A 37-year-old deputy finance minister viewed as one of Russia's top macroeconomists died of cancer less than a month before Kudrin left.
Oksana Sergiyenko, who played a key but little-noticed role in the 2004 creation of the federal stabilization fund, showed a rare talent for numbers and was motivated by a Protestant faith in God — a rare combination that drew hostility in some circles and unsubstantiated allegations that she was on the payroll of U.S. intelligence.
Kudrin — fired by President Dmitry Medvedev on Sept. 26 amid differences over government spending — will perhaps be best remembered for his bulldog determination to put revenues from high oil prices in the 2000s into the stabilization fund.
But the person responsible for drafting the fund's paperwork was Sergiyenko.
"She was one of the main drivers of the stabilization fund," said Valentina Boitsova, a senior economist and department deputy head with the Finance Ministry, who worked closely with Sergiyenko. "She prepared all the paperwork."
Sergiyenko's brother, Alexei, said his sister believed passionately in the fund and worked night and day for weeks on its creation.
"She prepared all the documents — that I remember clearly," said Alexei Sergiyenko, a financial markets analyst with Sberbank. "Around seven years ago she wrote a complete defense for the creation of the fund — why the stabilization fund was needed and how it was going to be spent."
Remarkably, Oksana Sergiyenko found inspiration to help create the fund in the biblical story of Joseph, who as the interpreter of Pharaoh's dreams came up with the idea to store windfall grain for an unforeseen lean period, her brother said.
Sure enough, Russia's lean times arrived with the 2008 recession. Suddenly everyone in the government — including populists who had ridiculed Kudrin for not spending the money as it flowed in — rejoiced that more than $200 billion had been stashed away. Kudrin received praise from government officials around the world for his farsightedness. Scarcely a word was uttered about Sergiyenko's role — and apparently she liked it that way.
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The Moscow Times
