The Financial Times

Max Seddon in St Petersburg

MAY 24, 2018

Russian banker linked to Jared Kushner ousted from VEB Sergei Gorkov to be replaced at ailing state lender by Putin ally Igor Shuvalov

The Russian banker who has come under scrutiny for his ties to Jared Kushner, a close adviser to US president Donald Trump, is being pushed out by Vladimir Putin and will be replaced by a former deputy prime minister to the Russian president.

Mr Putin replaced Sergei Gorkov as chief executive of VEB, an ailing state development bank, with former first deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov on Thursday.

Mr Shuvalov promised “not to let [Mr Putin] down”.

Mr Gorkov was fired to make way for Mr Shuvalov, Russia’s top economic official for the last decade, three people familiar with the matter said. Mr Gorkov will stay on at VEB under Mr Shuvalov until he finds him a new job, Mr Putin said.

A graduate of the FSB’s training school, the successor to the KGB academy, Mr Gorkov became a key figure in special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump entourage’s ties to Russia after he met Mr Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, in Trump Tower after the 2016 election.

Mr Kushner, a special adviser to the US president, said he was conducting government business, but Mr Gorkov said the meeting was part of a business roadshow, raising suspicions that the meeting touched upon VEB’s struggles with US sanctions and Mr Kushner’s attempts to refinance a major New York real estate holding.

Mr Mueller is investigating the meeting and an earlier meeting with then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, who asked Mr Kushner to meet Mr Gorkov, according to the Washington Post.

Mr Kushner told a Senate hearing last year that Mr Kislyak had said Mr Gorkov was a person “with a direct line to the Russian president who could give insight into how Putin was viewing the new administration and best ways to work together”.

“I did not collude with Russians, nor do I know of anyone in the campaign who did,” Mr Kushner added.

Former colleagues of Mr Gorkov, however, said his ties to the Kremlin were not as strong as assumed in the US. Mr Gorkov was head of human resources at Yukos, once Russia’s largest oil company, until Russia jailed its owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Russia’s richest man, in 2003.

He later took up a senior post at state-run Sberbank. Mr Gorkov inherited an $18bn hole in VEB’s balance sheet and largely failed to turn the bank around.

VEB lost Rbs287bn in 2017, a record in its decade-long history and 2.6 times what it lost in 2016. Bankers criticised Mr Gorkov for giving attention to cryptocurrencies, wellness, a “teenager factory” of school-age coders, and YouTube rap battles while VEB experienced financial struggles.

VEB declined to comment. A spokesperson for Mr Shuvalov did not immediately return a request for comment.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he would not comment on personnel appointments.