Putin’s successor touched diamonds

By Alexey Chertkov

On February 6, during his visit to the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russia’s future President visited a diamond sorting center of Russia's State diamond company ALROSA in the city of Mirny. This has served as the ground for a short retrospective review of presidential governments in view of their influence upon diamond business.

Boris Yeltsin
Under Yeltsin, the struggle between Moscow and Yakutia for domination in the diamond mining sector didn’t calm down. In that time, Mikhail Nikolaev, president of Yakutia, managed to use the weakness of the federal centre, having ‘outplayed’ Moscow officials. Then ALROSA started to be considered a “Yakutian company.” The only advantage of the Yeltsin era for the diamond business was an issue of the law "On Precious Metals and Stones."

Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin has orderly and purposefully brought to redistribution of ALROSA’s shares in favour of the state, basically through the shares repurchase from company’s physical shareholders, worker of the enterprise. Under Putin, liberalization of diamond industry has been embodied in actual steps: cancellation of rough diamond export and import quotas, declassification of information on diamond mining.

Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev’s stay in the Mirny region, Russia’s diamond mining center, was darkened by an unexpected electricity cut that lasted for about an hour. Ironically, this happened soon after Medvedev had launched a hydroelectric unit at the Svetlinskaya hydroelectric power plant by pressing a symbolic red button.
The Svetlinskaya hydroelectric power plant is called to supply energy to diamond mining operations in Western Yakutia.

After that, the State Duma entrusted the RF Government to clear up why Medvedev’s trips are accompanied by large-scale utility and manmade disasters, and emergency situations. According to the information in mass media, there were 13 large-scale utility and manmade disasters, and emergency situations during Medvedev’s visits in the regions in January.”
We can only hope that an incident occurred to Medvedev on the diamond land by mere chance, and it will not be able to shade the perception of Russia’s future president of the diamond business.