On the eve of the second round of the 1996 Russian presidential election, two employees of Yeltsin's election headquarters were detained while trying to take more than half a million dollars from the Government House building. What was it, a provocation or ordinary theft of public funds?
In the 1996 elections, Yeltsin found himself in a difficult position. Considering the likely possibility of communists coming to power, the head of the presidential guard, Alexander Korzhakov, FSB director Mikhail Barsukov and Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets persuaded him to cancel the elections, suspend the constitution and ban the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The oligarchs, on the contrary, persistently advised Yeltsin to go to the polls, promising to do everything to win.
They say that Yeltsin was ready to follow the advice of the security forces and, in fact, introduce a state of emergency in the country. However, Anatoly Chubais, through the president’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, dissuaded the current head of state from taking a rash step. Now the fate of the elections was in the hands of the triumvirate: Berezovsky - Gusinsky - Chubais.
Political technologies coupled with oligarchic capital have done their job. In the first round of the presidential elections, held on June 16, Boris Yeltsin defeated Gennady Zyuganov with 35% of the votes, who received 32%. However, a second round was required to determine the winner.
On the evening of June 19, 1996, officers from the Security Service of the President of the Russian Federation detained two members of Yeltsin’s election headquarters - Arkady Evstafiev and Sergei Lisovsky. The first was a close associate of Chubais, and the second was the organizer of a campaign in support of Yeltsin’s candidacy involving Russian pop stars.
The reason for the detention was 538 thousand US dollars in cash in a box of Xerox paper, which Lisovsky and Evstafiev tried to take out of the Government House building. Later, Tatyana Dyachenko explained this episode this way: “Korzhakov was responsible for control over all the finances of the election campaign. Therefore, he carefully watched how Lisovsky, as well as many others, received money dozens of times in Xerox boxes, in boxes of writing paper, in other boxes, in cases, in whatever was convenient to carry the money and pay.” .
Korzhakov himself noted that this time the money from Yeltsin’s election headquarters turned out to be unaccounted for, and he, as a responsible person, could not allow the theft of these funds by “activists.” According to him, the security service has repeatedly received reports of the theft of election campaign funds.
Immediately after the detention of the “activists,” Chubais held a press conference where he criticized Korzhakov and Barsukov, accusing them of fraud and the desire to usurp power. He called the “box of money” “one of the elements of the traditional KGB Soviet provocation.”
Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana Dyachenko comes into action again and asks Korzhakov and Barsukov to release the detainees. Chubais behaves more harshly: “We need to explain the situation to Messrs. Korzhakov and Barsukov: either they behave like human beings, or we will imprison them. Either they shut up or I’ll put you in jail, absolutely unambiguously.” According to Dyachenko and Chubais, the development of the scandal was in the hands of the security forces, which could mean one thing: the end of the elections.
Soon, under pressure from the press and thanks to calls from the Kremlin, Lisovsky and Evstafiev were released. On June 20, 1996, a meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation took place. At it, Yeltsin accused Mikhail Barsukov and Alexander Korzhakov of “exceeding their powers” and removed them from their positions.
Literally two days after his resignation, Korzhakov wrote a letter to Yeltsin, in which he indicated that his (the president’s) decision was wrong, counterproductive and extremely destructive for Boris Nikolayevich himself, since it gave a free hand to the man “whom the whole country hates” - Chubais.
They decided to conduct their investigation of the high-profile events at the editorial office of the magazine “Faces”. It was noted that after talking with the detainees Lisovsky and Evstafiev, the presidential security service found out where the money was taken from. It turned out to be from the office of the deputy head of the foreign loans department. An employee of an unnamed bank, Boris Lavrov, was in the room, although Oleg Lurie, a columnist for the newspaper “Top Secret,” claimed that Lavrov worked at the National Reserve Bank.
Lavrov stated that in March 1996 he became part of the control and accounting group of the headquarters for the election campaign of Boris Yeltsin. On the morning of June 19, he met with Deputy Minister of Finance German Kuznetsov, who asked him to transfer money to Evstafiev.
