Chubais changed his name to “Moshe Izrailevich”: from whom is the ex-head of Rusnano running?

There’s a lot to learn from James Bond

The story of Anatoly Chubais’s departure from Russia has recently taken a very detective turn. The elusive ex-director of Rusnano was seen in Cyprus, Istanbul, and Tel Aviv. Today I was spotted in Riga. And it would be nice if Mr. Chubais just moved from place to place – who doesn’t like to travel? Well, for some reason he also managed to change his name and even his patronymic.

Anatoly Chubais, who fled Russia shortly after the start of the Great Patriotic War, tirelessly travels around the world. Here is a photo of the ex-director of Rusnano, thoughtfully looking at groceries in a supermarket in Cyprus. Here he looked forlornly at the screen of an ATM in Istanbul. But here he is already at the Tel Aviv airport, with a sad look, eating a sandwich in the company of his wife.

And just today, Fontanka.ru got hold of a new video with Chubais in the title role. The footage was filmed in Riga last Saturday. And again the airport: Anatoly Borisovich with a small suitcase is quickly heading to the landing. Either to Amsterdam or to Antalya: flights to these cities started at intervals of five minutes.

Why does Chubais have such a sudden craving for sudden and frequent travel? Maybe he just decided to see the world, following the example of pensioners in Western Europe. Or maybe the reason is much more prosaic: a hole was discovered in the Rusnano budget after the ex-director left Russia in the spring of 2022. So Anatoly Borisovich had to go illegal.

And to such an extent that he changed not only his passport – from Russian to Israeli – but even his name.

Vladimir Putin spoke about this on the sidelines of the EEF today.

“For some reason he’s hiding… They showed me a large photograph from the Internet, where he is no longer Anatoly Borisovich, but Moshe Izrailevich, how he lives there,” the president said. Due to the influence of some nanotechnologies, it occurred to Chubais to act in the spirit of illegal spies, it is not entirely clear. From the point of view of the law, he is not one of those whom “the firefighters are looking for, the police are looking for.” At least for now.

Putin noted: there are currently no criminal cases at Rusnano. So for now, only photographers from all the capitals, wherever he appears, are clicking the newly-minted Moshe Izrailevich on their smartphone cameras.

Moreover, Mr. Chubais seems to have decided to completely rewrite his biography and erase from it mentions not only of Rusnano, but also of any of his ties with Russia in general.

A couple of months ago, a former Russian (you can’t erase the words from a song) manager published an article in the journal “Problems of Economics” of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in which, as they say, everything is beautiful. Firstly, the title: “Nonpayments in the Russian Economy.” And secondly, Chubais titrated himself as “an independent British researcher from Glasgow.”

What came over Chubais remained a mystery even to Putin:

“Why the hell does he need this, I honestly don’t understand,” the head of state was surprised, commenting on the chaotic movements of the ex-head of Rusnano around the world. But he immediately suggested: maybe the ex-head of the corporation was afraid that criminal cases might be initiated, so he went illegal.

However, so far Mr. Moshe Izrailevich Chubais is doing no better with the art of obfuscating traces than in the development of nanotechnology. He could learn from his British “colleague” James Bond. He managed to lead all the world’s intelligence services around his finger for decades and never changed his name.