Yury Skuratov


Yury Ilyich Skuratov is a Russian lawyer and politician.
Skuratov was born in Ulan-Ude. From 1995 until 1999, he was Prosecutor General of Russia. In February 1999, he disclosed the existence of FIMACO.
In April 1999, then FSB Chief Vladimir Putin and Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin held a televised press conference in which they discussed a video that had aired nationwide March 17 on the state-controlled RTR channel which showed a naked man very similar to Skuratov, in bed with two young women. This video was released after he began looking into charges of corruption by President Boris Yeltsin and his associates and the video was said to serve as kompromat.

2000 presidential campaign

In 2000, Skuratov ran in the Russian presidential elections.
Skuratov's campaign largely ran advertisements intended to remediate the damage inflicted to his reputation by the video which had been released in 1999. These ads portrayed him as a decent family man and a faithful husband who had been the victim of “lies” and “fabrications”.
In the limited coverage he was allotted, Russian media treated him as a sideshow rather than as a serious contender for the presidency.