The verdict that may shake Russia

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The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Dec 27, 2010 10:40 am

The verdict that may shake Russia
By Andrei Ostalski
Russian affairs analyst

The former oil tycoon was first arrested in 2003 on charges of tax evasion involving his company, Yukos

It is widely believed that by finding former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev guilty of embezzlement, the judge has ruled on something much more important than the fate of two defendants.

Many in Russia assumed that the outcome of the trial would foretell the result of the next presidential election in 2012.

According to this theory, an acquittal or even just a lenient sentence would indicate a possibility of incumbent Dmitry Medvedev serving another term.

A harsh sentence meanwhile would mean that his predecessor, current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, is still calling all the shots and is determined to return to the Kremlin.

In his second tenure, liberals hoped, Mr Medvedev would try to get out of his powerful mentor's shadow and shake off some of the KGB-associated legacy that, to a great extent, has shaped the domestic and international policies of Russia in the past decade.

It is thought that Mr Putin's comeback, meanwhile, will entail further tightening of the screws and a prolonged period of enforced "stability" which, in the eyes of his critics, means nothing but all-permeating stagnation and corruption.

To illustrate the point protesters outside the court on Monday were holding two pictures of Mikhail Khodorkovsky: one with Mr Putin and the other with Mr Medvedev.

Former tycoon

Mr Khodorkovsky and his partner have been accused of stealing some $25bn (£16bn) worth of oil - or practically all the oil that their company, Yukos, produced between 1998-2000, and all the oil it exported between 2000-03, and then laundering the proceeds.

Continue reading the main story

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I am ready to die in jail”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky
The prosecution is calling for a sentence of 14 years.

Independent jurists say they find the charge absurd. But plenty of observers said the same thing about many of the charges at the previous trial in 2005.

Last time, Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev were found guilty of underpaying billions of dollars in taxes. The figure was so extraordinarily high that on appeal the Moscow city court slashed it six times while bizarrely reducing the length of the prison sentence by one year only - from nine to eight years.

Whatever its legal merit, very few people are prepared to take the new case against Mr Khodorkovsky at face value. Even the worst enemies of the former tycoon are convinced that he is in the dock for something else.

Interestingly, that seems to include Mr Putin himself: in one of his recent interviews the prime minister spoke in support of a lengthy prison sentence for the former billionaire, citing some other alleged crimes that the defendant has never been charged with.

And then, a few weeks later, he restated again that to his mind Khodorkovsky is a proven criminal and "should sit in jail", a statement denounced by critics as interference in the trial.

The hopes of acquittal were raised when President Medvedev seemed to openly contradict the prime minister, publicly stating his view that no official should try to pre-empt the court's decision.

Some commentators went so far as to describe that as "a sensation", signalling "a major crack in the ruling tandem". This assumption has proved to be a gross exaggeration.

Stalinist tradition

Mr Khodorkovsky is not popular with ordinary Russians - they cannot forgive him for getting immensely rich in the 1990s.


Many see the guilty verdict as a strong indicator of the direction that Russia is going to take
But the selectiveness of Russian justice has registered by now - the public has realised that only those "oligarchs" who dare to stand up to the authorities have problems with the law.

Only 13% of those polled in September by Levada Center said they believed the charges, down from 29% in February. (Roughly twice as many, 24%, said they did not believe the charges.)

Mr Khodorkovsky made a lot of enemies among the ruling elite and his fellow businessmen by insisting early this century on adopting Western standards of transparency for his businesses while the rest continued to cloak their affairs in secrecy.

It is rumoured that he made another fatal mistake by refusing to "share" his huge earnings with the powerful bureaucrats who are used to regular backhanders, something meekly accepted by the Russian business community as a necessary evil.

In other words, Mr Khodorkovsky challenged the very foundations of the oligarchic system, the symbiosis of power and wealth that makes Russia what it is now.

And then, on top of all that, he offered financial support to opposition political parties in order, as he put it, to develop pluralism in the country. And that, probably, was the last straw.

There were hopes that in order to preserve his sound professional reputation judge Viktor Danilkin could go against the grain.

Had he acquitted the defendants, it might have created a powerful precedent greatly encouraging all those who want to see their country change. In the end it did not happen.

It is not easy to break the deeply-rooted Stalinist tradition of seeking to satisfy the nation's rulers while disregarding the facts or intricacies of the law.

