The long-serving chairman of the Alrosa Supervisory Board, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, has announced he will step down at the next Alrosa shareholder meeting scheduled for June 30.

Kudrin's exit from the board has been forced by a presidential decree, issued on April 2, ordering senior Russian ministers to vacate their seats on state-owned company boards.



A press statement, issued by the Finance Ministry earlier this week, said that Kudrin is complying with the "request of the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on April 2, 2011 for the implementation of priority measures aimed at improvement of the investment climate in the Russian Federation."



The statement said Kudrin will be leaving the boards of state-controlled VTB Bank and Alrosa, the government-owned diamond producer.



A well-informed source among Moscow diamantaires told PolishedPrices.com that he believes the likely candidate for chairman of the board will be a Kudrin stand-in, namely Deputy Finance Minister Alexander Akhpolov.



Akhpolov, 55, is an Ossetian who spent much of his career in financial and tax administration in the Russian federation republic of North Ossetia. In Moscow since 2001, he has been in charge of the financial flow control and administration of the Finance Ministry.



He is not known to have had previous experience in the diamond sector.