OREANDA-NEWS. February 10, 2011. Following the publication of an article in a Russian newspaper yesterday naming three members of the EBRD’s Moscow staff, the EBRD wishes to state that these employees are not under any investigation and are not linked in any way to the criminal inquiries that were the subject of the article, reported the press-centre of EBRD.

The three EBRD staffers named in the article published by RBK-Daily on January 19 were Natalia Khanjenkova, the EBRD’s Managing Director for Russia, Alexander Orlov, Director for Government Relations in Russia, and George Orlov, Director for Financial Institutions in Russia.  All three are Moscow-based.

The investigations which led the EBRD to lift the immunity of four individuals working in the Russian Director’s office at the Bank’s London headquarters concern exclusively Russian officials assigned to the EBRD by the Russian government, and not Bank staff.

One of those officials has been named in a statement issued by Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development on January 18. The identities of the other three have not been disclosed.

Unlike the individuals under investigation, who had all worked in the office of Russia’s representative on the EBRD board at the Bank’s London headquarters, none of the three EBRD staffers mentioned in the article is a Russian official.  

The EBRD has vigorously raised the issue of how the names of three Bank employees with no links whatever to the case appeared in the said article with the editorial management of the newspaper.