Some have even noticed the irony: Russia seems to have returned to the days of second trials that were common in Stalin's days: sending people back behind bars when their release became imminent.

Many see the guilty verdict as a strong indicator of the direction that Russia is going to take.

"This sentence will determine a lot if not everything in the development of our political and social situation as we all desperately need real justice and independent courts," said Leonid Parfenov, one of the most popular Russian television presenters.

To Mr Khodorkovsky himself the ruling apparently did not come as a surprise.

He was seen indifferently reading a book in his glass-and-steel cage while the judge went on reading out the long verdict.

"I am ready to die in jail," he said in his last word to the court in November, while strongly reiterating his innocence.

Not everybody took the verdict as a defeat. Some of the former businessman's supporters believe that such an openly biased trial and verdict will dramatically increase his popularity.

"Khodorkovsky is the name of the next Russian president," said a post on a popular Russian Twitter feed.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:27 pm

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Ha, I was looking for a Khodorkovsky thread!

The BBC piece is thick with diversions and propaganda and basically nothing about the guy.

The most important story in his biography, I would think, is how he not only got rich but, more importantly, made the jump to billionaire and oligarch. Keep in mind he's only like 48 years old today (1963, actually). From a background with the Communist youth organization, Komsomol, he started the first Russian private bank, Menatep. Menatep gained the Finance Ministry as a client, and subsequently was given the job of privatizing the national oil company, Yukos, in 1995. At that point other bidders were cut out as through some obscure process (probably involving more than broken knuckles) and Khodorkovsky's Menatep itself ended up buying 78% of Yukos for $350 million US. (Russia is the world's No. 2 oil producer!) The company's market value in 1997 was $9 billion!

Khodorkovsky was working out a deal to sell perhaps the majority of Yukos to Exxon-Mobil in 2003, and being talked up as a presidential candidate, when Putin had him bagged instead on a fraction of the possible charges that could have been lodged against him (or any of the oligarchs, or for that matter Putin himself).

And this is the glorious free market hero!

It's really something extraordinary to see how Clinton has taken her big stand on this case.

http://counterpunch.org/ridley12292010.html

December 29, 2010
Check Out the Dung Heap in Your Own Backyard
Enough Grandstanding About Khodorkovsky, Ms. Clinton!

By YVONNE RIDLEY

I wonder if Hillary Clinton really believes in the pompous invective that sprays from her lips with the rapidity of machine gun fire.

We had a classic example of it just the other day when she let rip in her grating, robotic monotone over a Moscow court’s decision to jail an oil tycoon.

To be fair to Clinton, she was not alone. There was a whole gaggle of disapproving foreign ministers who poured forth their ridiculous brand of Western arrogance which has poisoned the international atmosphere for far too long.

The US Secretary of State said Mikhail Khodorkovsky's conviction raised "serious questions about selective prosecution and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations".

Although Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, 54, were found guilty of theft and money laundering by a Moscow court, critics like Clinton say the trial constitutes revenge for the tycoon's questioning of a state monopoly on oil pipelines and propping up political parties that oppose the Kremlin.

Clinton's censure was echoed by politicians in Britain and Germany, and Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, urged Moscow to "respect its international commitments in the field of human rights and the rule of law".
Now while it may appear to be quite touching to see all these Western leaders express their outrage over a trial involving the one-time richest and most powerful man in Russia’s oil and gas industry, you have to ask where were these moral guardians when other unjust legal decisions were being made in US courts, for example?

So why have the Americans and Europeans rushed to make very public and official statements so quickly on a matter of oil and gas, in another country? Okay, so it is a rhetorical question!

But shouldn’t Clinton put a sock in it? The USA is still squatting in Cuba overseeing the continuing festering mess caused by one of the biggest boils on the face of human rights – yes, Guantanamo is approaching a decade of incarcerating men without charge or trial. At least Khodorkovsky had his day in an open court and can appeal.

Instead of sticking her nose in to other country’s courts, perhaps the US Secretary of State would care to look into her own backyard and tell us why one of her soldiers was given a mere nine month sentence earlier this month after shooting unarmed civilians in Afghanistan?

And after he's served his sentence US army medic Robert Stevens can still remain in the army, ruled the military hearing. His defense was that he and other soldiers were purely acting on orders from a squad leader during a patrol in March in Kandahar.

