Norilsk Nickel president Andrei Klishas plans to resign from the mining company to start a career as a lawmaker in the State Duma.
Klishas said by phone that he might run in the Krasnoyarsk region, where Norilsk produces most of its nickel, as a member of the United Russia party. He was confirming a report in Vedomosti.
Klishas was appointed to the post by Norilsk chief executive Vladimir Strzhalkovsky last year to help end a shareholder conflict between Vladimir Potanin's Interros Holding and Oleg Deripaska's United Company RusAl. Prior to joining Norilsk, Klishas was an executive at Interros.
"I have done what I was supposed to at Norilsk," Klishas said. RusAl, which owns 25 percent of Norilsk, and Interros, which has management control of the world's biggest nickel producer, have been embroiled since 2008 in a feud over running the company.
Vedomosti said Friday that Klishas may use his status as a lawmaker to fight RusAl by seeking to ban tolling, whereby materials are processed by a Russian plant for a fee and the finished product is exported and sold by a foreign-registered company.
"I don't have a goal of fighting with RusAl," Klishas told Bloomberg. The State Duma elections are scheduled for December.
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