Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

No Financial Center Without Rule of Law

Moscow Times

The plans to make the Moscow stock market into a major international exchange and Moscow into a major international financial center are, unfortunately, one big pipe dream as long as the regime of President Vladimir Putin continues to trample over private property rights.

Foreign investors will not bring their money into a financial marketplace in significant amounts until they can be assured that their investments are protected by a strong rule of law and an independent judiciary. As Russian capital continues to flee the country, a natural question arises: If Russians don’t trust their own country’s financial markets, why should foreign investors?

The Russian government and its senior officials continue to delude themselves every day. The growth that has occurred in Russia in the past 10 years is not because of Putin. It is despite him. The absurd criminal trial of a deceased Sergei Magnitsky is a pathetic attempt to deceive Russians and cover up the corrupt activities of Kremlin officials. It is right out of the Soviet playbook, as is the Russian ban on adoptions of Russian orphans by U.S. citizens.

Despite populist statements by the government about efforts to improve the business climate, the Kremlin’s control of the courts continues to be the law of the land. The cases of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his colleagues Platon Lebedev, Vasily Aleksanyan, Svetlana Bakhmina and others awakened the world to Russian justice under Putin. Magnitsky and the corruption exhibited by the Russian administration in everything associated with that case are indicative of complete lack of a rule of law and a continuation of the obfuscation.