Controversies
Vladimir Litvinenko, who has been rector since the 1990s and has close links to Vladimir Putin, defended Putin's doctoral thesis at the institute in 1996. Litvinenko oversaw Putin's work, which is alleged to include significant amounts of plagiarism and is speculated perhaps to have not even been written by Putin (i.e. that he paid somebody to write it for him). Litvinenko has been criticised for not spotting the plagiarism.
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