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ABRAMOV, Alexander Sergeyevich
Presidential Aide
06/24/2010
Alexander Sergeyevich Abramov (Александр Сергеевич Абрамов) was born February 10, 1957, in the village of Kurilovo in the Moscow region of Russia. He graduated from the Moscow State University of Railway Engineering (MIIT) in 1979 and from the Russian Government Financial Academy Institute for Retraining and Improvement of Qualifications, specializing in finance and banking, in 1994.
In 1979 he started working for the Moscow railway before becoming first secretary of the Voskresensk town committee of the Moscow branch of the Komsomol. In the early 1990s he was deputy manager of Finis-Bank and project manager in the public relations department of MENATEP Bank. From 1997 to 1999, Abramov was deputy chairman of the board of Alfa-Bank, responsible for relations with state authorities. He was appointed deputy head of the Presidential administration, responsible for working with the regions by President Yeltsin in December 1999 and was re-appointed to the position by President Putin in June 2000.
Since September 2000, he has been secretary of the State Council. Since 2004, he has been an aide to the President, most recently reappointed to this position in May 2008. Before Putin's 2000 presidential campaign headquarters were officially established under Dmitry Medvedev, campaign issues were handled by an unofficial structure headed by Dmitry Kozak, but in fact administered by Abramov. Analysts believe Abramov's work helped attract considerable capital to Putin's election campaign. Although Medvedev was officially named head of the campaign headquarters, Abramov is widely believed to have played the lead role in organizing the campaign.
Abramov’s appointment into the Presidential Administration was lobbied for by Vladislav Surkov, who, like Abramov, had been on Alfa-Bank’s board of directors and who was a protege of Alexander Voloshin, who had close links to President Yeltsin.
Abramov retains close ties to the president of Alfa-Bank, Pyotr Aven, and chairman of its supervisory board, Mikhail Fridman. He is known as a skilled lobbyist.
