Swiss charge Yeltsin’s daughters with corruption

JUNE 12: Swiss authorities will soon charge two daughters of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin with corruption, Newsweek magazine sai...

JUNE 12: Swiss authorities will soon charge two daughters of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin with corruption, Newsweek magazine said in an article released on Sunday.

Tatyana Dyachenko, one of Yeltsin’s closest political advisors when in power, and Yelena Okulova, his elder daughter, are among 14 people soon to be indicted in the Mabetex affair, the magazine said. The Swiss-based construction company Mabetex allegedly paid millions of dollars as bribes to top Russian officials to obtain lucrative renovation contracts for Kremlin-owned buildings when Yeltsin was in power. The allegations involve charges that Mabetex set up and paid the bills for credit card accounts for Dyachenko and Okulova around the same time that contracts were awarded to the company. According to sources cited by the weekly magazine, the accounts were opened for Yeltsin’s daughters “without their consent” and reportedly used them to spend “quite a lot of money.” The bills amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars, Newsweek

said.

Swiss authorities charged Behgjet Pacolli, head of the firm, with money laundering and criminal association two weeks ago. The scandal has hit the Russian leadership close to home, as Swiss authorities indicted Pavel Borodin, the former chief of the Kremlin property management division and top aide and confidante of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, on money laundering charges.

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Borodin helped to bring current Russian President Vladimir Putin from St. Petersburg to Moscow and served as his boss when he first arrived at the Kremlin. All those involved in the affair have denied any wrongdoing, and Borodin, despite an international arrest warrant issued in January, has refused to give himself up. Russia has no extradition treaty with Switzerland. The possibility that charges might be brought against Dyachenko have been discussed at the highest levels of the Kremlin leadership for at least a year, Newsweek

sources said.

Yeltsin was granted full immunity from prosecution on the day of his retirement on December 31. Speculation on Putin’s reaction to the formal charges pits Putin’s loyalty to the Yeltsin family with pragmatic concerns. “My guess is that Putin won’t react. He’ll try to stay out of it, but he won’t defend Tatyana,” the weekly quoted an analyst as saying, on condition of anonymity.