Posts Tagged ‘medvedev’
Russia Rules No Crime in Magnitsky Probe
Russian investigators have ended their probe into the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after accusing Russian officials of large-scale embezzlement of tax money, saying he suffered no abuse while incarcerated.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said Tuesday that it had closed its investigation into Magnitsky’s death because it found no evidence he was subjected either to “special conditions” or to “physical abuse or torture” in prison. It said he died of cardiac failure.
Magnitsky, a lawyer who worked for Hermitage Capital Management, which was the largest Western investment firm operating in Russia, accused Russian law enforcement and tax officials of a scheme by which they fraudulently received refunds for taxes that Hermitage paid in Russia, totaling $230 million.
Magnitsky was subsequently arrested on charges of tax evasion. He died in prison at age 37, after being detained for nearly a year and saying he was denied medical attention.
In 2011, an investigation by then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s human rights council found that Magnitsky, who had pancreatitis, had been “completely deprived” of medical care before his death. It added there was “reasonable suspicion” to believe Magnitsky’s death was triggered by a beating.
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In Putin’s Russia, Shooting the Messenger
WHAT is the difference between Dmitri A. Medvedev and Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s tag-teaming presidents? It’s the difference between officially asking experts for unvarnished advice, and punishing those experts for giving it.
In early 2011, when Mr. Medvedev (now prime minister) was still president, the Kremlin’s human rights council selected nine experts to scrutinize the 2010 conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was once one of Russia’s richest men but is now its best-known political prisoner. I was invited to serve, the one American in a group with six experts from Russia, one from Germany and one from the Netherlands. We did not mince our words criticizing the Khodorkovsky trial.
That December, Russian television showed the council’s chairman delivering our findings to Mr. Medvedev, with a recommendation that Mr. Khodorkovsky’s conviction be annulled. But then Mr. Putin, who was president from 2000 to 2008 and then bided his time as prime minister, returned to the presidency in May 2012. Since then, for their willingness to speak truth to power, at least four of my Russian counterparts have been questioned in connection with a criminal investigation. The court order used to harass them refers to their “deliberately false conclusions.” Talk about killing the messenger.
You may be surprised to learn that the Kremlin has a human rights agency. Not only has one existed since 1993, but the human rights council, as it is currently known, was active and respected under Mr. Medvedev’s presidency. Its membership was a who’s who of leading Russian human rights personalities, including Lyudmila M. Alexeyeva, the leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group and a former Soviet dissident.
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Disarray Among Putin’s Elites Deepens as Russia’s Self-Isolation Progresses
The meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk in the early hours of February 15, as damaging as it was, produced even more jokes than material destruction. One of those was about the State Duma urgently approving legislation banning the incursions of celestial bodies because of their pronounced anti-Russian inclinations (Newsru.com, February 15). The joke captures the frantic activity of the Russian parliament, which has lost legitimacy in the crudely falsified elections in December 2011. As a result, the Duma now tries to compensate for this disgrace by producing a deluge of laws aimed at restricting the growth of the country’s fledgling civil society and promoting “patriotism” even in such ugly forms as the prohibition of adoption of orphans by American families. Consequently, this commonly disparaged institution is now seen by a record high 42 percent of Russians as playing a big or very big role in Russia’s political life (Levada.ru, February 14). The unintended consequence of this attention-seeking behavior, however, has been a series of scandals that reveal the scope of corruption among the parliamentarians who are supposed to represent a key part of the political establishment (Moskovsky Komsomolets, February 14).
Vladimir Pehtin, the head of the committee on parliamentary ethics, had to resign from this chair after the publication by activist-blogger Alexei Navalny of documents confirming his ownership of a condo in Miami, which was not mentioned in his tax declaration (RIA Novosti, February 13). This revelation could have gone unnoticed, if it had not coincided with President Vladimir Putin’s introduction of a draft law that would prohibit a wide group of key state officials from holding bank accounts abroad, while all real estate owned overseas would need to be declared (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 13; see EDM, February 14). The aim of this legislation is to ensure loyalty among the prime beneficiaries of the “power-is-money” regime through the newly-launched campaign of “nationalization of the elites” (Forbes.ru, February 13). The predatory elites, however, remain reluctant to be “nationalized” in terms of repatriating their ill-gained fortunes. Keeping their wealth abroad allows them to enjoy a level of property rights, which are mostly non-existent in Russia.
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Medvedev Seen Clinging to Job as Putin Frets About Economy
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is clinging to his job as President Vladimir Putin grows increasingly frustrated with his protege’s inability to boost growth, three current and former Kremlin advisers said.
Putin criticized Medvedev’s government last week for failing to adapt to a “post-crisis” economic model. That followed what Izvestia, a newspaper owned by Putin ally Yury Kovalchuk, said Jan. 15 was a leaked Kremlin scorecard giving most ministers either average or “underperforming” marks. Medvedev said the scores were “plucked out of thin air.”
Medvedev, 47, is in a “very precarious position,” Sergei Markov, a political adviser to Putin’s staff and vice rector of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, said in an interview in Moscow. “He has a promise from Putin about his role as prime minister, but there are some very powerful forces that see him as a threat.”