Then everything goes according to plan. Evstafiev and Lisovsky, who arrived in the evening, packed the money in a box, after which the latter left a receipt confirming receipt of half a million dollars. The meeting, according to Lavrov, lasted several minutes. He did not know who the final recipient of the dollar parcel was.
It is noteworthy that during the secret opening of the safe of Deputy Minister of Finance German Kuznetsov, which followed the interrogation, the Security Service on the night of June 19, 1996, according to Korzhakov, discovered another 1.5 million US dollars.
Boris Yeltsin in his book “Presidential Marathon” explains the detention of activists of his election headquarters and their subsequent accusation of embezzlement of money by Korzhakov’s desire to “settle personal scores with political opponents.”
State Security Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 in London as a result of polonium poisoning under strange circumstances, called the money scandal “the first battle of a big war between oligarchs and security officers.” He noted that the further course of events confirmed this, turning, in essence, into a confrontation between “people in uniform and people with deep wallets.”
Political scientists note that the triumvirate of Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Chubais has something to be proud of. They emerged victorious from this struggle, simultaneously “crushing” the Russian communists. True, in the near future, disagreements and civil strife will play a cruel joke on the oligarchs.
The story itself “with the Xerox box” showed that the 1996 election campaign, from a legal point of view, leaves many questions. In particular, the investigation initiated by Korzhakov revealed that the pre-election expenses of the Yeltsin team were several times higher than the permissible level established by law.
As is known, the sources for the formation of the Kremlin’s “election fund” were money from leading bankers and entrepreneurs. Budget funds were also used for these purposes. But since the withdrawal of treasury funds was not provided for by law, the money went first to the oligarchs, and then the “laundered” ones were returned to the election headquarters. It is possible that the “money in the Xerox box” had to travel exactly this way.
On February 11, an An-148 of Saratov Airlines that took off from Domodedovo towards Orsk crashed in the Moscow region. 55.5% of the carrier’s shares belong to the Soyuz Invest company, which is owned by businessman Arkady Evstafiev. And another 26.63% is held by the Energy Union he heads. The entrepreneur has already appeared in four criminal cases, but was not convicted in any of them. Who is Arkady Evstafiev and how his career developed - in the material “360”.
Education and early career
Open sources indicate that Arkady Evstafiev was born on March 10, 1960 in Saratov. In 1977 he graduated from local secondary school No. 42, in 1982 from Saratov State University with a degree in applied mathematics, in 1986 from the KGB Higher School, and in 1990 from the Diplomatic Academy of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
After the Diplomatic Academy, Evstafiev was sent to work in the Ministry’s Information Department. There he took the position of second secretary and supervised journalists from the Scandinavian countries and Great Britain. A year later he moved to the press service of the Russian government. In 1992–1995, he held the position of adviser and press secretary to First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, in particular, he oversaw the advertising campaign “PrivatizA!tsiya”. He worked as deputy general director of Public Russian Television (OTR), but after the resignation of Chubais he was relieved of his post.
"Xerox Box"
In April 1996, Evstafiev worked at the election headquarters of then President Boris Yeltsin. On the evening of June 19, he and the head of the election campaign, Sergei Lisovsky, were detained at the exit from the Government House with the famous “copier box” containing half a million dollars. Due to a violation of the rules on currency transactions, Kommersant reported, a criminal case was opened. After detention and interrogation, Lisovsky and Evstafiev were released. They stated that they had not seen any box.
“It was a provocation. Well directed. We were simply set up. I can say about myself: I was too naive then. He was very sincere about politics, very emotional,” Lisovsky told Rossiyskaya Gazeta almost 10 years after the incident.
“I am often asked about the notorious “copier box,” and my position has not changed in 20 years: I have never carried this box. I don't know where she came from. If I knew, I forgot,” Gazeta.ru quotes Evstafiev as saying.
