Recognized for its competence, but accused of compromising with the regime, the technocrat tries to limit the Russian financial crisis.
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When a brilliant central banker, rented for his effective work, becomes an accomplice of a murderer diet? Is there, for competent Russian technocrats, other choices than leakage or compromise? Elvira Nabioulline may have asked these existential questions when she appeared, everything from black dressed, for a short solemn speech on February 28. Russia had invaded Ukraine four days earlier, and Westerners were to freeze the assets of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), of which she is the governor. At least half of this Russian “Treasure of War” of $ 630 billion (573 billion euros), carefully accumulated for years of work, was now inaccessible.
Without mentioning the war or even “the special military operation” in place, according to the terminology of the Kremlin, M me nabioulline announced a brutal remedy to try to limit the Russian financial panic: a doubling the 20% key interest rate and severe capital controls. On Wednesday, March 16, she underwent the Governor of the Central Bank, while the country was missing a repayment deadline, taking the first step towards a default.
Tone and severe face, Elvira Nabioulline is the central banker of Vladimir Putin since June 2013. Its professionalism is no doubt: “It is competent, open to dialogue, rational”, esteem Sergei Guriev, a former economic adviser of the government Russian, who regularly worked with her. He took the road from exile in France in 2012, after criticizing the arrests of political opponents. She chose to climb the ladder of a brilliant career. “Putin believes that she is loyal to him, otherwise she would not have had this position. She probably has a relationship of trust with him,” says Guriev.
“She does not worry of the interest of the Russians “
Daniela Gabor, specialist in central banks at the University of Western England, in Bristol, confirms it, but more brutally. “The competent technocrats that support the deadly dictatorships hiding behind the pretext of” working for the Russian people “should be sent to the Hague [where the International Criminal Court).” “She is part of the Russian system. She does not Do not worry about the interests of the Russians, but those of the Kremlin, “added Maximilian Hess, Specialist of Russia at Foreign Policy Research Institute, an American think tank.
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