Valery Braiko

Chairman, Russian Gold Producers Union

Valery Braiko was born on 12th Feb­ru­ary 1939 in Tula Re­gion (No­vo­moskovsk). His par­ents were min­ing en­gin­eers. In 1961 he gradu­ated from Tula Min­ing In­sti­tute as min­ing en­gin­eer-elec­tri­cian and star­ted work at the “Sever­ov­os­tokzo­loto”. Valery began his car­ri­er as an elec­tric­al mech­an­ic of a mine in Chukotka. He later be­came a fore­man, chief mech­an­ic and then chief elec­tric­al en­gin­eer. From 1970 to 1975 he was the chief en­gin­eer and dir­ect­or of “Krasnoarmeisky” and “Kom­so­mol­sky” mines. Un­til 1982 he led the Pol­yarn­in­sky min­ing-and-pro­cessing in­teg­rated works plant, a part of “Sever­ov­os­tokzo­loto”.

From 1982 to 1984 – stu­dent of Na­tion­al Eco­nomy Academy of Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of the USSR. The title of gradu­ation pa­per: “Prob­lems of non­fer­rous metals pro­spect­ing”.
In 1985 he was ap­poin­ted dir­ect­or gen­er­al of “Sever­ov­os­tokzo­loto”. Many ex­perts be­lieve that gold min­ing and pro­cessing in­dustry of Magadan re­gion and Kamchatka reached its highest eco­nom­ic growth dur­ing his ten-year lead­er­ship.

In March 1995 he be­came a Chair­man of the Rus­si­an Gold Pro­du­cers Uni­on. He ini­ti­ated the Uni­on’s concept as non-profit or­gan­iz­a­tion that brings to­geth­er pre­cious metals mar­ket play­ers such as gold-min­ing com­pan­ies, pro­cessing com­pan­ies of vari­ous own­er­ship types and com­mer­cial banks. In his opin­ion, the main goal of the Uni­on is co­ordin­a­tion and in­teg­rat­ing ef­forts of its mem­bers – gold min­ing and pro­cessing com­pan­ies of vari­ous own­er­ship types, com­mer­cial banks and oth­er en­tit­ies of pre­cious metals and gem stones mar­ket – to en­sure the de­vel­op­ment and growth of the in­dustry as a whole and to im­ple­ment ap­pro­pri­ate meas­ures.

Mr Braiko is a cor­res­pond­ing mem­ber of the Rus­si­an En­gin­eer­ing Academy (1995), mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al IT In­form­a­tion Academy (1997) and mem­ber of the Rus­si­an Min­ing Academy (1999).

In Oc­to­ber 2002 he was elec­ted deputy chair­man of the Com­mit­tee of Cham­ber of Com­merce of Rus­si­an Fed­er­a­tion on sup­port­ing en­tre­pren­eur­ship in min­ing, pro­cessing, pro­duc­tion and trade of fer­rous metals, gem stones and jew­ellery.