The Federation Council at the first meeting plans to appoint the head of the Accounts Chamber

The lower house of parliament – the State Duma – will hold the first meeting of the spring session on January 17. The Federation Council (SF), which, following the State Duma, approves or rejects already adopted laws, will traditionally work a little later. Therefore, the upper house of the Russian parliament will meet on January 25 – its meetings are held only on Wednesdays.

According to two Vedomosti sources in the Federation Council, the issue of appointing the chairman of the Accounts Chamber (CA) may also be included in the agenda of the first meeting. This position became vacant after Alexei Kudrin, who had been in charge of these parliamentary control bodies since 2018, submitted his resignation to the president on November 29, and on November 30, the next day, the Federation Council confirmed this decision.

At the moment, officially the question of a candidate for the post of chairman of the joint venture is not on the agenda on January 25, Vyacheslav Timchenko, chairman of the Federation Council committee on regulations, told Vedomosti. However, he explained that for this they must first go through all the necessary procedures, in particular, the candidates for potential chairmen of the joint venture must be discussed by all committees of the upper house of parliament and submitted to the budget committee.

After that, this committee will submit a list of applicants for a meeting of the committee of the upper house of parliament, which, in turn, will send the list to the head of state. The committees, according to Timchenko, have not yet begun to sit and discuss candidates: “As a rule, they meet on the eve of the first meeting.”

According to the interlocutor in the Federation Council, the committees should be held on January 23-24, that is, before the meeting of the council of the upper house, which is scheduled for Tuesday, January 24. According to the regulations of the Federation Council, candidates for the post of chairman of the joint venture are submitted to the president by the council on the proposals of the committees.

No less than three applicants for the post of chairman of the control body shall be submitted to the President of the Federation Council for consideration. However, according to the regulations, the issue of appointing the chairman of the joint venture can be considered by the upper chamber within 30 days after receiving the president’s proposal on the candidacy.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to a request whether he planned to meet with applicants for the post of head of the joint venture before the appointment.

Now a wide range of candidates are being discussed on the Old Square and in the Parliament. RBCfor example, called in this capacity the first vice-speaker of the State Duma Alexander Zhukov, Vedomosti wrote about Andrey Makarov, chairman of the Duma budget committee.

But there are other potential nominees as well. For example, according to a source in parliament and a Vedomosti interlocutor close to the presidential administration (AP), Minister of Justice Konstantin Chuichenko may be considered for the post of head of the joint venture (Vedomosti sent a request to the Ministry of Justice). “Such decisions are kept secret to the last. But why should such an appointment not take place? – said a source close to the AP.

However, other interlocutors do not yet see any clear prerequisites for the resignation of Chuichenko, who is considered one of the main associates of Dmitry Medvedev (he studied with him at the law faculty of Leningrad State University, was the head of the Presidential Control Department when this position was held by the current deputy chairman of the Security Council). For example, according to one of them, he has recently been able to seriously expand the apparatus of the department, another notes that this is an “agency with an asterisk” – it is directly subordinate to the president, not the government.

Such a reshuffle would only make sense if they wanted to give the joint venture additional weight, argues one of the interlocutors (he had not heard of such an appointment), because Chuichenko, who worked in the White House as the head of the government staff, left the post immediately after Medvedev in 2020, he ceded his office to Mikhail Mishustin.

Among other candidates, one of the interlocutors in parliament names the same Zhukov to Vedomosti (he did not confirm the transfer), as well as two immigrants from St. Petersburg. In particular, Andrey Kutepov, Chairman of the Economic Policy Committee of the Federation Council, and Vyacheslav Makarov, the first deputy head of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, the former speaker of the city’s Legislative Assembly.

The interlocutor of Vedomosti says that Makarov even discussed the possibility of leaving for the joint venture with the leadership of the Federation Council (Vedomosti sent a request to the press service of the Federation Council). It is possible that Galina Izotova, the acting chairman of the joint venture, who was Kudrin’s deputy, will continue to lead the control body. And the last candidate he names is the former head of the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations, and now Deputy Minister of Finance Mikhail Kotyukov.

A Vedomosti source close to the Presidential Administration says that an unexpected figure may be appointed to the post of chairman of the joint venture. Another interlocutor says that in recent years the joint venture was headed by people who have a lot of experience and political influence, recalling that before Kudrin, the joint venture was headed by the current Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova. The joint venture, as another parliamentary source noted, in the case of Golikova has become a kind of personnel springboard.