Chubais suggested at a press conference that the box was planted by the security forces. Open sources note that informal pressure was also exerted by other politicians interested in Yeltsin’s victory. As a result, the owners of the money were not found, and the case was closed “for lack of evidence of a crime.” The initiators of the detention - Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, FSB Director Mikhail Barsukov and head of the Presidential Security Service Alexander Korzhakov - lost their positions.
In August 1996, Evstafiev went to the Center for the Protection of Private Property, then became deputy general director of the PR and GR service of Mosenergo.
"The Case of Writers"
At the end of 1997, a book scandal occurred in the country. Major government figures became its defendants. Chubais, Kokh, Maxim Boyko, Alexander Kazakov, Pyotr Mostovoy, Evstafiev and others received from the Segodnya-Press publishing house, controlled by the Onexim group, $90 thousand each as an advance for the then unwritten book “The History of Russian Privatization.” Investigators became interested in the excessively inflated fees of co-authors.
However, according to newspapers, the case was closed in 1999. Boris Yeltsin removed Chubais from the post of Minister of Finance, leaving him as First Deputy Prime Minister. The head of the FSDN, Mostovoy, and the head of the State Property Committee, Boyko, resigned, and Kazakov was relieved of his post. According to Kommersant, TV presenter Sergei Dorenko accused Evstafiev that the “writer” tried to bribe the heads of the Moscow bureau of Reuters so that they would publish material about the legality of the fees. However, in a telephone conversation with 360, he denied this information.
In 1999, Evstafiev unsuccessfully ran for the State Duma. He co-founded a number of commercial and trust companies, as well as investment funds, some of which, according to the FLB agency, were supervised by then-deputy government chairman Alfred Koch.
"Credits in the Fog"
In September 2001, Evstafiev became acting. General Director of Mosenergo, in April 2002 he officially headed the company. A little earlier, he became a defendant in a criminal case for the third time.
A statement to the police was received from the shareholder of SBS-Agro Bank Natalya Stepanova. In 1996–1997, the financial organization issued preferential loans of more than five million dollars to the Civil Society Foundation and the Center for the Protection of Private Property, which were then headed by Evstafiev. The publication of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta noted that it was his signatures that were on the loan agreements. Then the bank “disappeared into the fog.” According to the applicant, this caused her great financial problems. But this case, like the previous ones, was hushed up, and then it was closed due to the lack of evidence of a crime.
Former capital mayor Yuri Luzhkov spoke extremely negatively against the appointment of Evstafiev as acting and then head of Mosenergo. The ex-mayor regularly expressed complaints about his activities, in particular in letters to President Vladimir Putin. On June 6, 2005, the head of state criticized Evstafiev due to a major accident at the Chagino substation, after which he resigned. Lenta.ru reported this. According to others, he was dismissed from office by presidential decree due to inadequacy for his position.
In 2006, he headed the CJSC Investment Holding Energy Union.
"Pay your taxes"
In 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office opened a case against Evstafiev and Mosenergo chief accountant Tatyana Dronova for fraud and tax evasion in the amount of 105 million rubles for the period from January 2001 to December 2002. But this case was also closed. From 2008 to 2009, Dronova worked as deputy general director for strategy and development of the Energy Union, and in 2009 she joined the board of directors of the small Saratov bank Agroros, the key beneficiary of which is Arkady Evstafiev.
55.55% of the shares of Saratov Airlines belong to Soyuz Invest LLC, whose owner is Evstafiev. Another 26.63% of the shares are owned by the Energy Union he heads, RBC reported with reference to the SPARK database. The assistant to lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who represented Lisovsky in the box case and Evstafiev in the loan case, the secretary of ex-Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets and former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov refused to comment to 360.
In 1996, two employees of Yeltsin’s election headquarters were detained while trying to take more than half a million dollars from the Government House building. What was it, a provocation or ordinary theft of public funds?
