - the head of the Ranchin and one of the ideologists of the Putin economy - was put under house arrest. "Medusa" tells its story

On June 30, it became known that Vladimir Mau was detained in Moscow, the rector of the RANEPA - the university under the President of Russia. He became the accused in the last year’s criminal case , which was brought to the former deputy minister of education of the Russian Federation Marina Rakov and the rector of another important higher educational institution, the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninka), Sergei Zuev. MAU is accused of "thefts of budgetary funds on an especially large scale ." "Medusa" tells about Mau - and about the case, the defendant of which he became.

Detention

A search in the house of the rector of the RANEPA Vladimir Mau took place two days before the journalists found out about him - early on the morning of June 28. After the search, the MAU was detained and delivered for interrogation, the sources of the Russian BBC service said at the university.

On the same day, the Executive Director of the Media Communications School of RANEPAS Tatyana Udalova sent a letter to colleagues, in which she asked not to answer calls from unfamiliar numbers and refuse to communicate with reporters. At the same time, Udalova fogically made a reservation that media employees could ask "with a request to comment or give an interview with the leadership of the RANEPA." She asked all such appeals to immediately inform her (this letter is at the disposal of Medusa, the Russian BBC service also wrote about it).

According to the BBC source, the Academy team was not talked about that day about the rector’s searches, but this was already discussed at the university “at the rumor level”.

On the morning of June 30 (when Mau was already detained), the news appeared on the RANEPA website that the rector participated in awarding the winners of the I -Professional Olympiad along with the First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko. The awarding took place on June 28-on the day when, according to the sources of the Russian BBC service, the rector was already searches. In addition, in the plots of NTV and REN TV channels, Mau does not appear with awarding.

On the day of the preventive measure, Vladimir Mau was elected to the Board of Directors of Gazprom at the annual meeting of shareholders.

On the afternoon of June 30 - before the detention of Mau was officially announced (Medusa already knew about what was happening from her sources), the rector’s assistant and the vice did not answer the calls of the Medusa correspondent. The press service of the RANEPS answered the call, but said that they did not “hear questions”, after which they hung up the phone and did not approach the phone anymore. At the time of publication of the text, Medusa did not receive a response to the official request to the press service of the Academy.

The detention of MAU was confirmed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs only on the afternoon of June 30. The investigation immediately asked to appoint Mau house arrest until August 7, and the court agreed with this. According to official figures, the rector is accused of “embezzlement of funds of the RANEPAS”, the charge was charged under an article on fraud, committed by an organized group or on a particularly large scale (159 part 4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), the press service of the Tver court said. The punishment under this article is up to 10 years in the colony.

On the afternoon of June 30, the agency publication clarified that the interrogation of Mau continued from June 28 to 30. The rector’s lawyer at a meeting of the preventive measure said that the “negative results” did not give searches and, after a confrontation with one of the witnesses (his name is not called), Mau was released home. After that, the rector took another confrontation - with the former deputy minister of the Russian Federation, Marina Rakakova. On June 30, IAA “on a phone call, in violation of the notification procedure [about the need to appear for interrogation], appeared in the investigation unit,” the lawyer said in court.

Vladimir Mau is defended by lawyer Alexei Dudnik, at the end of the zero his client was the former treasurer of Yukos Alexei Leonovich. Dudnik refused to comment on the MAU "Medusa" case.

At the meeting, it turned out that the same testimony was given by the same Marina Rakova, as well as her assistant Evgeny Zach - a former employee of the Fund of New Forms of Education (Organization subordinate to the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation).

A new business

A month and a half before these events, May 20, 2022, a new criminal case of fraud was allocated from last year’s main case about the theft of budgetary funds of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation; Marina Rakova and rector Shanka Sergey Zuev are accused of him. The new case, according to investigators, is associated with the organized cancer "fictitious employment of an employee of the Ministry of Education to the Federal Institute for the Development of Education of the RANEPAS."

Then, at the end of May, investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted searches from the former and existing employees of the RANEPA, the sources of RIA Novosti and TASS reported. “All of them are in one way or another connected with the RANEPA. In particular, with a search, they came to the ex-head of the Federal Institute for the Development of Education of the RANEPS, Maxim Dulinov, ”said TASS source.

The RANEPA also “discuss” the possible detention of three vice-rectors close to the MAU, the sources of the Russian BBC service say . On the afternoon of June 30, the Agency reported that the searches are held with the vice -rector of the Academy, and according to the source of RBC, the searches are also in the Samuhny RANEPAS.

