It was then, Pugachev said, that he first began to really notice Putin. The day after the video was aired, Putin gave a press conference together with Sergei Stepashin, the country’s interior minister, at which he vowed that the tape was authentic. In comparison to Putin’s clear, insistent manner, Stepashin kept his eyes glued to the floor, as if embarrassed to be part of the show. Pugachev said it was then that he began to see Putin as someone he could rely on:[66] ‘He spoke very coolly. He looked like a hero on TV. This was the first time I noticed. No one else was thinking of him then. But I thought, he looks good on TV. We’ll make him president.’[67]
Despite everything, Skuratov was still in position, and was increasing the pressure over the Mabetex affair. On March 23, while Swiss prosecutor Carla del Ponte was visiting Moscow again, matters reached boiling point. Skuratov sent a team of prosecutors to seize documents from Borodin’s property department, as well as to the Moscow offices of Mabetex.[68] The raid by a prosecutor on a Kremlin office was unprecedented. The Family – and Borodin and Pugachev – were in shock. The theatrics were already ominous, but the old guard had a further point to make. That same day, a leading Communist lawmaker, Viktor Ilyukhin, stepped up the pressure another notch, holding a press conference at which he claimed he’d received evidence that part of the $4.8 billion bailout loan granted to Russia by the International Monetary Fund at the height of the 1998 financial crisis had been siphoned off to companies linked to the Yeltsin Family, including $235 million through what looked to be an Australian bank, Bank of Sydney, to a company 25 per cent owned by Leonid Dyachenko.[69] The media furore reached fever pitch, with political analysts saying they were no longer sure whether Yeltsin could secure the support of the army.
Pugachev said he returned to the Federation Council to press for another vote on Skuratov’s resignation.[70] But the former Communist senator who led it once again indicated that he had more powerful backers elsewhere. Pugachev then went to see Luzhkov, the Moscow mayor, whose voice was carrying ever greater weight with the senators of the upper chamber. But Luzhkov had been trying to stack the parliamentary vote against the Kremlin ever since the August financial crisis hit. He’d developed his own ambitions for power, said Yumashev: ‘Luzhkov was working actively in the Federation Council. He was telling the heads of the regions, “I will be president and I will give you this and do this for you. We are fighting the president, and the prosecutor general for us is a powerful resource.” In essence, there was a fight for the future of the presidency.’[71] ‘Luzhkov was boasting he had 40,000 guys from the Moscow interior ministry behind him, as well as the local FSB,’ said Pugachev.[72] ‘Primakov and Luzhkov had been working to get the support of tens of thousands across the mid-level of the army. This was starting to look like a real state coup.’ One Russian tycoon close to Luzhkov said the Moscow mayor’s political weight had indeed risen rapidly: ‘Against the background of the flailing Yeltsin, it was clear he was the new centre of power. Marshals and generals began coming to him. They came to bow to the new tsar. They were asking for orders from him.’[73]
What happened next, Pugachev insists, was motivated by the best intentions. He said that he could not allow Primakov and his crew to come to power and endanger the freedoms of the Yeltsin years, and that he’d felt the stench of Soviet stagnation and corruption as soon as Primakov and his team had entered the White House: ‘The first thing they did was ask for bribes. I’d spent so much effort making sure the democrats remained in power and the Communists were kept out,’ he said, referring to his efforts in Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election campaign. ‘You need to understand that the Yeltsin Family were normal people. This was nothing compared to the corruption you see today. My idea was not to let it all collapse.’[74] But fears over the money trail Skuratov was pursuing and where it could lead undoubtedly weighed heavier still.
Skuratov had spent the morning of April 1 handing over a report to Yeltsin on what he said were the illegal Swiss bank accounts of twenty-four Russians.[75] By the evening, Yeltsin’s Kremlin had launched another attempt to oust Skuratov from his post. Skuratov’s deputy, Yury Chaika, and the chief military prosecutor Yury Demin were called in to the office of the Kremlin chief of staff, by then a Berezovsky associate named Alexander Voloshin, a slight, bearded economist.[76] There, Voloshin, together with Putin, Nikolai Patrushev, who’d risen with Putin through the St Petersburg KGB and had served for the past four years in senior positions in the FSB, and Pugachev leaned on them to launch a criminal case against Skuratov, claimed Pugachev. They wanted him suspended for cavorting with the prostitutes.
Chaika and Demin were scared. ‘They didn’t understand why they were there. It was like a meeting of deaf and blind,’ said Pugachev. ‘They were both frightened. “How can we open a criminal case against the prosecutor general?” they said. They were looking at who was there at the meeting. Putin was no one then, Patrushev was no one. They looked at us and thought, “We’ll end up outsiders, and then we’ll be accused of organising a state coup.” I could see this going through their heads. I understood this in five minutes. So I called them away individually.’
Pugachev said he went to a meeting room opposite Voloshin’s office. First, he called in Chaika. ‘I asked him, “What do you want to open a criminal case?” But I saw there was no chance. Then I called in Demin, and asked him, “Are you ready to be prosecutor general?”’ Seeing that his offers of rich rewards and promotions in return for cooperation were having little effect, Pugachev asked them to at least explain in detail what would be needed to open a criminal case. ‘We talked for six hours, going over it all. They said only a prosecutor general could launch a case against a prosecutor general. I said, “Look,” to Chaika, “you are the first deputy and you will become the acting prosecutor general. You can open a case against the former prosecutor general.” But he said, “No, the Federation Council has to sign off on it.” I said that if there was no criminal case, the Federation Council wasn’t going to sign off on it. And we went round and round in circles for hours. I understood that it was not possible to deal with them, that nothing was going to work out.’
It was already after midnight, and Pugachev was rapidly running out of options. He had one avenue left. In the small hours of the morning, he called the head of the Moscow city prosecutor’s office at home. ‘I said, “I need you.” He said, “Yes, Sergei Viktorovich, what do you need?” I told him I couldn’t tell him by phone. But he asked me again what the problem was. He said, “You have to tell me.” So I sent one of my guys round to his house with a note.’[77] But the Moscow prosecutor appeared to have little desire to respond in person. Pugachev believes Chaika called him and warned him off. When Pugachev phoned him again a little while later, he advised Pugachev to call the prosecutor on duty for the night instead.
This man was Vyacheslav Rosinsky, a grey man in glasses who that night was in a terrible state. He had been drinking – his daughter had recently committed suicide, hanging herself in her flat, and he was still mourning the loss. But Pugachev sent a car to bring him into the Kremlin nevertheless. As Rosinsky was driven through the Kremlin gates, said Pugachev, ‘he was flabbergasted. He had no idea where he was being taken. When he got to my office, he sat there in a drunken funk. He was very down. But I told him, “Look, it’s all very simple. You can open a criminal case against the prosecutor general.” I showed him the charge sheet’ – which of course had been prepared in advance. ‘He told me what I needed to change. And then he signed.’[78]
Pugachev began to think about what he could offer in return. ‘I told him I couldn’t make him deputy prosecutor general immediately. But he said, “That’s all right. I don’t want that. If possible, I’d like to be the prosecutor general of Moscow.”’ Pugachev told him he’d make it happen. Although in the end he couldn’t pull it off, that didn’t matter. The criminal case accused Skuratov of abusing his position, and led to his immediate suspension by Yeltsin. His position was undermined when the prostitutes on the tape testified that they were paid for by a relative of a businessman and banker who’d been under investigation by Skuratov.
For a while, Skuratov still fought tooth and nail