A Russian media campaign against Roman Sulzhyk, a 40-year-old managing director of derivatives at Moscow Exchange, prompted him to quit his job on Jan. 30. Publications accused him of devaluing the Russian ruble, one of the world's worst performing currencies last year, and linked this assault to the financier's Ukrainian citizenship.
“Dear friends, I’ve made a decision, which wasn’t easy, to leave the Moscow Exchange after three years of working here,” Sulzhyk wrote on Facebook. “Unfortunately, my life position and bright personality led to absolutely absurd and groundless accusations in the tabloids and had an impact on the Exchange.”
“I’m Ukrainian, I don’t have and have never had the U.S. citizenship, and my parents, whom I love and for whom I’m making this decision, have been living in Kyiv all their life,” he added.
With two countries in a de facto state of war, citizenship matters a lot.
On Dec. 20, state-owned news agency RIA Novosti in Moscow reported that Sulzhyk is to blame for the depreciating Russian currency. “A Maidan activist who shakes the hand of (U.S. Senator) John McCain … – this and other images journalists and blogger apply to describe Roman Sulzhyk who, according to them, doesn’t deserve a place in Russia,” one article went.
Several days later, on Dec. 24, Moscow newspaper Izvestia ran a story about Sulzhyk. It mentioned Evgeniy Fyodorov, a member of Russian parliament with Edinaya Rossiya, the political party controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Fyodorov asked the Investigative Committee, a Moscow-based analogue of Federal Investigation Bureau, to investigate Sulzhyk, an “extremist” who supported the EuroMaidan Revolution in Kyiv and “was publishing slogans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on Facebook.”
What’s even worse, he “manipulated the market.”
“The stock exchange can’t have any direct impact on the currency volatility,” comments Aleksandr Abramov, a stock market expert with the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
However, Russian journalists, most of whom wouldn’t be able to say how a swap differs from a futures, made their judgement with the local politicians following suit.
Sulzhyk started his career at Moscow Exchange in 2012. Prior to that, he worked at JP Morgan Chase, an American investment bank, in 2000-2008. In 2008-2011, he headed the rates derivatives trading division of Deutsche Bank in Moscow.
Derivatives are considered to be the most complicated investment instrument that led to the 2007-2009 global financial crisis. To manage them, one needs to have a profound understanding of the financial market.
With Russia’s pensioners forming lines to the currency exchange outlets to buy dollars or euros, accusing a Ukrainian financier with experience of work in globe’s leading investment institutions in devaluing the ruble looks like, say, blaming Raghuram Rajan, the head of India’s central bank, for the rape that took place in an Uber taxi cab in New Dehli in December.
Kyiv Post associate business editor Ivan Verstyuk can be reached at [email protected].