Five of the 12 soldiers named in the case are accused of premeditated murder in the most serious prosecution of atrocities by US military personnel since the war began in late 2001. Some even collected severed fingers and other human remains from the Afghan dead as war trophies before taking photos with the corpses.

By comparison, just a few months earlier, Dr Aafia Siddiqui, was given 86 years for attempting to shoot US soldiers … the alleged incident happened while she was in US custody, in Afghanistan. She didn’t shoot anyone although she was shot at point blank range by the soldiers. The critically injured Pakistani citizen was then renditioned for a trial in New York. The hearing was judged to be illegal and out of US jurisdiction by many international lawyers.

Did Clinton have anything to say about that? Did any of the foreign ministers in the West raise these issues on any public platform anywhere in the world? Again, it’s a rhetorical question.

Of course a few poorly trained US Army grunts, scores of innocent Afghans, nearly 200 Arab men in Cuba and one female academic from Pakistan are pretty small fry compared to an oil rich tycoon who doesn’t like Vladimir Putin.
But being poor is not a crime.

Exactly how would the Obama Administration have reacted if Russian President Dmitry Medvedev criticized the lack of even handedness in the US judicial system and demanded Dr Aafia Siddiqui be repatriated? What would be the response if Medvedev called an international press conference and demanded to know why 174 men are still being held in Guantanamo without charge or trial?

Just for the record, the US judicial system imposes life sentences for serious tax avoidance and laundering of criminally-received income – crimes for which the Russian tycoon has been found guilty. Sentencing will not take place until Moscow trial judge, Viktor Danilkin, finishes reading his 250-page verdict, which could take several days.

In her comments Clinton said the case had a "negative impact on Russia's reputation for fulfilling its international human rights obligations and improving its investment climate".

How on earth can anyone treat the US Secretary of State seriously when she comes out with this sort of pot, kettle, black rhetoric? This from a nation which is morally and financially bankrupt, a country which introduced words like rendition and water-boarding into common day usage.

My advice to Clinton is do not lecture anyone about human rights and legal issues until you clean up your own backyard. In fact the next time she decides to open her mouth perhaps one of her aides can do us all a favor and ram in a slice of humble pie.

Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist, is the European President of the International Muslim Women’s Union as well as being a patron of Cageprisoners. She can be reached at yvonne@yvonneridley.org


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So in searching him on RI I saw (and recalled) that Mr. K. was peripherally mentioned in the weird Susan Lindauer case.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23140

Lindauer was the at-least mildly unstable or perhaps MCed woman who convincingly claimed foreknowledge of 9/11 (and that she had tried to warn her cousin, Andy Card) and had a long case on charges that she had acted as an Iraqi agent in traveling to Baghdad.

However, it emerges from her story that anything she knew indicating 9/11 was coming, she actually got from a character called Richard Fuisz, who appears to have been her Svengali. Or, as she claims, her handler.

wikipedia material from that thread wrote:Richard Carl Fuisz, M.D. (born December 12, 1939) is an American physician, inventor, and entrepreneur. Fuisz founded Fuisz Technologies, Ltd. and Medcom, Inc.[1] He is credited with bringing the first Miss USSR to the United States though his modeling agency.
After graduating from medical school, he acted, playing a doctor in public health films. He then hosted a television talk show, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Pennsylvania.[4]

Later Fuisz was commissioned as a Lt. Commander in the United States Navy. His Naval work included a White House posting. Fuisz then founded Medcom, a publicly traded medical training company.[1]

Fuisz established the Seline Modeling Agency together with Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Seline Agency brought the first Miss USSR to the United States.


The citation for that is for a 1998 article in New York mag, by the reporter

Michael Gross, who wrote:In May 1988, the first Miss Moscow contest was held. A year later came the first Miss USSR, Yulia Sukhanova, a rangy 17-year-old Moscow schoolgirl with gray-blue eyes, blonde hair, and a beauty mark over one eyebrow.

Though she didn't know it, her modeling career was facilitated by Richard Fuisz (pronounced fuse), a former actor, psychiatrist, pediatrician, congressional candidate, whistle-blower, and entrepreneur who declines to comment on a published report that he has intelligence ties. Fuisz, who owned a company that did joint ventures in Moscow, was approached by the then-Soviet ambassador to Washington, Yuri V. Dubinin, to set up a modeling agency to prepare the first waves of Soviet beauties for American commerce (which often meant substantial dental work) and protect them from "adverse influences" and bad publicity like magazine "spreads about their teeth," Fuisz says.

