Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Putin’s purges

The Economist

FOR senior members of the United Russia party it was like a scene from Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”. They would have special affinity with Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, chairman of the tenants’ association tricked by Woland (Satan in disguise). The roubles he gets from Woland’s sidekick and stuffs into a ventilation shaft turn into dollars. Bosoi is arrested and put in a psychiatric ward, where he dreams of a bass voice booming from the sky: “Hand over your foreign currency!”

This time the voice asking for a handover of foreign bank accounts was President Vladimir Putin’s. On February 12th he submitted a bill to the Duma banning officials and lawmakers from having foreign bank accounts or investing in foreign government debt. The draft also banned the ownership of property abroad, though this was subsequently changed to merely demanding its declaration.

A day later Vladimir Pekhtin, a founder of United Russia and head of the Duma’s ethics committee, was revealed as the owner of an undeclared $1.3m luxury apartment in Miami Beach. The details were posted on the internet by Alexei Navalny, an opposition activist and blogger. Mr Pekhtin brushed off these “unmerited accusations”. “I practically have no property abroad,” he insisted. Yet on February 20th, doubtless after hearing Mr Putin’s voice, he resigned from the Duma. Even though he had done nothing wrong, he said, the scandal tainted the party and its interests must come above his own. Another United Russia deputy, Anatoly Lomakin, with an estimated fortune of $1.2 billion, resigned “for health reasons”. More deputies are on their way out, say press reports. State television showed pictures of Miami Beach apartments and talked of purges and a return of moral values.

In place of public denunciations and 1930s show trials, the “purged” Mr Pekhtin was greeted by standing ovations from his comrades who called him an example of morality. No proceedings were started against him and he could yet end up with a cushy job. Nevertheless, the purges signal a shift in Russia’s politics.