Posts Tagged ‘IMR’
Not Stupidity, but Malevolence
Critics of the current Russian regime often call its actions “stupid” and detrimental to its own image. According to author and analyst Alexander Podrabinek, however, what looks like government “stupidity” is actually a well-thought out strategy.
It is nice to think of your adversary as an idiot. It makes you feel better about yourself and reassures you by trivializing the threat: what foolishness did he or she think of this time? The same holds true when the adversary is the government. We fume about the Russian government doing this or that. How can it be so stupid? Does it not realize that it is undermining its own position and the image of the country? What we fail to appreciate is that the government understands everything it does; we just don’t understand its real motives. We judge the regime’s objectives, logic, and morals by our standards, when its own standards are completely different. Many of our troubles come from this lack of understanding.
Many of the government’s initiatives damage Russia’s image and result in international scandals. Prison sentences for members of the punk band Pussy Riot mobilized protests by top figures in the European music industry. Laws directed against homosexual propaganda have elicited fierce criticism of the Russian government from all corners of the world. The government’s insistence on protecting the law enforcement mafia in the Magnitsky case drew the world’s attention to a new instrument of government influence that violates human rights.
And we continue to wonder: What does the government think it is doing? How can it fail to foresee the possible consequences of its actions? Unfortunately, we just don’t understand the government. It very likely weighs its actions in advance and expects consequences. As much as we would like to think otherwise, it is anything but stupid. It simply has different objectives. In the Pussy Riot case, the government wanted to demonstrate that Russia is a religious and fundamentalist country, rather than a secular one; that the sentence handed down in the farce trial was a reflection of the people’s will; and that individual freedom pales before the power of the inferior mob.
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Moscow Recruits Interpol
The Russian authorities have requested an Interpol Red Notice against William Browder, head of the Hermitage Capital Management investment fund and a key architect of the Magnitsky Act. Author and analyst Alexander Podrabinek notes that Interpol has a history of honoring the Kremlin’s politically motivated requests.
At the end of April, Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court issued an arrest warrant in absentia for British citizen William Browder. The Russian justice system is accusing him and the late Sergei Magnitsky of purchasing Gazprom shares between 1999 and 2004. Browder could only be arrested in absentia because he is not willing to appear in the Tverskoy District Court, rightly believing that “justice” there is nothing but fiction. Sergei Magnitsky is not in the courtroom either. In 2009, he was killed in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison to prevent him from publicly exposing the crimes of a gang of police investigators and tax officials.
According to a statement by the Russian Interior Ministry, Browder “acquired more than 130 million Gazprom shares worth at least 2 billion Rubles at domestic-market prices, which caused large-scale damages to the Russian Federation.” The nature of the crime is unclear. The point is that at the time it was forbidden for foreign investors to buy Gazprom shares on the market. On Browder’s initiative, Russian citizens and Russian legal entities founded dozens of companies, which then purchased Gazprom shares (for the market price) and waited for the day when they would be able to sell them for a higher price on the international market. This is a normal speculation, with its risks and its investments. There is nothing illegal here. Apart from an understandable resentment of someone who bought something cheaply and intends to sell it at a higher price, there is nothing objectionable in these actions. According to the Russian “justice” system, however, this is a crime.
The case does not have any prospects in court. It will be impossible to carry out the sentence. Magnitsky is dead, and Browder is beyond the reach of Russia’s authorities. The fact that a dead man is being tried posthumously makes the trial not only pointless but also immoral. Nevertheless, the regime decided to take this shameful step, and the reason is clear. The international scandal that resulted from Sergei Magnitsky’s death, and US sanctions that followed with regard to those connected with this crime motivate the Kremlin to prove its innocence by accusing the deceased of committing a crime, along with his colleague William Browder.
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On April 19–20, the Joint Baltic American National Committee (JBANC) held its 10th annual conference in Washington DC. The key topics of discussion included the deteriorating political and human rights situation in Russia, and the prospects for EU visa sanctions against Russian human rights abusers modeled on the US Magnitsky Act.
JBANC’s 10th annual conference brought together diplomats; government officials; political, business, and NGO leaders; journalists; and policy analysts from the European Union, the United States, Canada, Russia, and other countries. This year’s keynote speaker was William Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and former employer of Sergei Magnitsky, the Moscow attorney who was arrested, denied medical care, and died in prison after uncovering a $230 million tax fraud scheme involving Russian officials. Not one of the officials linked to the theft—or to Magnitsky’s unlawful prosecution and death—has been punished; indeed, some have received awards and promotions.
“I realized that it is impossible to achieve justice for Sergei inside of Russia,” Browder said in his remarks to an audience that included Magnitsky’s mother, widow, and youngest son. “So I decided to seek justice outside of Russia.” Over the past three years, the Hermitage CEO has been leading international efforts to get those implicated in the Magnitsky case—as well as other Russian human rights abusers—blacklisted from Western countries. In the United States, the visa ban and asset freeze were effected by the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, a measure passed and signed into law last year. On April 12, the US government published its first public blacklist under the Magnitsky Act. Browder vowed to continue his efforts to achieve similar sanctions in the European Union, despite persistent threats to his own life and an Interpol arrest warrant issued by the Russian government.
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