Sukhanova was the first of ten girls he would oversee. But first, he had to free her from the Soviet Union. He did it with the help of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now one of Russia's oil billionaires but then the head of the Komsomol, or Young Communist League, and beginning his business career in a computer venture with Fuisz. "Each time Yulia tried to leave, the Moscow City Council canceled her visa," Fuisz reports. The hard-liners were opposed. "With Khodorkovsky's help, I escorted her to the airport and onto a plane to get her out." Soon, she was meeting Miss America, Nancy Reagan, and Sting, shooting the cover of Details, and filming a yogurt commercial...

http://nymag.com/nymetro/nightlife/bars ... ndex1.html


More Wikipedia on Fuisz:

Dr. Fuisz was a major CIA operative in Syria and Lebanon in the 1980s. Dr. Fuisz coordinated the hostage rescue of Terry Anderson et al out of Beirut, Lebanon. His team located their make-shift prisons and called in the Delta Force for a daring raid. He testified before Congress about U.S. corporations that supplied Iraq with weapons systems before the first Gulf War. He got outed as CIA by Damascus after stealing the blueprints for Syria's brand new telecommunications system.


NYT on Lindauer and Fuisz, from 2004, complete version archived in the Lindauer thread:

Tucked away behind a mixed-use town house development, Kosmos Pharma, Richard Fuisz's place of business, is part of a Pynchonesque landscape in Northern Virginia where anonymous front offices and brass nameplates give few clues as to the actual nature of the businesses within. When I showed up at his office, Fuisz graciously invited me inside to talk.

A dark-haired, handsome man with a soigné charm, Fuisz, 64, who went to Georgetown Medical School and did postgraduate work in medicine at Harvard, was trained as a psychiatrist and has more than 200 patents listed under his name. According to its Web site, Kosmos Pharma specializes in making oral-drug-delivery systems. He has also run a modeling agency for Russian women and worked briefly in the White House under Lyndon Johnson. During the 70's and 80's, he says, he did business around the world -- in the Middle East, the Eastern bloc, the Soviet Union.

Citing unnamed sources, The Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper, reported in 2000 that Fuisz had been the C.I.A.'s most important agent in Damascus during the 80's. ''This is not an issue I can confirm or deny,'' Fuisz told The Herald. ''I am not allowed to speak about these issues. In fact, I can't even explain why I can't speak about these issues.''


Fuisz confirmed that he saw Lindauer about once a week on avearage between 1994 and 2001 and that she would drop by to talk to him about her personal life as well as about her contacts with the Libyans and the Iraqis. He agreed to talk to me about Lindauer after requesting that his son, Joe, a lawyer, be present for our conversation.


Sorry if this post is all dump-style. But damned if this isn't all open-source and out there. Fuisz of the CIA running women out of Russia in 1988, working with Khodorkovsky still in his Komsomol days, at the dawn of K's capitalist career. This is how Oligarch Prime, Yeltsin's most favoured plunderer of the 1990s, the man who later tried to sell Russia's oil to Exxon-Mobil, got his start. That was close! And Clinton's got no problems howling it out for him right now, 'cos open source or not, the most basic story of his biography, the way he actually became a billionaire (Menatep and the Yukos privatization), does not merit mention in reports from the BBC, or the other pretend-news media presenting K. as the hero fighting for freedom against the evil Putin.

I'm half-sure this is the story fictionalized in the excellent novel I read in 2009, Legends by Robert Littell, in which (among many other things) the CIA helps make a character called "The Oligarkh," who by virtue of buying and blackmailing the entire Yeltsin family holds sway and plunders the Russian economy, and does so not even for the money, but to prevent the possibility of Russia's comeback as a superpower.

http://www.amazon.com/Legends-Novel-Dis ... 1585676969

Hmm, I wonder whether it's easier for Holder to get Manning to flip on Assange, or for Putin's people to convince Mr. K. to flip on the CIA? Problem is, the Russians always hold their fucking cards and use'em for back deals. Besides which, who da fuck knows what leverage the CIA may still have on K's family to the fourth cousins twice removed?

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Last edited by JackRiddler on Thu Dec 30, 2010 2:46 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:59 pm

Now this looks like a book that might cover the history well - anyone interested, I'd say read the table of contents to see.

http://books.google.com/books?id=glqoRJ ... on&f=false

The quality of freedom: Khodorkovsky, Putin, and the Yukos affair By Richard Sakwa (Oxford, 2009).

