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Eastern Europe
June 14, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 13
Russia's Fx/gold reserves top $500bn for the first time in five years
The foreign currency and gold reserves of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) amounted to $502.7bn as of end of the week of June 14 –
the first time the Central Bank of Russia’s (CBR) gross international reserves (GIR) topped the $500bn mark since 2014, when the reserves where slashed from $510.5bn to $388bn by the need to support plummeting ruble rate, the regulator reported on June 13.
Reserves gained $7.5bn in the reporting week, due to a positive revaluation of the foreign currency component and regular purchases of Fx as part of the "budget rule" sterilising extra oil revenues, the CBR said in a statement.
As reported by bne IntelliNews, the macro stabil- ity of the first quarter of 2019 has allowed the CBR to return to its informal target of building up GIRs to over $500bn after flip flopping on the issue earlier this year.
The $500bn target was set by the CBR in 2015, as the currency market stabilised after the extreme volatil- ity of 2014, and was repeated by Nabiullina until the spring of 2018. But in September 2018 along with front-loading the key interest rate by 25bp to 7.5% the CBR halted purchases of foreign currency on the currency market as ruble came under increased pressure from possible toughening of sanctions.
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Ukrainian president seeks dismissal of prosecutor general
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has submitted a motion to the nation's parliament to approve the dismissal of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, according to deputy presidential chief of staff Ruslan Riaboshapka.
"There is a legal position that is connected with the fact that despite changes in the law on the prosecutor’s office that the prosecutor general should not have a degree in law, other provisions of the law on the prosecutor's office say that only be a person with a degree in law could work as a prosecutor at the Prosecutor General's Office," Interfax quoted Riaboshapka as saying on June 11.
He added that a prosecutor performs procedural functions and that he or she must have both
a degree in law and relevant experience in the field of law.
Lutsenko, appointed in 2016, has no legal training and has been widely criticised by both local reform- ers and Western governments for being entirely ineffectual. However, the former president Petro Poroshenko and his circle are unwilling to loosen their grip on the key law enforcement institution, or replace Lutsenko with a new and untainted figure.
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