After the news of the detention of the MAU, the press service of the RANEPA informed the Russian BBC Service that the Academy employees were provided by the investigation of “assistance and assistance”.

Read more about the case of Shaninka and RANEPAS

Read

Universities cooperate under several educational programs, and some university employees are employed both in Shaninka and the RANEPA.

The first criminal case under the article on fraud on a particularly large scale (or committed as part of an organized group) against employees, Shaninki was excited in the fall of 2021. Then they arrested the former deputy Minister of Education Marina Rakov, rector of Shanka Sergey Zuev and others. There are six accused in total. According to investigators, Shaninka received budget money to fulfill two contracts from the Fund for new forms of education development, subordinate to the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, but did not complete the work.

Sergei Zuev was detained in October 2021, taking away from the hospital, where he got with a hypertensive crisis, he was accused of embezzlement of 21 million rubles. The rector was placed under house arrest, after which he was undergoing an urgent heart surgery. In just a year, he underwent three operations. After Zueva was placed in a pre -trial detention center, he fell into civilian and prison hospitals several times.

At the end of November, Rakakova, Zuev and another person involved in the case, Evgeny Zabov , were charged with fraud - according to investigators, they fictitiously employed 12 employees of the Ministry of Education at the Institute of Public Sciences of the RANEPAS.

The criminal case is based on the examination conducted by the Russian Academy of Education. It is headed by Olga Vasilieva, a former Minister of Education, with whom Rakakova had a serious conflict.

"His nature is not bureaucratic"

In the 1980s, Mau worked at the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, taught at Moscow State University. In the 1990s he became an adviser to the chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation-he was then the reformer Yegor Gaidar. Then the Mau took the post of deputy director of the Institute of Economics of the Transition period - they also were Gaidar.

Since 2002, Mau headed the Academy of the National Economy under the Government of Russia. And after the Academy of Civil Service under the President and other institutions was attached to it in 2010, I Mau became the rector of a new enlarged university-Ranchihs.

The Mau has a doctoral degree in economics: he defended the dissertation on the topic “State and economic process (theoretical and ideological foundations of the economic policy of Russia, 1908–1929)”. In France, he is the current doctor of philosophy (PhD) of the University of Pierre Mendes-France with a degree in Applied Economics. In the beginning of 2021, the Mau has a residence permit and real estate in France at the beginning of 2021.

For his work (development of state socio-economic policy and scientific activity), I received two orders “For Merit to the Fatherland” of the III and IV degree from the hands of Vladimir Putin.

Also, Mau is the editor -in -chief of the magazine "Economic Policy", he wrote more than 30 books and 700 articles that were printed in Russia, Germany and Italy and other countries. For example, in 2017, he wrote : “A new political polarization is increasingly being formed, which replaces the confrontation between the right and left forces - in other words, supporters of the free market or socialism, liberalism or ethism. The confrontation between populism and traditional modernization models becomes more significant. ”

In 2011, on the instructions of the Russian government, Mau, together with the rector of the Higher School of Economics, Yaroslav Kuzminov, oversaw the development of Strategy 2020, which described the socio-economic development of Russia until 2020. About a thousand experts in various fields participated in the work on the document.

In 2015, Yaroslav Kuzminov - at that time the current Rector of the Higher School - in an interview with Medusa described their joint work:

Putin instructed us with the head of the RANEPA Vladimir Mau to form a group of experts that prepared his program-2020, and the president’s articles were largely based on those elements of the 2020 program with which he agreed. He did not agree with everything that we proposed - we, for example, offered a more stringent pension reform . But he agreed with the core, with the economic program , so we consider the program with which Putin won the election, his program.

Then Kuzminov called Vladimir Mau and the former Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation Alexei Kudrin “a professional part of the current elite”, which is engaged in “professional support for reforms” in Russia.

“He is characterized by scientific curiosity, a wide range of questions causes him a friendly curiosity,” said Mau Political scientist Ekaterina Shulman in a conversation with Medusa. Schulman herself graduated from graduate school, defended a dissertation there, and also taught at the academy.

“He was interested in social sciences, the history of human thought, the transformation of economic models,” recalls Schulman. - Under his patronage in the publishing house of the RANEP, translated and domestic scientific works, historical literature and memoirs were published. For me, it became unexpected in personal communication, how much he, for example, knows verses by heart. He generally has a wonderful memory of a reading person. Its nature is not bureaucratic, although the bureaucracy was inevitable in the RANEPA. ” As the Rector of Mau, according to Schulman, encouraged the Academy those features that were characteristic of himself: "Scientific search, interest in the new, in what is developing."

