Sverdlovsk Region housed an important interregional meeting of governors headed by a visitor from Moscow. Local banks found themselves in the news again due to scandalous violations. More details in the weekly report by UralPolit.Ru.
Sverdlovsk Region housed an important interregional meeting of governors headed by a visitor from Moscow. Local banks found themselves in the news again due to scandalous violations. More details in the weekly report by UralPolit.Ru.
Sergey Sobyanin holds a meeting
Sergey Sobyanin, deputy chairman of the government of the Russian Federation, visited Ekaterinburg last week to chair a meeting of all governors of the Ural Federal District devoted to anti-recession measures. The Ural District is one of the key districts of Russia and its economic situation influences the whole country. Deficit of the Russian budget currently makes 8 %, Sergey Sobyanin said. The government has already spent enormous amounts of money from the reserve fund. Consequently, the task for the regions presumes optimizing all budget expenses on the regional level.
Nikolai Vinnichenko added that Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk Region are most vulnerable in the crisis circumstances, because their economy depends on the metals market.
Growing unemployment has been generally called the most burning problem. Local governments hope that the support of businesses and enterprises will help stabilize employment rate. The Russian government has identified one thousand regional enterprises and 200 federal companies of strategic importance. 300 billion rubles will be used to support them.
Final program of anti-recession measures will be elaborated by the local administrations based on the results of this meeting.
New appointments and resignations
Vladimir Putin has appointed new deputies for the Minister of Regional Development of Russia Viktor Basargin – Yury Osintsev, senator from the Sverdlovsk Region, and Roman Panov, vice-governor of the Chelyabinsk Region.
General Director of MRSK-Ural Aleksey Bobrov resigned last week. This decision was motivated by his desire to realize more of his personal plans and creative ideas, explained Aleksey Bobrov, who is currently 41 years old.
MRSK-Ural demonstrates stability and the management team shouldn’t be changed, he added.
Banks in trouble again
General prosecution of the Ural Federal District disclosed the facts of numerous violations in the actions of top-managers of the bank “Severnaya Kazna”. All assets of this bank currently belong to Alfa-bank, and top-managers demanded millions of rubles of severance pay from the new owner. It has been acknowledged by the prosecution that salary increases and other bonuses had been designated for them illegally.
It has been discovered that in October 2008, when Severnaya Kazna could hardly pay its liabilities, chairman of the management board raised salaries of 7 top managers up to 750 thousand rubles a month, granted them life-long medical insurance at the expense of the bank and 18 million rubles of severance pay. After the bank was sold to Alfa, these managers demanded nearly 70 million rubles of total payments.
VEFK-Ural remained in the news, too. Ural general prosecution received information confirming that the bank appropriated 9 million rubles, which belonged to the Sverdlovsk Fund of compulsory medical insurance, which had been allocated for medical establishments of the region. More investigation procedures are on the way. A criminal case against VEFK-Ural has already been started regarding the loss of 1 billion rubles, which belonged to the Sverdlovsk Pensioners Fund.