Background
Lavrov stated that in March 1996 he became part of the control and accounting group of the headquarters for the election campaign of Boris Yeltsin. On the morning of June 19, he met with Deputy Minister of Finance German Kuznetsov, who asked him to transfer money to Evstafiev. [C-BLOCK]
Then everything is according to plan. Evstafiev and Lisovsky, who arrived in the evening, packed the money in a box, after which the latter left a receipt confirming receipt of half a million dollars. The meeting, according to Lavrov, lasted several minutes. He did not know who the final recipient of the dollar parcel was.
It is noteworthy that during the secret opening of the safe of Deputy Minister of Finance German Kuznetsov, which followed the interrogation, the Security Service on the night of June 19, 1996, according to Korzhakov, discovered another 1.5 million US dollars.
The fight between two camps
Boris Yeltsin in his book “Presidential Marathon” explains the detention of activists of his election headquarters and their subsequent accusation of embezzlement of money by Korzhakov’s desire to “settle personal scores with political opponents.”
State Security Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 in London as a result of polonium poisoning under strange circumstances, called the money scandal "the first battle of a big war between oligarchs and security officers." He noted that the further course of events confirmed this, turning, in essence, into a confrontation between “people in uniform and people with deep wallets.”
Political scientists note that the triumvirate of Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Chubais has something to be proud of. They emerged victorious from this struggle, simultaneously “crushing” the Russian communists. True, in the near future, disagreements and civil strife will play a cruel joke on the oligarchs.
The story itself “with the Xerox box” showed that the 1996 election campaign, from a legal point of view, leaves many questions. In particular, the investigation initiated by Korzhakov revealed that the pre-election expenses of the Yeltsin team were several times higher than the permissible level established by law. [C-BLOCK]
As is known, the sources for the formation of the Kremlin’s “election fund” were money from leading bankers and entrepreneurs. Budget funds were also used for these purposes. But since the withdrawal of treasury funds was not provided for by law, the money went first to the oligarchs, and then the “laundered” ones were returned to the election headquarters. It is possible that the “money in the Xerox box” had to travel exactly this way.
Today is the nineteenth anniversary of dramatic events that few people remember, but which predetermined the development of Russia for many years to come. On this day, in the struggle for the Kremlin, for the first time, two forces, which today are commonly called “siloviki” and “liberals,” clashed harshly. The liberals then smashed the security forces to smithereens, but as it turned out, not for long.
Before 1996, few people considered the security forces as a political force—they only talked about the confrontation between reformers and communists. That year, Boris Yeltsin ran for a second presidential term. Everyone predicted victory for the communists. In January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Western leaders lined up to meet Zyuganov to meet the future Russian president. Yeltsin, a man who drinks and is not very healthy, has already been written off by most observers.
At the same time, a group of oligarchs was formed in Davos, led by Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who decided to pool their financial and media resources in support of Yeltsin. They called Anatoly Chubais as manager.
Yeltsin faced a choice. The security forces - security chief Alexander Korzhakov, FSB director Mikhail Barsukov and Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets - persuaded him to cancel the elections, suspend the constitution and ban the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The oligarchs and Chubais called for people to go to the polls, promising victory.
On March 16, Yeltsin was ready to follow Korzhakov’s advice and had already signed decrees essentially introducing a dictatorship in Russia. However, Chubais, with the help of Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana, was still able to convince the president, and with a heavy heart he decided to go to the polls, putting a secret triumvirate at the head of the pre-election campaign - Chubais, Berezovsky and Gusinsky.
On June 16, after a grueling election campaign that took him all over the country, Yeltsin finally defeated the Communists; he received 35 percent of the vote, leaving behind Zyuganov with 32 percent. The strategy, which was to reduce Yavlinsky's weight and help Lebed, bore fruit: Lebed came third with 15 percent, taking away a significant part of the votes from the Communists, and Yavlinsky gained 7, losing votes to Yeltsin. Yeltsin and Zyuganov now had to fight in the second round.
Yeltsin understood that he owed his victory to Berezovsky-Gusinsky-Chubais, and at that moment the security forces struck their blow.
