OSI/CSIS Conference
On 12 May 2003 Marchenko held a speech entitled "Caspian Oil Windfall: Who Will Benefit?" at a conference in Washington D.C. that the Open Society Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies sponsored. In his speech, he defended the National Fund of Kazakhstan's management of revenues from Kazakhstan's petroleum production and he criticised a book published by the OSI with the same title as his speech referring, in particular, to 40 factual "mistakes" found by him in said book.
Marchenko specifically took issue with the allegations that the Kazakhstan Government established the fund on a questionable legal basis, citing 30 amendments to several laws passed by the Parliament regarding financial accountability, the fact that President Nursultan Nazarbayev has complete control over the fund, calling it "simply wrong" that the book refers to "the Russian Black Sea port of Ceyhan" which is in fact a Turkish port, but not, as asserted in the book, a Russian port. In conclusion, Marchenko proposed "that the book be recalled, and the chapter on Kazakhstan be rewritten." George Soros invited Marchenko to point out the mistakes he had found and undertook that these mistakes would be corrected.
Marchenko met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Putin's economic advisor Andrei Ilarianov, in May 2003. After the meeting there were rumors in the media that Putin had offered Marchenko a job in the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.
Read more about this topic: Grigori Marchenko
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