‘A COUNTRY RUN BY GANGSTERS’

The Daily Express
Along with the crushing disappointment that followed the announcement that Russia and not England will host the 2018 World Cup, it was impossible to silence another sentiment: the Russians bought it. World Cup host Russia has, it’s alleged, a Mafia that controls politics and police, and hitmen ensure there’s a rule of fear.

The details of who they might have influenced and with what are pretty sketchy. The strongest hint that Fifa might have been persuaded by something even more powerful than a case well made came inadvertently from the Russian prime minister. ostensibly Vladimir Putin’s decision not to go to Zurich was made out of respect for the Fifa executive committee whose members had been “smeared in dirt” by a Panorama documentary shown only days before the vote.

Unlike the British, who had a Prime Minister and a future king in place, the Russian delegation did not need him as front man, said Putin. He trusted Fifa to make the right choice, do the right thing, he said.

It is all uncomfortably reminiscent of Don Corleone saying he has made an offer you can’t refuse. Putin may bridle at the comparison but after the revelations published this week,this is small potatoes.

The highly sensitive – and very candid – diplomatic correspondence leaked to and published by the renegade Wikileaks website paints a portrait of a nation run by spies and criminals and mired in corruption; a country where what is legal is determined not by legislators but by crooks, where the system of bribery is so sophisticated that it functions like a tax system, where crime lords are put in prison not as a punishment but to protect them from other gangsters. A country where, in the words of US defence secretary Robert gates, “democracy has disappeared”.

Nearly 20 years after the fall of communism corruption has infiltrated every facet of Russian society to the extent where the activities of government and organised crime are often indistinguishable. Russian security officials allow criminal organisations. gangsters pay them kick backs and carry out secret operations for the government in return for a “krysha”, a roof or protection from the law.

Some of the most damning accusations come from Jose “Pepe” grinda gonzalez, a Spanish prosecutor who has spent 10 years investigating the Russian mafia’s activities in Spain through two lengthy major operations .

In a special briefing last January in Madrid, he told US officials that the Russian government uses organised crime “to do whatever the government of Russia cannot acceptably do as a government”.

Recent “unacceptable” tasks in clude allegedly supplying guns to the Kurds through Zakhar Kalashov, a known mafia leader, in an attempt to destabilise Turkey, and trafficking arms to Iran in the mysterious case of a vessel supposedly seized off the Swedish coast by pirates who sailed it to Africa.

Gonzalez also alleges that the ultranationalist liberal Democratic Party, which has representatives in the Russian parliament, was created by the SVR (successors to the KgB). Among its members are serious criminals and Andrei lugovoi, the exKgB agent who is wanted by Scotland Yard for the murder of dissident Alexander litvinenko, who died of polonium poisoning in 2006.

In another leaked cable sent last February, American ambassador to Russia John Beyrle describes Moscow’s “pyramid of corruption” overseen by the mayor Yuri luzhkov and encompassing the police, the interior ministry (MVD), the federal security services (FSB) and “ordinary” criminals .

In what amounts to a parallel tax system, the FSB collects bribes from big businesses and the MVD from smaller enterprises. But all businesses in Moscow are forced to pay bribes to someone. (luzhkov, who was first elected mayor in 1992, was sacked in September by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.)

Anticorruption crusaders come to grief. Sergei Magnitsky, a 37yearold Russian tax lawyer, died last year in a squalid, sewagefilled Moscow cell while awaiting trial on trumped up charges of tax evasion. He and fellow lawyer Bill Browder, founder of the Hermitage hedge fund – once the largest portfolio investors in Russia – uncovered an alleged £285million tax fraud committed against the Russian people by what Litvinenko Browder calls “a transnational organised criminal group involving Russian mafia and Russian government officials”, about 60 people in all. The fraud essentially entailed a huge amount in bogus rebates for which taxpayers would be liable.

Americanborn Browder, 46, says, “95 per cent of people in Russia are good guys but 94.9 per cent are scared good guys. Sergei wasn’t scared, that’s what made him special.”

THE attempts to investigate Magnitsky’s death have been frustrated by lies and coverups. “We know the identities of the individuals involved in the fraud and we would also like to see their assets frozen,” says Browder. “The idea is to inflict as much suffering, morally and financially, as we can.” Browder, who agrees the entire country is paralysed by institutional corruption, has received death threats but says: “I walk looking straight ahead, figuring what I’ll do next to bring his killers to justice. I’m motivated by anger, not fear, and I’ll travel the world to get justice, if that is what it takes.”

Dr Yuri Feltshinsky, a friend of litvinenko who cowrote the book Blowing Up Russia with him, said: “There is nothing very new in the leaks. What is new is that they are damaging both to Russia and to the other countries involved. This is material written by diplomats. It was never meant to be published. It was not written for sensationalism. That gives it great credibility as confirmation of what we suspected all along. In the Soviet Union the KgB used to do the dirty work but now the secret service is the respectable face of Russia’s state terror.” займы без отказа срочный займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php быстрые займы на карту