Yury Skuratov
Yury Ilyich Skuratov is a Russian jurist and politician.
Skuratov was born in Ulan-Ude. From 1995 until 1999, he was Prosecutor-General of Russia. In February 1999, he disclosed the existence of FIMACO.
Notable investigations
Supported with an audit of the financial and economic activities of the office of the Prosecutor-General of Russia which was investigated by Nikolai Yemelyanov, Skuratov spearheaded a corruption investigation into the former acting Prosecutor-General of Russia Alexey Ilyushenko and his friend Pyotr Yanchev.Ilyushenko was forced to resign on 8 October 1995 because of a 97 volume indictment on him involving the theft of 25 million tons of Russian oil, which was worth 2.7 billion rubles, from the Balkar Trading company. Balkar Trading, formed in Balashikha, was one of the largest Russian oil traders in the early to mid 1990s and was in competition with Boris Berezovsky's interests. BAM-Credit, which had Balkar Trading accounts, was the dominant financier of gold mining in the Irkutsk and Magadan regions.langx|ru|Татьяна Владимировна Ильюшенкоlangx|ru|"Балкар-банка"langx|ru|Петр Головиновlangx|ru|АОЗТ «Русский Дом Селенга» langx|ru|Гаврилов Илья Наумовичlangx|ru|Федеральный депозитный банкlangx|ru|Арслан Какаевlangx|ru|госпожа Ниязоваlangx|ru|Филипп Генрихович Туроверlangx|ru|Генрих Яковлевич Туровер
Scandal and dismissal
In April 1999, then FSB Chief Vladimir Putin and Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin held a televised press conference in which they discussed a video that both Mikhail Shvydkoy and Mikhail Lesin agreed to release and that had aired nationwide on 17 March on the state-controlled RTR channel which showed a naked man very similar to Skuratov, in bed with two young women.This video was released after he had been investigating numerous corrupt officials including Alexander Mamut and both Pavel Borodin and Vladimir Putin and had begun looking into charges of corruption by President Boris Yeltsin and his associates: the video was said to serve as kompromat.
Skuratov's dismissal occurred just days before a second search of the owner of Mabetex the Albanian businessman Behgjet Pacolli linked interests during an ongoing money laundering investigation which had begun in 1992 in Bern involving Pacolli and Yakutiya officials involved in gold and diamonds especially the Mayor of Yakutsk Pavel Pavlovich Borodin who was Putin's architect for the transfer of the Presidential Property Management Department assets to LLCs, JSCs, and Joint Ventures during early 1997.
In early 2000, Filipe Turover sent messages from his Swiss residence to Moscow prosecutors "I'm ready to talk about Putin. Always your Turover." The Russian prosecutor Ruslan Tamaev headed the Russian investigations into Mabetex which ended when his half brothers Hasan and Hussein were charged with illegal possession of drugs and weapons and he was subsequently removed from investigations. A few months later the charges against his half brothers were dropped.
In April 2000, Skuratov was fired as chief prosecutor after serving a suspension for accusing top officials of corruption.
2000 presidential campaign
In 2000, Skuratov ran in the Russian presidential elections.Skuratov's campaign largely ran advertisements intended to remediate the damage inflicted to his reputation by the video which had been released in 1999. These ads portrayed him as a decent family man and a faithful husband who had been the victim of "lies" and "fabrications".
In the limited coverage he was allotted, Russian media treated him as a sideshow rather than as a serious contender for the presidency.