“Senior comrade,“ roof ”for all the best [in the RANEPA]. The smartest person who continued to influence the processes for a long time, - described the Mau in a conversation with Medusa, his acquaintance, economist Dmitry Nekrasov. “At least I tried [to influence]: it was already clear that everything was rolling to where it was rolling, but he continued“ Gaidarovo’s case ” - as he knew how.”

In 2010, Vladimir Mau, together with Sergey Sobyanin, Igor Shuvalov, Alexei Kudrin and Elvira Nabiullina and several other officials, came to Boston, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to a two -day seminar, where he studied how to combine science and business to “establish an innovative economy in Russia”.

In 2011, the then head of the Federal Tax Service, Mikhail Mishustin, attracted Mau to the public council of the department-to change his public appearance. Mau headed the Council, his deputy editor -in -chief RIA Novosti (and the reformer of the state news agency) Svetlana Mironyuk became the deputy.

In 2017, RBC called Mau one of the richest rector of Russia: in the ranking he took second place, declaring the income of 64.5 million rubles. In the first place with the income of 195.7 million rubles, the publication was delivered by the former supervisor of Putin, the rector of the St. Petersburg Mining Institute Vladimir Litvinenko. In 2020, Mau reported in the declaration of 74.9 million rubles.

Part of the system

Mau never entered into an open confrontation with the authorities and, rather, helped her. When in 2020 the Nikulinsky inter -district prosecutor’s office of Moscow demanded that the Academy that he headed provide information about students who attend rallies (as well as those who participate in “anti -Russian campaigns” or collaborates with foreign NPOs), the Rector of the MAU appointed employees responsible for fulfilling the requirements of the prosecutor's office. They had to report to the students to the security forces.

After the start of a military invasion of Ukraine, the Mau signed the appeal of the Russian Union of Rectors in support of the actions of a special operation calling for "rally around the president." The signatures were set by more than 260 university leaders (in total, about 700 rectors in the Union). Initially, the document did not have a signature of the Mau - instead of him, the vice -rector of the RANEPA Maxim Nazarov signed the letter, who was called the rector in circulation. A week later, this was fixed, the name of the real rector appeared on the list. The press service of the Academy certified the journalists who discovered Nazarov on the list that the surname Mau was there from the very beginning.

“He could sign anything - but I would be very surprised if he thought that“ war is very good, ”the familiar Mau, economist Dmitry Nekrasov, said in a conversation with Medusa. - He continued to play according to all bureaucratic rules, observed subordination, did not perform sharp demarchees. ”

In mid -May, from the RANEPA, at their own request, they asked to quit the teacher “Critical Thinking” of the Institute of Social Sciences of the RANEPA Denis Grekova, who publicly opposed the war. This happened after Grekova’s colleague at the Academy complained about his post with criticism of Facebook invasion. “I was offered to write of my own free will, I agreed ... You probably heard about Sergei Zuev. In general, in order not to create an additional reason to persecute my university, I completely wrote a statement, ”Grekov said then.

"Another dead university"

Economist Konstantin Sonin in a post, published after the news of the detention of the rector of the RANEPAS, called Vladimir Mau “Not just the rector of the largest in the size of the University of Russia”: according to Sonin, Mau - “Leading Specialist in Economic History, an important publicist and adviser to Yegor Gaidar at the most difficult moment in Russian history”:

MAU, of course, is the most qualified economist of those who were Putin's adviser in the last period when the Russian economy grew up 12-15 years ago. Instead of turning to him for the examination in the difficult economic situation - they arrested him on the fake of the Zuev case.

Outside the walls of the RANEPA MAU, “has long stopped fit into the system,” says economist Nekrasov. “This was the last status person who was part of the economic councils under the government , under the president ,” said Nekrasov Medusa. “He could write some memos-and called me to this.” It has long been pointless to write such notes to the government, but he tried to maneuver and maintain economic and humanitarian science in the environment that he led in position. ”

Nekrasov could not leave a person “from the liberal bloc” at the head of the employees university. “How in our country the“ victorious KGB ”position of the main person responsible for the reproduction of the elites can be occupied by a person like Mau? You understand that all these "schools of governors" , the training of state personnel - they are both formally and largely informally supervised by Mau. [Mau] Liberal, the successor of the Gaidar case, located in the very center for the training of the state apparatus. The whole system was sharpened to pounce on this. ”

