The money trail from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to Swiss and
German subsidiaries of the Russian central Bank was comprehensively
reconstructed. Still, the former Chairman of the central bank, Sergei
Dubinin, called Ilyukhin's allegations and the ensuing Swiss
investigations - "a black PR campaign ... a lie."
Others pointed to an outlandish coincidence: the ruble collapsed twice
in Russia's post-Communist annals. Once, in 1994, when Dubinin was
Minister of Finance and was forced to resign. The second time was in
1998, when Dubinin was governor of the central bank and was, again,
ousted.
Dubinin himself seems to be unable to make up his mind. In one
interview he says that IMF funds were used to prop up the ruble - in
others, that they went into "the national pot" (i.e., the Ministry of
Finance, to cover a budgetary shortfall).
The Chairman of the Federation Council at the time, Yegor Stroev,
appointed an investigative committee in 1999. Its report remains
classified but Stroev confirmed that IMF funds were embezzled in the
wake of the 1998 forced devaluation of the ruble.
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