Posts Tagged ‘editorial’
Russia’s corruptionism
WE’D LIKE TO CONGRATULATE Vladimir Putin on his exciting, come-from-behind victory to become Russia’s next president. After barnstorming across steppe and taiga, presenting a detailed program for the next six years, Mr. Putin won the enthusiastic support of —
Oh, no, wait. That’s not how things work in Russia today. Actually, the story is simpler: Vladimir Putin decided that he would like to be president again, and so he will be.
This may be good news for Dmitry Medvedev, the hapless incumbent whom Mr. Putin installed in the Kremlin in 2008, after Mr. Putin already had served eight years as president. Mr. Medvedev, who had to pretend to lead while Mr. Putin ran the show, can subside into a No. 2 post (prime minister) more suited to his character and to reality.
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Magnitsky and The Mentality Of the Siloviki
A new conflict broke out between the Interior Ministry and the British hedge fund Hermitage Capital when a Moscow court Wednesday ordered the arrest of Ivan Cherkasov, a Hermitage partner who has lived in Britain since 2006.
The case against Cherkasov was presented in court by Interior Ministry investigator Oleg Silchenko.
Silchenko’s involvement in this case is an affront to President Dmitry Medvedev’s efforts to attract foreign investors, clean up the police force and protect business from the extortion of “law enforcers.”
Silchenko’s name first surfaced in 2007, when he led a case against Manana Aslamazyan, then-head of Internews International in Russia. Internews trained more than 15,000 regional journalists.
Aslamazyan was caught after she passed through customs at a Moscow airport with slightly more than the limit of $10,000, which she did not declare. This minor offense is usually punishable with a small fine, but Silchenko and colleagues turned it into an attack against Internews. The NGO had to close after its financial documents were seized by investigators.
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Sergei Magnitsky and the Rule of Law
In November 2009, Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in a Moscow detention facility, just short of a year after his arrest on alleged tax evasion charges while defending an investment company on tax fraud and evasion complaints brought by the Russian government. Magnitsky publicly implicated certain Russian officials in an embezzlement scheme and misappropriation of funds from the Russian Treasury and assets of his client.
Magnitsky was tortured because he blew the whistle on a massive government-organized conspiracy to steal $230 million that he discovered and in which he testified against the corrupt officials. He was tortured to drop his testimony and sign a false confession stating that he committed the crime that he discovered. His imprisonment for “tax evasion” was a pretense to retaliate on his whistle blowing. His death has generated significant outcry in the international community, with allegations of torture and detention without trial or other procedural rights, and the denial of critical medical treatment that led to his death.
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