President Vladimir Putin suggested that Anatoly Chubais, a former top government official who fled after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, may have left due to financial irregularities at the state-run corporation he oversaw.
Putin’s comments, made on September 12 at an economic forum in Vladivostok, were the first he’s made about Chubais since he abruptly resigned last March and fled Russia.
Until 2020, Chubais headed the state-run corporation Rosnano, which was tasked with developing Russia’s high-tech nanotechnology. Putin then appointed him as a special envoy for foreign relations.
Asked by the event moderator about reports that Chubais was living in Israel, Putin replied, using what appeared to be an anti-Semitic remark: “For some reason, [Chubais] is hiding there. They showed me photographs, from the Internet where he is no longer Anatoly Chubais, but some Moshe Israeilevich, living somewhere there. Why does he do this? I don’t understand,” Putin said.
“Why did he run away? Maybe this is also due to the fact that there were some complex processes at [Rusnano], which he headed for many years. There's a big hole there, a huge financial hole,” he said.
“Thank God, there are no criminal cases or prosecutions there. But it may have something to do with this, that he fears in the end this will somehow lead to a criminal case,” Putin said.
Last October, Russian authorities announced they had opened a probe into Rosnano's financial activities, alleging as much as $50 million might have been embezzled at the company between 2010 and 2020.
The status of that investigation is unclear.
Chubais's exact whereabouts are not known, although he’s been spotted in Cyprus, and Russian news reports say he may have sought to immigrate to Israel.
He has said nothing publicly since fleeing Russia. Last August, he was reported to have been hospitalized in Italy for a rare immunity disorder.
A deputy prime minister and Kremlin chief of staff in the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin, Chubais was instrumental in the controversial privatization of some of the country's biggest industrial assets.