(Google scans'em for free out of the library, but has all these protections against showing pages here, and does not display all pages. Fookers.)

Anyway, no mention of Fuisz in that book, and CIA occurs only here: "Menatep was the only bank mentioned by name in a 1994 CIA report warning that the majority of Russian banks are controlled by the dreaded mafia."

But roll through it and you'll see lots on K's rise with Menatep.

A review...

http://kunikovsreviews.blogspot.com/200 ... putin.html

Sunday, July 5, 2009
The Quality of Freedom: Khodorkovsky, Putin and the Yukos Affair by Richard Sakwa
As a student of Soviet history, and being from the former Soviet Union myself, I have a varied interest in modern Russian history. I am one of those who views history (that is events that occurred at least half a century ago) as easier to understand and fit into a context than the study of current events. The Yukos affair and Khodorkovsky are something one hears a great deal about in both the western and Russian media. While western media seems to garner the majority of sympathy for Khodorkovsky, the Russian media seems to be more antagonistic against a man once called an 'oligarch.'

While Sakwa tackles Khdorkovsky, Putin, the Yukos affair, the varied meanings of 'freedom', and a variety of other topics in this text, I cannot help but think that while this is a very good, and academic, treatment of the subject(s) it is not a definitive account. This is not to say that Sakwa's narrative or analysis is weak but simply that he is writing from a hindsight that has yet to fully set in. A large portion of his sources are also media related, both western and Russian, and while journalism once meant something, today's mass media is simply a running joke. Granted, this might apply more to the US than Russia, but there it seems that the journalists are polarized either for or against the government. While this does provide the reader with a broad spectrum of opinions and contextual analysis, in the end, in my opinion, it is still too biased for a scholarly analysis.

With that said, the author utilizes a wide variety of sources so that his foundation and basis for much of what he writes is ingrained in academic literature, be it from Russia or the west. While many will undoubtedly view Khodorkovsky as getting what he deserves, simply because he was an oligarch, in reading this work the reader will be given a more fully developed understanding of the atmosphere Khodorkovsky and others (Berezovsky, Gusinky, Smolensky, etc) were operating in. Much of what they did was illegal and the country was plundered to a great degree under the administration of the 1990s. But it was Yukos and Khodorkovsky that were arrested, imprisoned, and bankrupted by Putin and his administration, not all of the other oligarchs who acted similarly. Then again, Khodorkovsky had more than one chance to leave the country, as many others did, but he chose to stay, more so, to ingrain himself in the politics of the country.

That, in a nutshell, is what Putin rebelled against. It is one thing to become an oligarch and reign supreme in the world of business, it is a totally different matter to indulge in political intrigue and attempt to maneuver against the powers that be, no matter how much money you have on your side. Khodorkovsky learned his lesson and continues to learn it in prison. He speaks out, writers letters and lambastes the current administration for what it has done to him and Yukos. Perhaps he's right, Yukos should not have been taken apart, but Putin and the factions inside the Kremlin that helped him 'tame' Khodorkovsky and the others who helped run Yukos (many were put on trial aside from Khodorkovsky, and even tried in absentia) decided that an example needed to be made. Khodorkovsky proved to be the perfect target and he paid with his freedom while Yukos paid by hemorrhaging billions in 'unpaid taxes' which forced it to sell off its assets and go bankrupt. The winners of this 'affair' were undoubtedly the factions within the Kremlin, but what that 'win' entails is too early to tell. For those interested in an academic, highly detailed and analytical look at modern Russia, you'll do well to invest in this text.


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Re: The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:15 am

http://www.network54.com/Forum/155335/t ... +of+a+myth

Khodorkovsky - the making of a myth
September 11 2010 at 12:32 AM chornyvolk (Login IGORM)

Ben Aris in Moscow
September 6, 2010


In October, the former owner of Yukos oil company Mikhail Khodorkovsky will start his last year in jail. The one-time oligarch and subsequent self-proclaimed victim of political violence has become a cause célèbre, held up as an example of everything that is bad about Russia today.

Khodorkovsky's arrest in his plane while it stood on the runway in Novosibirsk by Kalishnikov-toting Special Forces in October 2003 made headlines around the world. He was eventually sentenced to eight years in jail in May 2005 for fraud and tax evasion, most of which he has spent in a remote camp on the Chinese border in Russia's Far East.