Putin, 60, was forced by the constitution to cede the presidency after his second-straight term ended in 2008. Medvedev, the prime minister at the time, became president and appointed Putin his premier. The two swapped jobs again last May after elections that sparked the biggest protests of Putin’s political career.
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Putin Aide Says U.S. Holds Key to Improving Ties
Strained U.S.-Russian ties will not improve unless Washington stops openly criticizing Moscow’s human rights record and supporting President Vladimir Putin’s foes, the top foreign policy official in the Russian parliament said.
Relations between the Cold War-era rivals took a dive after Putin’s return to the Kremlin in May, undermining a 2009 initiative by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russia’s then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, a more liberal Putin protege, to “reset” ties.
Alexei Pushkov, head of the international affairs committee in parliament’s lower chamber and a Putin ally, said the ties were “negatively stable” now and the “reset” could be considered over without an initiative on the highest political level to save it.
“The priority is political realism. Ideology matters should be secondary. I tell you, issues over ideology and values can destroy anything,” Pushkov said in an interview.
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Did Prime Minister Medvedev physically threaten Russia’s most acid billionaire critic?
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev appeared to physically threaten an American billionaire critic of his country in an off-the-record briefing with journalists, the billionaire says.
Because the briefing last week at Davos operated under Chatham House rules, which bar the disclosure of remarks attributed to specific individuals, none of the journalists has written about the session with Medvedev. But Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital, says that (video) four journalists who attended the Jan. 24 briefing told him of Medvedev’s remarks.
Browder, once one of Russia’s most enthusiastic Western investors and now one of its most acid critics, accuses Russian officials of murdering his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, after an expose accused them of stealing $230 million in government revenue. Magnitsky died in a Moscow jail in 2009, and the US has passed a law called the Magnitsky Act that bars US entry for Russian officials allegedly complicit in the death. Lithuania has frozen bank accounts allegedly used to secretly get some of the money out of Russia.
The reported remarks are highly unusual not just in their content but their source—Medvedev is typically one of Russia’s most mild-mannered senior leaders, particularly compared with the pugnacious and outspoken president, Vladimir Putin.
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Always the Last to Know
Dmitri Medvedev-prime minister of Russia, at least until Putin needs a sacrificial victim to blame for some failure, that being the main role of a Russian PM-claims that Russian business has not been harmed by the Magnitsky controversy:
Medvedev said the whistleblower’s death in jail, for which no one has been brought to justice, was being used by Kremlin critics to score points but was of no import to business leaders.
. . . .
“It does not interest anyone, except maybe certain citizens who are trying to use it to accumulate political capital,” said Medvedev, who was president from 2008 until Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin last May.
“Not a single businessman raises this issue,” he told state television in an interview focusing on his role in the forum. “But unfortunately it has become a factor in political life.”
Biznessmen have a different story-off the record, which is part of the point:
With international concern spreading after the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky, some Russian tycoons are worried their legitimate cross-border money transfers involving anything from industrial investments to luxury properties will get hit by red tape.
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Medvedev Courts Davos Skeptics With Better-Than-China Pitch
Russia has a $10 billion sales pitch for investors at this year’s World Economic Forum: give us your money and we’ll worry about corruption for you.
That was the line from First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov in an interview with Bloomberg Television last week and that’s what Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will try to convince skeptical investors of tomorrow with his keynote address at the conference in Davos, Switzerland, the third by a Russian leader in five years.
Russia plans to raise a record $10 billion from asset sales this year as it seeks to stem capital flight and reverse the state’s creeping hold over the economy, Shuvalov said. The government failed to reach a similar goal last year, when it retained its ranking as the most corrupt country in the Group of 20, an organization it leads this year.
“Russia, regardless of what people are saying, is a place that people can invest, can earn,” Shuvalov said on a Jan. 18 train ride to Moscow from Kaluga, a region that has attracted investment from companies including Volkswagen AG (VOW) and AstraZeneca Plc. (AZN) “If you talk with investors, they say they invest maybe less than in China, but lose less than in China. They say people don’t know Russia.”
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Medvedev Courts Davos Skeptics With Better-Than-China Pitch
Russia has a $10 billion sales pitch for investors at this year’s World Economic Forum: give us your money and we’ll worry about corruption for you.
That was the line from First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov in an interview with Bloomberg Television last week and that’s what Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will try to convince skeptical investors of tomorrow with his keynote address at the conference in Davos, Switzerland, the third by a Russian leader in five years.
Russia plans to raise a record $10 billion from asset sales this year as it seeks to stem capital flight and reverse the state’s creeping hold over the economy, Shuvalov said. The government failed to reach a similar goal last year, when it retained its ranking as the most corrupt country in the Group of 20, an organization it leads this year.
“Russia, regardless of what people are saying, is a place that people can invest, can earn,” Shuvalov said on a Jan. 18 train ride to Moscow from Kaluga, a region that has attracted investment from companies including Volkswagen AG and AstraZeneca Plc. “If you talk with investors, they say they invest maybe less than in China, but lose less than in China. They say people don’t know Russia.”
Putin Critique
Medvedev used his Davos speech in 2011 to highlight the “new opportunities” for foreigners “for doing business with success” in Russia. The message was more upbeat than the one then-premier Vladimir Putin delivered in 2009, in which he said the global crisis had shown the dangers of rampant greed in the U.S.-dominated global financial system.
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