How this happened is described in our book with Marina Litvinenko, written from the words of direct participants in the events:
On the evening of June 18, Igor Malashenko, Gusinsky’s right hand and the creative genius of NTV, stopped by the Logovaza Club on Noaokuznetskaya. There he found Berezovsky and Chubais sitting on the veranda. Berezovsky was in great spirits and sipped his favorite Chateau Latour. But Chubais seemed very concerned. For four hours now he could not find his assistant Arkady Evstafiev anywhere. Chubais endlessly called everyone he knew and asked them to find him.
Finally, someone reported that at about six in the evening, Evstafiev and Sergei Lisovsky, owner of the Media International agency, were arrested by Korzhakov’s people as they left the Government House, carrying half a million dollars in cash in a cardboard box containing Xerox copy paper.
As Malashenko later told me, deathly silence reigned on the terrace. No one was surprised by this amount of cash: Lisovsky’s agency coordinated concerts during the election campaign, and pop stars performed only for cash. But the fact that Korzhakov arrested Chubais’s people did not bode well. It was obvious that this would be followed by an attack along the entire front.
Let’s move inside,” someone suggested. It was unsafe to remain on the open terrace, which was clearly visible from the surrounding houses.
Soon several more people arrived: Gusinsky with his guards under the command of a thug armed with a huge pump-action shotgun nicknamed Cyclops, Nizhny Novgorod Governor Boris Nemtsov and Minister of Privatization Alfred Koch.
Later, Malashenko recalled the events of that night from memory:
Boris [Berezovsky] and Gus [Gusinsky] remained the most cold-blooded. Together with Chubais, they quickly counted our resources: two TV channels, direct access to the President through Tanya-Valya [Dyachenko and Yumashev]; two heavyweights - Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and General Lebed. But we understood that Korzhakov had a very real force - the FSB special forces.
For the third time this year, it fell to Tanya-Vali’s lot to save Russian democracy from the security forces. It was already past midnight when they arrived at the Club. As everyone agreed later, this was the decisive factor that saved everyone. By morning, snipers appeared on the roofs of nearby houses. However, Korzhakov did not dare to launch an assault, knowing that the president’s daughter was in the Club.
After the immediate threat had passed with the appearance of Tatyana, everyone remembered the two prisoners - Evstafiev and Lisovsky.
“Chubais picked up the phone,” Malashenko recalled, “called the director of the FSB and started yelling: “If even one hair falls from their head, I will destroy you!” Of course, his threats were worth little, but this picture itself - Chubais yelling at Barsukov - cheered everyone up.
Arriving at the Club, Tatyana called her father. She insisted that the President be woken up.
“Dad, turn on the TV,” she said, “important things are happening.”
At that very moment, NTV presenter Evgeny Kiselev was entering the studio for an emergency news release.
“Perhaps it was the most important news release in the entire history of NTV,” Malashenko recalled. - But it was intended only for one person - Yeltsin. If Tatyana had not woken him up, everything would have ended badly.
After watching the breaking news, the President made one phone call and went back to sleep. And at four in the morning Evstafiev and Lisovsky were released.
In the morning, Chubais was summoned to the president. In the morning news it was announced throughout the country that Soskovets, Korzhakov and Barsukov had been dismissed due to an attempted coup.
When Sasha Litvinenko came to work in the morning, his bosses “walked around like shell-shocked.” Towards the end of the day, the assistant director of the FSB approached him and said: “Tell Boris that if Korzhakov or Barsukov is arrested, then he is a dead man.”
On July 3, 1996, in the second round of presidential elections, Yeltsin won a landslide victory over Zyuganov. After the victory, Chubais received the post of head of the Kremlin administration. The communists were dealt a blow from which they never recovered. The security officers were licking their wounds. A coalition of reformers and oligarchs firmly held power in the Kremlin.
Recalling these events later, Sasha Litvinenko called them “the first battle of the big war between the oligarchs and the security officers.” The entire subsequent outline of events boiled down to a confrontation between people in uniform and people with deep wallets.