Not that anyone is expecting Khodorkovsky to be released soon. On March 31, 2009, the Prosecutor General of Russia brought a fresh case against Khodorkovsky on more charges of embezzlement and money laundering that continues to the present day. Khodorkovsky faces another 22 years in prison if found guilty. Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev will appear again in court on November 17 to face the new charges.

The trouble with this whole story is that even if the forces of law unfairly picked on Khodorkovsky, he is, as Newsweek correspondent and Russia hawk Owen Matthews points out, "guilty as charged." All the oligarchs were blatantly stealing everything they could in those days, so the issue isn't whether the law was use to lock up Khodorkovsky and expropriate his company, it's why all the other oligarchs weren't arrested and locked up too.

Khodorkovsky may be a victim, or better to say loser, of the political showdown with the Kremlin, but he is also certainly not the martyr the international press and leader writers in most of the international press make him out to be. Indeed, he started his corporate life as the very worst corporate governance abuser, which in Russia circa the mid-1990s is saying a lot. But since then, Khodorkovsky has been careful to manufacture an image by spending millions of dollars on the best law firms, lobbyists and PR that money can buy with so much success that no one remembers the "old Khodorkovsky" when he had a moustache, wore shabby suits and big black, TV-frame glasses and would dilute your stake to zip the moment you invested into one of his companies.

Oil dilution

My first physical encounter with Yukos was at an extraordinary shareholders meeting called by its Yuganskneftegaz production subsidiary in March 1999.

It was a sunny day as I walked down to the Yukos clubhouse in the Lepekhinsky Perulok cul de sac, a short walk from Red Square, where the meeting was due to be held. A group of men in expensive suits were loitering on the pavement in front of the elegant building, smoking and talking on phones as we all waited to be ushered into the small office in the building opposite to register for the meeting.

I had interviewed Khodorkovsky several times in this building that once belonged to a Soviet labour union and sports a sweeping staircase, large club rooms and immaculate parquet floor. But on this day, the clubhouse was the setting for a showdown between Khodorkovsky and his biggest minority investor, Kenneth Dart, the American heir to a Styrofoam cup fortune who had bought some $100m worth of stakes in all three of Yukos' main production facilities.

John Papesh, who represented Dart and lived in Cyprus, was there waiting for me, looking tanned and nervous. Dart was afraid that the shareholder meeting was going to massively dilute his stake in the company and had arranged by power of attorney for me to attend the meeting as Dart's proxy. In theory, I could have voted on any motion in the meeting, but I had just come to watch.

Russia was just emerging from the financial crisis of 1998 when oil prices had dropped as low as $10. Despite running transfer pricing schemes for years and squirreling hundreds of millions of dollars away into offshore tax havens, even Khodorkovsky was strapped for cash. His bank Menatep had borrowed $266m from a pool of creditors that included Daiwa Bank, WestMerchant Bank (a subsidiary of Westdeutsche Landesbank) and Standard Bank of South Africa, secured against a 32% stake in Yukos. Khodorkovsky tried to persuade his creditors to a rescheduling over three years, but they called the loan in and took possession of the Yukos stake. However, after Khodorkovsky threatened to issue millions of shares and Yukos began to sell off its major assets to offshore shell companies, the creditors took fright and settled, taking a haircut in the process, according to "The Quality of Freedom", a book by Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent. "Yukos was selling prime assets to offshore companies (presumably linked to the Yukos management) and it appeared to be in danger of becoming little more than a shell company," he wrote.

There was a brief flash of hope in the summer of 1999 when the knight-errant of minority shareholders and chairman of the then-Federal Securities Commission, Dmitry Vasilyev, took up Dart's cause. However, when the FSC started to investigate, a truck carrying 607 boxes of company documents accidentally drove off a bridge and sunk to the bottom of the Dubna river in May 1999. Vasilyev went as far as suspending all trading in shares of Yukos' main subsidiaries - Samaraneftegaz, Tomskneft and Yuganskneftegaz - in June that year.

I entered the small office with Papesh and presented my documents to the girl who was processing the shareholder documents and adding their names to a register of shareholders in attendance. She took one look at my papers and gestured to the burly security office wearing blue fatigues in the corner. He marched over: "Out," was all he said, moving his hand onto the butt of submachine gun that was swinging at his hip.

