In a surprise move on Wednesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev picked a Russia Forbes List billionaire as his adviser, according to a statement made by presidential spokeswoman Natalia Timakova on Wednesday.
Mikhail Abyzov, 39, ranked 76th by the Forbes’s 2011 Russia Billionaire List with a fortune estimated at $1.2 billion, chairs the board of directors of E4 Group, one of Russia’s largest engineering companies.
“Medvedev has signed a decree on appointing Mikhail Abyzov as an adviser. He will focus on coordinating the work of an ‘open government,’ and working out mechanism of its interaction with government agencies,” Timakova said.
In his state of the nation address to parliament last December, Medvedev proposed setting up the mechanism of a larger government to address the country’s pressing issues.
“I have suggested going beyond the bounds of the established institutions and creating a greater, or probably, it would be better to call it ‘open government’, which would unite, for the sake of addressing strategic and day-to-day issues, all levels and branches of power, public figures, prepared to participate in the processes of running the state, developing and scrutinizing the most important decisions and programs,” he said.
