Yury Chaika

Yury Chaika
Yury Chaika, Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation
6th Prosecutor General of Russia
Incumbent
Assumed office 23 June 2006
President	Vladimir Putin
Preceded by	Vladimir Ustinov
Personal details
Born	(1951-05-21) 21 May 1951 (age 66) Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, Khabarovsk Krai, Soviet Union
Occupation	Attorney

Yury Yakovlevich Chaika (Russian: Юрий Яковлевич Чайка) is the current Prosecutor General of Russia.

Chaika began his career as an electrician in a shipyard. After serving in the army, he graduated from Sverdlovsk Institute of Law in 1976 and began work at Irkutsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office where he served as an investigator and a deputy district prosecutor. In 1983 he became head of the investigations at the East Siberian Transport Prosecutor's Office.

From 1984 to 1992 Chaika worked in various positions for the Irkutsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office, the regional Communist Party and the East Siberian Transport Prosecutor's Office. In 1992 he was appointed Irkutsk Oblast prosecutor.

In 1995 he became first deputy Russian prosecutor general. He was appointed by then Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov, his former classmate from Sverdlosk Institute of Law. Following Skuratov's suspension, Chaika served as acting prosecutor general for a brief spell between April and August 1999. From August 1999 to June 2006 he served as justice minister.

On 23 June 2006, Chaika became Russian prosecutor general, effectively swapping jobs with his predecessor Vladimir Ustinov who took up the post of justice minister.

A "Crown prosecutor" (likely a reference to Chaika) was mentioned in an email chain released on 11 July 2017 by the son of then Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, Don Jr, in regards to the Russian government and their alleged attempts to provide damaging information during the U.S. Presidential election of 2016. The email thread resulted in the Trump campaign–Russian meeting of June 2016.

On 14 June 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office reported that it had reopened the "Three Whales" corruption investigation, a case in which nineteen high-ranking FSB (Federal Security Service) officers were allegedly involved in furniture smuggling cases, as well as illegally importing consumer goods from China. The mass media revealed that the officials dismissed around that time had worked in the Moscow and federal offices of the FSB, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Moscow Regional Prosecutor's Office, the Federal Customs Service and the Presidential Executive Office. Deputy heads of the FSB Internal Security Department also figured in the report authored by Viktor Cherkesov. The purge occurred while FSB head Nikolai Patrushev was on vacation.