Spouse(s) Tamara Stepashin Name Sergei Stepashin | Nationality Russian | |
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Prime Minister Yevgeny PrimakovActing PM himself Full Name Sergei Vadimovich Stepashin Born 2 March 1952 (age 72) Lushunkou, China ( 1952-03-02 ) Education Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation | ||
RUSSIA: YELSIN FIRES PM & CABINET
Colonel General Sergei Vadimovich Stepashin (Russian: Серге́й Вади́мович Степа́шин; born 2 March 1952) is a Russian politician who briefly served as Prime Minister of Russia in 1999. Currently he is Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of Russia. He was appointed federal security minister by President Boris Yeltsin in 1994. He resigned his position in 1995 as a consequence of the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis.
Contents
- RUSSIA YELSIN FIRES PM CABINET
- RUSSIA PM STEPASHIN BRIEFS YELTSIN ON HIS USA VISIT
- Early life and education
- Career
- Honours and awards
- References
RUSSIA: PM STEPASHIN BRIEFS YELTSIN ON HIS USA VISIT
Early life and education
Stepashin was born in Lüshunkou, China on 2 March 1952. He graduated from the Higher Political School of the USSR Ministry of the Interior (1973), in 1981 from the Lenin Military-Political Academy, and in 2002 from the Finance Academy. He is a Doctor of Law, Professor, and has a rank of the State Advisor on Justice of the Russian Federation. His Military rank is Colonel-General.
Career
Stepashin served as the Head of the FSK (the predecessor of the FSB) from February 1994 until June 1995. He then became justice minister, serving from 1997 to March 1998, and interior minister, holding that office from March 1998 to May 1999, when he was appointed and confirmed by parliament as prime minister. Yeltsin made it fairly clear when he appointed him Prime Minister that Stepashin would only hold the position temporarily, and he was replaced in August 1999 by future president Vladimir Putin.
Stepashin's attitude towards the Chechen conflict was markedly different from that of Vladimir Putin. Stepashin had, for example, presented leaders of the separatist regime in Chechnya with monogrammed pistols, praised the activities of the religious extremists who had taken over several Dagestani villages, and had proclaimed publicly: "We can afford to lose Dagestan!".
After having been fired from the position of Prime Minister, Stepashin joined the political party Yabloko for the Russian parliamentary elections of 1999 and was elected to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. Later on he resigned his parliamentary seat and became head of the Account Chamber of the Russian Federation, the federal audit agency. He holds his job to date.
Most recently, he has been asked by lawyers for Hermitage Capital, once among Russia's top foreign investors, to investigate what it says was a series of fake tax refunds which defrauded Russian taxpayers of 11.2 billion roubles ($382 million), according to lawyers Brown Rudnick in a letter to Stepashin.
Since 2007, Stepashin is the head of the revived Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society.