POLITICS | Wed Aug 24, 2016 4:41pm EDT

Trump adviser's Russia credentials come under scrutiny

By Alexander Winning and Olga Popova | MOSCOW

When Donald Trump named a little-known U.S. energy consultant as part of his foreign policy team, the adviser's ex-boss was puzzled; how could the relatively junior banker he knew in Moscow a decade ago be qualified to brief a presidential candidate?

Carter Page, who worked in Russia at U.S. investment bank Merrill Lynch, paints an impressive picture of his three-year stint from 2004, saying on his company's website that he advised on "key" transactions involving some of the country's biggest energy groups.

But Sergey Aleksashenko, who became head of the bank's Moscow operation toward the end of Page's assignment, expressed doubts about whether he has the experience to act as an adviser on Washington's fraught ties with the Kremlin.

"For me it was a strange choice," said Aleksashenko, who served as a deputy finance minister and deputy central bank governor in the 1990s before running Merrill Russia in 2006-2008. "Carter was never a person who would discuss foreign policy or U.S.-Russian relations."

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