FEDERATION COUNCIL FLINGS MUD AT “YOUNG REFORMERS,” NEWSPAPER AT PRIMAKOV DEPUTIES.

Federation Council speaker Yegor Stroev yesterday charged that last August’s financial collapse was the result of “gross errors” committed by Sergei Kirienko’s government and the “criminalization” of the “credit-financial” sphere. A commission set up by the Council to investigate the August meltdown has put the blame on Kirienko, then prime minister; Sergei Dubinin, then Central Bank chief; Sergei Aleksashenko, then Dubinin’s deputy; Anatoly Chubais, then President Yeltsin’s special representative to international lending institutions; and Yegor Gaidar, then serving unofficially as an adviser to Kirienko.

The Council’s commission has recommended that those responsible for the financial collapse be banned from government service and from working in state or quasistate organizations or companies. (Chubais currently heads United Energy Systems, Russia’s para-statal electricity monopoly.) The commission accused both Chubais and Kirienko of disclosing confidential information to interested foreign organizations, and that Chubais, “without observing the necessary demands of national security, carried out consultations with the heads of foreign financial organizations which have an interest in the Russian market” (Russian agencies, March 15).

While the Federation Council’s accusations, which focus on the alleged sins of the “young reformers,” are bound to be welcomed by the Primakov government, the cabinet also continues to be the target of corruption allegations. “Nezavisimaya gazeta” today detailed an alleged scheme in which a significant chunk of Angola’s multibillion-dollar debt to the Soviet Union–and now Russia–was sold at throwaway prices to an offshore firm in the Isle of Man. The newspaper said the deal, which was approved late last year by First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov, had cost Russia several hundred million dollars (Nezavisimaya gazeta, March 16).

REINFORCEMENT FOR THE NAVY’S “NORTHERN BASTION”.