The triumvirate of Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Chubais, which can rightfully take pride in consigning Russian communism to the dustbin of history, collapsed soon after. The oligarchs eventually lost the war to the security officers because of their internecine strife.
“They thought that with their own money they could buy our generals and take them into their service, and they rushed to compete to see who could offer the most,” Sasha explained. “But for our people it was a class struggle; from the very beginning they planned to take everything away from them, to sit in their place and command.”
“The oligarchs made a big mistake in considering the communists their main opponents,” he later wrote in his book “Lubyansk criminal group.” “They thought that no one was behind Korzhakov and Barsukov, they didn’t understand that the special services had their own political interests. And the special services learned a lesson, they realized that they would not be able to feed themselves by “protecting” business if they did not crush the oligarchs. In general, in 1996 the special services lost the battle, but not the war. But then few people understood this. Boris, perhaps, understood earlier than others, but Putin outwitted him too.”
The same “copier box”
One of these days, June 16, 2016, will be the anniversary of dramatic events that few people remember, but which predetermined the development of Russia for many years to come. On this day, in the struggle for the Kremlin, two forces, which today are commonly called “siloviki” and “liberals,” clashed violently for the first time. The liberals then smashed the security forces to smithereens, but as it turned out, not for long.
Before 1996, few people considered the security forces as a political force - they only talked about the confrontation between reformers and communists. That year, Boris Yeltsin ran for a second presidential term. Everyone predicted victory for the communists. In January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Western leaders lined up to meet Zyuganov to meet the future Russian president. Yeltsin, a man who drinks and is not very healthy, has already been written off by most observers.
At the same time, a group of oligarchs was formed in Davos, led by Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who decided to pool their financial and media resources in support of Yeltsin. They called Anatoly Chubais as manager.
Yeltsin faced a choice. The security forces - security chief Alexander Korzhakov, FSB director Mikhail Barsukov and Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets - persuaded him to cancel the elections, suspend the constitution and ban the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The oligarchs and Chubais called for people to go to the polls, promising victory.
On March 16, Yeltsin was ready to follow Korzhakov’s advice and had already signed decrees essentially introducing a dictatorship in Russia. However, Chubais, with the help of Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana, was still able to convince the president, and with a heavy heart he decided to go to the polls, putting a secret triumvirate at the head of the pre-election campaign - Chubais, Berezovsky and Gusinsky.
On June 16, after a grueling election campaign that took him all over the country, Yeltsin finally defeated the Communists; he received 35 percent of the vote, leaving behind Zyuganov with 32 percent. The strategy, which was to reduce Yavlinsky's weight and help Lebed, bore fruit: Lebed came third with 15 percent, taking away a significant part of the votes from the Communists, and Yavlinsky gained 7, losing votes to Yeltsin. Yeltsin and Zyuganov now had to fight in the second round.
Yeltsin understood that he owed his victory to Berezovsky-Gusinsky-Chubais, and at that moment the security forces struck their blow.
How this happened is described in our book with Marina Litvinenko, written from the words of direct participants in the events:
On the evening of June 18, Igor Malashenko, Gusinsky’s right hand and the creative genius of NTV, stopped by the Logovaza Club on Noaokuznetskaya. There he found Berezovsky and Chubais sitting on the veranda. Berezovsky was in great spirits and sipped his favorite Chateau Latour. But Chubais seemed very concerned. For four hours now he could not find his assistant Arkady Evstafiev anywhere. Chubais endlessly called everyone he knew and asked them to find him.
Finally, someone reported that at about six in the evening, Evstafiev and Sergei Lisovsky, owner of the Media International agency, were arrested by Korzhakov’s people as they left the Government House, carrying half a million dollars in cash in a cardboard box containing Xerox copy paper.
As Malashenko later told me, deathly silence reigned on the terrace. No one was surprised by this amount of cash: Lisovsky’s agency coordinated concerts during the election campaign, and pop stars performed only for cash. But the fact that Korzhakov arrested Chubais’s people did not bode well. It was obvious that this would be followed by an attack along the entire front.
