Yeltsin Fires His Justice Minister
Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Wednesday sacked Justice Minister Valentin A. Kovalev, who was caught up in a scandal involving a sauna video, and replaced him with a former national security chief, the Kremlin said.
Kovalev’s replacement is Sergei V. Stepashin, a former head of the Federal Security Service.
Yeltsin suspended the justice minister June 22 pending a probe into a newspaper report alleging that Kovalev had been filmed in a gangland sauna with naked women.
Interior Ministry officials said the video, sections of which have been broadcast on Russian television, was genuine.
But Kovalev, 53, has implied that the video is fake. He asked Yeltsin to suspend him to give him time to clear his name.
Yeltsin sacked Stepashin, 45, from his top security job in June 1995 for mishandling a hostage-taking crisis in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk. At least 120 people were killed in the incident, and the separatist Chechen fighters who took the hostages escaped.
Stepashin has headed the government’s administrative department since November 1995.
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