Epress.am News from Armenia
The head of banking oversight at Russia’s central bank, Gennady Melikyan, who prior to going on holiday until Aug. 25 made his resignation public, officially resigned after returning to work briefly.
Melikyan made his resignation public a month after the bank approved a record bailout of Bank of Moscow, a banking source told Reuters early this month.
“It (the resignation) is likely to be linked to the Bank of Moscow (bailout approval) because Melikyan was in charge of supervision,” said Rustam Botashev, an analyst at Unicredit Securities.
The $14 billion bailout of Bank of Moscow, including a 295 billion rouble ($10.5 billion) central bank loan, was agreed when state bank VTB’s hostile takeover bid revealed a gaping hole in its books.
The bailout was equal to about 1 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product, the highest amount paid in Russia to shore up a bank.
Bank of Moscow’s former head, Andrei Borodin, has left Russia after selling his and his ally’s stake for about $1.1 billion. Borodin is wanted on an international arrest warrant and denies any wrongdoing.
Melikyan joined the Central Bank in 2003, leaving Sberbank as its vice-president. In 2006, Andrei Kozlov, the Central Bank’s first vice-president, was murdered and Melikyan replaced him on the supervisory committee, thus launching his watchdog career forward, reported The Moscow News.
“It was a difficult time,” a colleague of Kozlov and Melikyan told Vedomosti, “After Andrei’s death the motor broke down and Melikyan was a moral leader at that time, he could argue himself hoarse with the bank’s opponents, even with people from state banks.”
Melikyan has said little about his departure, saying that it was time to go, “as I have wanted to do for a long time,” Vedomosti reported.