The vice president of the board of the Savings Bank of Russia, Gennady Melikjan, at the all-Russia conference "The State and Banks" in Moscow in 2001
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Temporary Oversight
// Gennady Melikjan Takes Over One of Andrey Kozlov's Posts
Yesterday the Bank of Russia announced that Deputy Central Bank Chairman Gennady Melikjan had been named to the post ofchief of the committee of banking oversight, a position left vacant by the murder of Andrey Kozlov last week. Kommersant's souces in the Bank of Russia and the presidential administration consider Melikjan's appointment to be for purely technical reasons and predict that the post of deputy chairman in charge of banking oversight will go to someone else.
Many in the Bank of Russia considered Melikjan's appointment to be a given, since he was already in a position to take over the job. The law "Concerning the Bank of Russia" requires that the chairmanship of the banking oversight committee go only to a member of the Central Bank board of directors. Melikjan, who is currently in charge of inspections of credit organizations, is the only member who has direct experience in banking oversight. In particular, it is he who made the decision to include banks in a system of investment insurance.
Others in the banking sector also consider the choice of Melikjan to be natural. "Oversight, on the one hand, should punish, but on the other hand, it should support the stability of the system. And the only people who know that fine line of stability are those who grew up within the system. As such it seems to me that the appointment of Gennady Melikjan is the most logical of all the possibilities," said Russian Credit Bank president Dmitry Yeropkin.
Mr. Melikjan himself preferred not to comment on his appointment. He stated only briefly that he expects no serious changes in the oversight policies of the Central Bank.
At the same time, much attention is being paid to the fact that Mr. Melikjan has not been named to the other post held by his predecessor: that of Central Bank first deputy chairman. Sources within the presidential administration suggest that Mr. Melikjan's duties will be purely technical, while the post of first deputy chairman in charge of banking oversight will go to someone who will be more responsive to President Vladimir Putin's demands for stronger control in the banking sector.
Immediately after Mr. Kozlov's murder, Mr. Putin set about creating an interdepartmental group for banking oversight composed of representatives from the general prosecutor's office, the FSB's Economic Security Service, the Interior Ministry, and the Bank of Russia. The influence of the siloviki in the commission is particularly feared in banking circles, leading to the hope on the part of the Bank of Russia that its representative on the committee will be someone who is capable of both finding a common language with the representatives from the security departments and who is close to the banking sphere.
A source in the Kremlin does not believe that Mr. Melikjan has enough political clout to take up the position. In the source's opinion, the most likely candidate for the spot is Vneshtorgbank-24 president Mikhail Zadornov, who has already met with Central Bank chairman Sergey Ignatiev about the possibility.
Igor Moiseev and Elena Kiseleva
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 22, 2006
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