The repressions against the RANEPA were “just a matter of time,” said sociologist Viktor Vakhstein , who worked at the Academy for 10 years. “When the most independent people turned out to be either [in jail] under torture - as it happened with Zuev, or out of work, on retirement, in honorary resignation - as happened in HSE, it became obvious that the skating rink would reach MAU,” said Vakhste Medusa. - The Rakoka case is only part of these repressive rolleries. And they took place not only in Moscow. ”

Vakhstein said to “clean up” the space relative to the autonomous pro -Western education, but, unlike HSE , I did not give up its positions “to the last”:

He refused to transfer to the Academy to people affiliated with another political camp. And even when there were rolled on the academy - and they happened regularly - he, thanks to his political weight, managed to fight back. He did not dismiss politically objectionable teachers on the scale in which they were fired for the past few years [in universities throughout Russia]. There were no closure of international projects until a very recent time, there were no demonstrations of the paroxysms of patriotic delight until recently at the Academy. And this is a greatly merit of Mau.

Благодаря связям Мау и его умению «отбиваться», вспоминает Вахштайн, в РАНХиГС «были возможны международные программы, англоязычные бакалавриаты, обучение по программе liberal arts ». Часть проектов РАНХиГС без покровительства ставшего фигурантом уголовного дела ректора выжить не смогут, считает социолог. «Я не буду их [конкретные проекты] называть, чтобы не повредить людям», — уточнил Вахштайн в разговоре с «Медузой».

«[При Мау в РАНХиГС появились] Школа актуальных гуманитарных исследований во главе с Николаем Павловичем Гринцером, небольшие направления по психологии — это то, что развивалось на моих глазах, то, что я видела как рядовой сотрудник, я совершенно не какая-то особо приближенная [к Мау преподаватель], — вспоминает бывшая заведующая кафедрой теории и практики медиакоммуникаций РАНХиГС Ксения Лученко в разговоре с „Медузой“. — Он поощрял студенческие обмены, стажировки, приезды иностранных преподавателей в академию. С ним было интересно: он был руководителем, который живо интересовался тем, что происходит — именно с содержательной точки зрения».

При Мау в РАНХиГС появлялись проекты, уже невозможные в других государственных вузах, считает преподававшая в академии оппозиционный политик Юлия Галямина. «Институт общественных наук [РАНХиГС], в котором [арестованный по „делу Раковой“ Сергей] Зуев был ректором. Программа liberal arts , которая была самой прогрессивной, — перечисляет Галямина. — Видимо, она теперь накроется. Ее уже переименовали, многие преподаватели оттуда ушли. Видимо, и сама РАНХиГС превратится в еще один погибший вуз».

Екатерина Шульман считает неудивительным, что, хотя Мау и был частью политической системы, это не уберегло его от обвинения. «Он не был оппозиционером и не мог им быть на этой должности. Он старался не впадать в крайности: не проявлять избыточного начальственного рвения во вред учреждению, студентам и преподавателям, — говорит Шульман. — Он был не просто частью системы, но одним из архитекторов ее экономической идеологии. Но это само по себе не становится никакой страховкой от такого развития событий [уголовного дела]. Мы видели, как система поедает своих».

По мнению Шульман, в последнее время уровень репрессий внутри элит (в отличие от направленных против гражданского общества) снизился — это, как отмечает политолог, могло быть сделано, чтобы «демонстрировать всеобщее единство» элит россиянам и внешнему миру — чтобы не складывалось ощущения, что «властная машина пошла вразнос: люди разбегаются и непонятно, кому руководить», считает Шульман. По ее мнению, «то, что произошло сегодня, выбивается из этой демонстрации всеобщего единства».

Шульман считает, что обвинение Мау — это не способ поменять руководство в РАНхИГС, а тянущееся последствие «дела Шанинки»: «Кажется, в нем затронуты действительно большие деньги. И они [люди, которые могли бы принимать решения о возбуждении дел] даже не особенно смотрят на то, какое впечатление обвинение будет производить».

С Шульман не согласен Виктор Вахштайн. Сейчас перед силовиками «поставлена задача устроить в РАНХиГС массовые репрессии и зачистки», убежден социолог. «Вопрос, скорее, в том, кто станет следующей жертвой [следствия] внутри академии, — рассуждает он. — Понятно, что если это будет реализовываться по сценарию Шанинки, то задача там — уничтожить весь костяк, а не конкретного ректора. Люди [в РАНХиГС] отбиваются, люди держатся. По кому еще проедет силовая машина? Кто еще окажется в тюрьме?»

Саша Сивцова и Лилия Яппарова