MOSCOW, June 3 (Reuters) - Russian state savings bank Sberbank fired an executive who forecast that bad loans could spark a major sell-off of real estate pledged with Russian banks, the bank said on Wednesday.
"A. S. Chuvin had no authority to make a presentation on this subject in the name of Sberbank," Sberbank said in a statement on Wednesday.
"The presenter is not a specialist in macroeconomics."
Sberbank said Chuvin was on leave pending dismissal as a result of organisational and staffing measures.
Chuvin's remarks were published on Reuters and in a number of prominent Russian media. They featured on the front page of influential business daily Vedomosti.
"A lot of banks will have major problems in the autumn, and they could start dumping real estate like owners are dumping now," Chuvin, director of construction finance at Sberbank, said on the sidelines of an Adam Smith conference.
"One wave could crash into another, and the situation could become quite serious. The upcoming autumn could be quite difficult."
Several Russian bureaucrats -- including Chuvin's boss, Sberbank chief executive German Gref, who said in April that the crisis was just starting for banks -- have made gloomy remarks only to drastically soften their stance within hours.
The government has limited doses of sensitive data, such as rising unemployment figures, in an apparent effort to limit public discontent and prevent a potential run on Russia's banks, which remained relatively stable despite a rouble devaluation.
Russia's top macroeconomic planner, Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Klepach, was slapped down by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for using the "R" word in public late last year. Russia's economy slipped into recession in the first quarter.
Putin also said Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin's suggestion that the favourable conditions of recent years might not return for "five, 10, 20 or 50 years" reflected a state of extreme stress. Kudrin denied he was stressed out.
Sberbank, a major lender to developers, has been a less than optimistic commentator on property prices.
Its macroeconomic research centre forecast in December that under a pessimistic scenario of economic contraction of 2.5 percent, rising inflation and a deep devaluation of the rouble, new build prices could fall 60 percent in dollars. (Reporting by Dmitry Sergeyev and Oksana Kobzeva; writing by Melissa Akin, editing by Will Waterman)