CREF founder and chairman Pavel Ivlev recently attended the 2011 annual meeting of the U.S.-Russia Business Council in Chicago. You can read his open letter to its members here and his op-ed about the meeting that appeared in the Chicago Tribune here.
Ivlev also had the opportunity for an exchange with Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, who gave a keynote address on Oct. 4. Ivlev’s questions is below:
Igor, I’m glad to see you here. The question I want to ask you will be perhaps a little bit more personal than this audience normally allows. Sad news came today that our friend Vasily Aleksanyan died. You know who he was, what he did and why he died. My question is what you personally are going to do as the prime minister of our country, to fight pandemic corruption, which has spread over our country, and as a very good lawyer, as I know a much better lawyer than some other members of the government, what are you going to do to create really independent courts in Russia?
You can find Shuvalov’s answer, beginning in paragraph 10, here: http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/10/05/58211007.html.
