MIKHAIL MISHUSTIN, the man likely to be Russia’s next prime minister after President Vladimir Putin proposed him Wednesday, is a little-known figure to the wider public who has headed the country’s tax service for a decade.

The 53-year-old Muscovite was trained as an engineer and has a Ph.D. in economics, according to his official biography.

He was appointed head of the tax service in 2010 after being proposed by then-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, known for his outspoken liberal stance.

He has been in the post ever since and is praised for streamlining the service formerly notorious for red tape, mountains of paperwork and long queues.

After Putin proposed Mishustin, Rossiya-24 state television reported that he “created the best tax collection system in the world.”

He was picked as prime minister to create a “more competent leadership,” Dmitri Trenin, head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote on Twitter.

Mishustin is a “worthy candidate” for the position of prime minister, according to Nikolay Zhuravlev, deputy speaker of parliament’s upper house the Federation Council. “He’s a huge professional, who proved his effectiveness in actual practice. His agency is among the leading ones.”

Mishustin is a “neutral figure” and his candidacy cannot be linked to any “ideological platform,” political analyst Ekaterina Schulmann said, adding she doubted he is being groomed as a successor to Putin.

Mishustin, however, has almost no political profile and analysts say he could be a “technocratic placeholder.”

His predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin ally, stepped down as prime minister Wednesday, making way for constitutional changes which would give Putin scope to extend his hold on power after leaving the presidency. Putin also suggested diminishing the powers of the presidency and beefing up those of the prime minister.

Mishustin has won praise for improving tax collection processes and more than doubling tax revenues in the past decade, with 20.4 trillion roubles (US$331.92 billion) collected in the first 11 months of last year.

The majority of those revenues still come from taxes on the vast energy sector, but an increasing share now comes from other forms of taxation after an efficiency drive.

Despite these successes, Mishustin’s name had not appeared in many lists of potential candidates for the post.

“Mishustin does not have any political experience or popularity with the electorate and is not part of Putin’s inner circle,” Tatiana Stanovaya, nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote on social media.

She said Mishustin would be unlikely to run in the presidential election due when Putin’s fourth term ends in 2024, adding: “(It) seems highly likely that Mishustin is just a technocratic placeholder.”

Russia has had technocrats as prime minister before, including when Putin was cementing his grip on power after 2000.

“(Mishustin) looks a lot like the technocratic prime ministers ... of the early 2000s,” Stanovaya said.

Mishustin shares a sporting interest with Putin, as he “regularly plays ice hockey,” said state news agency RIA Novosti.

He is a member of the supervisory council of CSKA hockey club, along with Rosneft chief Igor Sechin and other powerful figures. He also leads the amateur hockey team of the Federal Tax Service of Russia, which is called Sportima.

The RBK business newspaper reported in 2010 that Mishustin has “good contacts in the law enforcement structures. He has often been seen at hockey matches with senior officials from the FSB (security service) and the interior ministry.”

In 2006, he took part in the demonstration swim at the opening of the Russian Swimming Championships in the Olimpiysky Sports Complex. Politicians and athletes competed in freestyle at a distance of 50 meters.

Mishustin also composes music and plays the piano in his spare time.

While much of his career has been at the tax service, he started out in the 1990s heading an organization set up to promote international cooperation in computing.

He became deputy head of the tax service in 1998 and shortly afterwards was appointed deputy tax minister, a position he held until 2004. After that he headed federal agencies that worked on property and special economic zones.

Dubbed the “taxman of future” in a recent Financial Times profile, which noted his efforts to streamline his department’s work throughout the country, he managed to simplify taxes for everyday Russians by creating the so-called “single-window” system, cutting down on paperwork by digitizing much of the process and constructing a massive unified database last year. Russia has seen a boost in revenues thanks to the reforms.

He oversaw the opening of the first special economic zones in Russia and in the early 2000s was put in charge of the Federal Real Estate Cadaster Agency.

Working with special economic zones, Mishustin was engaged in the introduction of a “one-stop-shop” system for residents.

In March 2008, he left for the business sector, taking the post of president of the UFG group of companies, one of the largest companies operating in Russia in the field of asset management, direct investment and mutual investment funds together with Deutsche Bank.

He was appointed head of the Federal Tax Service in April 2010.

He reportedly speaks several foreign languages.

Forbes Russia listed him as the 54th best-paid state official in 2015 with earnings of 183.31 million rubles.

While Putin has criticized the Internet and is rarely shown using technology, Mishustin has said Russia needs to adapt its economy, making him closer to Medvedev, a keen user of Apple products.

Mishustin told the Kommersant newspaper last year that Russia needs to adapt to the era of digital technology and artificial intelligence or fall behind.

“We are entering a fourth industrial revolution; this is already a digital world,” he said.

“If we don’t understand how this world is developing and what its rules are, if we insist our country is part of the old order, this new world will make us its victim.”

Market participants credit a background in the tech sector for his success in bringing taxation in Russia into the digital age. Payments for both individuals and businesses have become simpler and a predominantly online process.

Digitalization has also led to a drop in tax evasion and a reduced role for the shadow economy, with many small- and medium-sized enterprises beginning to pay taxes.

Mishustin told Vedomosti newspaper in 2018 he did not see a return to the private sector.

“But if destiny chooses a different path for me, I would work in innovations, with new technologies, in the same field as I have always worked: transformation, related to the digital economy,” he said.

Mishustin’s colleagues describe him as not just a true professional, but a colorful personality to boot.

“He’s a man who has made a reputation for himself by creating a high-tech Federal Tax Service from scratch with the use of state-of-the-art technologies, the digital economy,” State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin pointed out.

“He knows modern technologies better than anyone else,” said Russian hockey-legend-turned-politician Vyachslav Fetisov, praising him as “very responsible and systematic, which is very important nowadays.”

Volodin said Mishustin could count “openness” and “dynamism” among his best qualities, adding that the 53-year-old’s “extensive knowledge of what’s happening in Russia’s regions” only adds to his credentials.

“He is demanding on himself and his subordinates,” businessman David Yakobashvili described Mishustin after he was appointed to the post of head of the Federal Tax Service.(SD-Agencies)