Mr Chubais is one of several top officials who received a $90,000 book advance from a publishing company partly owned by a bank which is one of the biggest beneficiaries of state sell-offs. One of the five authors, Alexander Kazakov, Boris Yeltsin’s first deputy chief of staff, was fired by the President yesterday, prompting rumours that Mr Chubais will suffer the same fate.
Mr Yeltsin will be loathe to lose him. He was the driving force behind his reelection campaign, and is a key contact point with Western governments and investors and international institutions, notably the International Monetary Fund.A nervous-looking Mr Chubais, who is first deputy prime minister, appeared on television yesterday, where he admitted the fee was “high”. He denies wrongdoing, however, offering to pay most of the money to a new charity, the Fund for the Protection of Private Property.Although the book, titled The History of Russian Privatisation is unpublished, its chances of being a hot seller are seen as nil.

Yesterday, the Moscow prosecutor, Sergei Gerasimov, said he intended to interrogate Mr Chubais and other officials about the payment, which was from Segodnya-Press, an affiliate of Oneximbank. The bank was recently among the winning bidders for a valuable slice of the state telecoms monopoly, Svyazinvest. The scandal is suspected as being an attempt at revenge by Boris Berezovsky, a tycoon and rival of Mr Chubais recently sacked by Mr Yeltsin He was a losing bidder for Svyazinvest.. Paul Daniel is running the English National Opera at the most threatening moment in its history. In his first interview since taking over the helm, he tells David Lister why the company isn’t ready to quit the Coliseum. After tonight’s premiere of Verdi’s Falstaff, Paul Daniel, music director and acting artistic head of ENO, will come on stage and make a political speech.

It will begin: “Ladies and gentlemen, you have seen tonight what it is that makes this company unique …” He has been making that same speech after almost every performance for the past highly charged fortnight. He usually gets a thunderous ovation.
After several years of largely self-inflicted wounds, there is a buzz about the ENO again. Its audience figures are up, it is reacquainting itself with critical acclaim for standards of production and musical direction. It has dropped its deeply unpopular plan to apply for lottery money to leave the Coliseum and fund a new building outside the West End. And it has won lottery money to help pay off its deficit and make a fresh start financially.And then along comes the Culture Secretary, Chris Smith, with a proposal that the ENO should leave the Coliseum and move into the Royal Opera House, which it would then have to share with both the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet.The ENO’s loyal followers and its loyal staff are appalled, fearing that a move to Covent Garden could lose it both its audience and its distinct identity – opera in English at reasonable prices (pounds 2.50 balcony to pounds 55 best stalls), nurturing home-grown talent, developing links with the community through much-praised education work, and championing new opera in its contemporary opera studio.The Culture Secretary’s proposals have to pass through Sir Richard Eyre’s review committee, where they could still, in theory, be modified or even radically altered. But there is already a growing feeling of sympathy with the ENO, the feeling that they may have been dragged into the Government’s determination to sort out Covent Garden, and may have been unjustly tarred with the same brush of managerial incompetence and profligacy – ironic when you consider that ENO has just had a massive vote of confidence in the form of a pounds 4.5m stabilisation award from the Arts Council.And just at the time when the ENO needs a political streetfighter to lead its campaign to stay in its home, it finds itself without a general director following the resignation of Dennis Marks in September.

And so the 39-year-old conductor Paul Daniel, who only arrived from Opera North in August, now finds himself in the bear pit of politics.It sounds like a walkover for Mr Smith – until you meet Paul Daniel, and realise that the company, in its hour of need, has almost by accident found itself a most sincere and persuasive advocate and ambassador, with an honesty and openness that those more experienced in cultural politics tend sometimes to mislay over the years.Paul Daniel is a tall, skinny enthusiast, his prematurely greying curls contradicted by a boyishly youthful face. He is hard to interrupt, so passionate is he in his championing of the ENO, where he began his operatic career back in 1982, before moving on to become music director first of Opera Factory in 1987 and then of Opera North, in Leeds, in 1990.It must, I suggest, be odd to be thrust into such a political hotbed only weeks after returning to ENO as its new music director. “Yes, I don’t do much music at the moment,” he replies a little sadly, “and I’m not a politician But something really interesting is happening It’s like in a war. What has hit me in the face with this company is the intensity of feeling within. The people here are all pulling together, though we don’t actually know who we are fighting The Treasury? No Public taste? No The Press? Certainly not And absolutely certainly not Covent Garden.

I’m determined this will not become a `them and us’ situation. They need as much support as we can give them and vice versa.”Daniel, a newcomer to the rough-and-tumble and even sheer bad manners of politics, is still angry at the speed of the Smith announcement. “Our staff should not have woken up to hear me talking about it on the Today programme. That is not the way things should happen or people should be treated in the real world.”But now that he has digested the Smith proposal, he is intense and forthright in his dismissal of it “The company is the most important thing. But if we go to Covent Garden, the company will be decimated.