RUSSIA - Profile - Anatoly Chubais

Of a Jewish parent and aged 42, Chubais has become very wealthy and is the CEO of Unified Energy System (UES) which runs 27 of Russia's 34 largest power plants and is still 53% state owned. He was re-elected to this post in June 1998 - after he served as 1st deputy PM - and appointed several allies in key UES positions, including Jewish expert Andrey Rappoport who moved from Rosprom/Yukos to head UES' investment division. With Yeltsin's support in the background, he was first voted to UES' board of directors in early April 1998, after he was relieved as 1st deputy PM the previous month, and was elected as CEO in late April. Chubais was brought back to the government in July as 1st deputy PM to head the negotiations with the IMF, which led to the fund's $22.6 bn bailout package.

Chubais had made a surprise return to the Kremlin on July 15, 1996, when he became its chief of staff. In that position, he got close to the ruling family and was the third most powerful man in Moscow next to Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin. He was made 1st PM and finance minister in 1997. But in November he lost the finance portfolio after a clash with Chernomyrdin. In early 1998 he was removed as overseer of government policy on the news media. His rivalry with Berezovsky and Chernomyrdin remains one of the issues, although Chubais is out of the government. On Aug. 24, 1998, when Chernomyrdin was made PM again, Chubais warned: "The fate of the country rests on whether or not the new Russian government is able to resist... (the huge economic dangers). We have already witnessed the huge losses which the country suffered after March 23, when there was virtually no government for a month and a half. Now the situation is many times more difficult".

Chubais remains a member of the oligarchs' Economic Liaison Council, which he helped set up in June 1998 to advise the government, although the tycoons were split. In early June Yeltsin had appealed to the oligarchs to settle their quarrels and help him stave off a further deterioration of the stock and bond markets. The council's co-ordinator is Berezovsky whose faction includes the oil barons and Vyakhirev. The faction of Chubais includes Vladimir Potanin.

Very unpopular at home, accused for having sold state assets to the oligarchs "for a song", Chubais is praised abroad as a key reformer. But in early 1998 he lost luster in the West and was fiercely attacked by Jewish financier George Soros as being the creator of a system of cronyism and "robber capitalism". The Russians remember him for what they regard as a government con trick, in the end-1992 handout of millions of privatisation vouchers, which many thought would make them wealthy capitalists overnight. Nationalists and Communists branded him a traitor, accusing him of selling off the cream of Russian industry at bargain prices to bankers with close ties to the Kremlin.

Chubais claims his privatisations were a success, stressing the irreversibility of his sell-off of thousands of state-owned companies. Like other radical reformers in the government of Gaidar appointed at the end of 1991, Chubais, who had been 1st deputy PM for the economy, was eased out in the wake of the Communist election victory four years later. But Yeltsin made him leader of the president's re-election campaign. His success in securing victory in mid-1996 over Communist challenger Zyuganov was rewarded on July 15. As head of the presidential administration, Chubais replaced Nikolai Yegorov, a hardliner.

Red-haired, pale and somewhat featureless, Chubais has little charisma but his remarks are intelligent. A former economics teacher, he became more involved

in politics as he served in government. He helped found the Democratic Choice Party in mid-1992 and became its deputy leader. He entered parliament in December 1992.

Born on June 16, 1955 at Borisov in Belarus into an army family, Chubais studied at the Leningrad Economic Institute, then taught there for eight years. He later became economic advisor to Anatoly Sobchak, then mayor of St. Petersburg.