Let’s move inside,” someone suggested. It was unsafe to remain on the open terrace, which was clearly visible from the surrounding houses.
Soon several more people arrived: Gusinsky with his guards under the command of a thug armed with a huge pump-action shotgun nicknamed Cyclops, Nizhny Novgorod Governor Boris Nemtsov and Minister of Privatization Alfred Koch.
Later, Malashenko recalled the events of that night from memory:
Boris [Berezovsky] and Gus [Gusinsky] remained the most cold-blooded. Together with Chubais, they quickly counted our resources: two TV channels, direct access to the President through Tanya-Valya [Dyachenko and Yumashev]; two heavyweights - Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and General Lebed. But we understood that Korzhakov had a very real force - the FSB special forces.
For the third time this year, it fell to Tanya-Vali to save Russian democracy from the security forces. It was already past midnight when they arrived at the Club. As everyone agreed later, this was the decisive factor that saved everyone. By morning, snipers appeared on the roofs of nearby houses. However, Korzhakov did not dare to launch an assault, knowing that the president’s daughter was in the Club.
After the immediate threat had passed with the appearance of Tatyana, everyone remembered the two prisoners - Evstafiev and Lisovsky.
Chubais picked up the phone, Malashenko recalled, called the director of the FSB and started yelling: “If even one hair falls from their head, I will destroy you!” Of course, his threats were worth little, but this picture itself - Chubais yelling at Barsukov - cheered everyone up.
Arriving at the Club, Tatyana called her father. She insisted that the President be woken up.
“Dad, turn on the TV,” she said, “important things are happening.”
At that very moment, NTV presenter Evgeny Kiselev was entering the studio for an emergency news release.
Perhaps it was the most important news release in the entire history of NTV, Malashenko recalled. - But it was intended only for one person - Yeltsin. If Tatyana had not woken him up, everything would have ended badly.
After watching the breaking news, the President made one phone call and went back to sleep. And at four in the morning Evstafiev and Lisovsky were released.
In the morning, Chubais was summoned to the president. In the morning news it was announced throughout the country that Soskovets, Korzhakov and Barsukov had been dismissed due to an attempted coup.
When Sasha Litvinenko came to work in the morning, his bosses “walked around like shell-shocked.” Towards the end of the day, the assistant director of the FSB approached him and said: “Tell Boris that if Korzhakov or Barsukov is arrested, then he is a dead man.”
On July 3, 1996, in the second round of presidential elections, Yeltsin won a landslide victory over Zyuganov. After the victory, Chubais received the post of head of the Kremlin administration. The communists were dealt a blow from which they never recovered. The security officers were licking their wounds. A coalition of reformers and oligarchs firmly held power in the Kremlin.
Recalling these events later, Sasha Litvinenko called them “the first battle of the big war between the oligarchs and the security officers.” The entire subsequent outline of events boiled down to a confrontation between people in uniform and people with deep wallets.
The triumvirate of Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Chubais, which can rightly take pride in consigning Russian communism to the dustbin of history, collapsed soon after. The oligarchs eventually lost the war to the security officers because of their internecine strife.
They thought that with their own money they could buy our generals and take them into their service, and they rushed to compete to see who could offer the most,” Sasha explained. “But for our people it was a class struggle; from the very beginning they planned to take everything away from them, sit in their place and command.”
“The oligarchs made a big mistake in considering the communists their main opponents,” he later wrote in his book “Lubyansk criminal group.” - They thought that no one was behind Korzhakov and Barsukov, they did not understand that the special services had their own political interests. And the special services learned a lesson, they realized that they would not be able to feed themselves by “protecting” business if they did not crush the oligarchs. In general, in 1996 the special services lost the battle, but not the war. But then few people understood this. Boris, perhaps, understood earlier than others, but Putin outwitted him too.”
History of the box before the second round of the 1996 presidential election:
"Xerox Box", wiretap
