CHUBAIS ADMITS HE EARNED A LOT IN 1996, BUT DENIES EVADING TAXES.

President Boris Yeltsin’s opponents, having failed to find a constitutional means of ousting him from power, have now trained their guns on his chief-of-staff, Anatoli Chubais. The press has been having a field day with a copy of Chubais’ statement covering his account with Most Bank. It shows him earning $278,000 in the first six months of 1996, much of it on the lecture circuit, and spending it in London and New York. Chubais shrugged off these reports. "I have money, and I spend it as I choose," he told the newspaper Izvestia last week. But Chubais, scourge of Russian businesses and regions that default on federal taxes, strongly denied potentially more embarrassing charges that he had evaded paying income taxes. He also declined to reveal details of what he claimed was his second account with a Russian bank, saying the press had not yet found out where that was. (Izvestia, January 23)

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