Dart's lawyers were ready and rushed over. "Mr Aris has a legal right to attend this meeting under Russian law. All his paperwork is in order!" they said waving the papers around.

The security guard took hold of the butt of his gun and pointed it into my face and said again: "Out." So we left.

I joined the group of investors and journalists who had also been barred from the meeting. Apparently, Dart's shares had been seized by a court and frozen, so his proxies, including me, weren't allowed to vote at the meeting.

Together with David Hoffman from The Washington Post, we managed to corner Dmitry Gololobov, the Yukos lead lawyer (who it was recently reported was hired as a vice president at Rosneft, which now controls the main Yukos assets, but this apparently was a rumour and wrong), as he came out of the registration office. "This is an outrage. You have to let us in," Hoffman shouted, but Gololobov simply shrugged his shoulders, mumbled something about arrested shares and pushed past to follow the others into the club house.

Over the next few hours, the shareholders (that got in) voted to tripled the number of shares in Yukos, leaving Dart with an insignificant stake. To add insult to injury, the new shares were to be paid for with veksels, or promissory notes, that wouldn't mature for three years. And finally the shareholders decided it was in the best interests of the subsidiary to continue selling its oil to an "independent" oil trader for $1.50 a barrel, when the price of oil was already on its way to $30.

Papesh tried to keep his cool and said that in the long-term Dart's interests would be protected, but couldn't contain himself completely: "This brazen asset grab takes the violation of Russian law and international standards of corporate governance to a new low."

Makeover

Pretty much the same story played out at the other Yukos subsidiaries - Samaraneftgaz and Tomskneftegaz: court orders, arrested shares, emergency shareholder meetings. Minority shareholders like Dart lost almost everything But ironically, these corporate governance abuses amongst the worst of the time paved the way for the most dramatic makeover Russia has ever seen.

Once Khodorkovsky had almost full control of all these production subsidiaries, all the assets that had been moved offshore were returned and the game at Yukos became all about investment and boosting production as fast as possible. The company was the fastest growing in Russia, with production soaring over by well over 10% a year until it was pumping 1.1m barrels per day, making Yukos one of the largest oil producers in the world.

Still, Khodorkovsky's name was mud for the rest of 1999. Dart took out a series of full-page ads complaining about Yukos in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Investors appealed to the US government, World Bank and other global institutions for assistance, all of whom condemned Yukos. After a survey of corporate governance practices in 25 emerging markets in November 2000 put Russia dead last, Yukos had a good claim on the title of "worst corporate governance abuser in the world."

"Prior to the crisis, the stocks of the three oil companies that Yukos controls - Yuganskneftegaz, Samaraneftegaz and Tomskneft were a hot property," The New York Times wrote in an editorial in April 1999. "An investment of $3,000 at the end of 1996, divided equally among the three, would have grown to more than $11,000 by the following August. However, the same stake in the three companies fell 98% to a combined value of $150" by April 1999 following the financial crisis and corporate governance abuses. Companies that were earning $2bn a year in revenues in 1999 had a market capitalisation of only $22m after Yukos' share price fell from $6 in 1997 to $0.15 at the start of 1999. And it was precisely this that presented Khodorkovsky with his biggest opportunity.

Oligarchs are not businessmen, they are opportunists. They got so rich so fast because they saw only a few months before everyone else how the collapse of the Soviet Union could be turned to their advantage as long as they acted quickly and ruthlessly. According to bne sources, the actual idea for the makeover was not Khodorkovsky's; a group of bankers from Brunswick (which later sold out to UBS in 1997) went to see Khodorkovsky and explained that the most he could ever get out of Yukos was the $2bn annual revenue. But if he could turn his image round, then he could make far more from the share appreciation; at the start of 1999, Yukos' shares were trading at a price/earnings multiple of 1.3x, way below its Russian peers that were trading at multiples of 6.8x.

Khodorkovsky seized on the idea and threw himself into the task of cleaning out his own Aegean stable. It is a testament to the shortness of investors' memories that he was so spectacularly successful. Within three years, Yukos was the doyen of good corporate governance in Russia and Khodorkovsky was the 16th richest man in the world. Harvard Business School wrote a paper on the "Khodokovsky effect," which saw this good corporate governance spread to other Russian companies as the country's oligarchs looked on amazed.

The campaign was due to kick off in 2000, so in December 1999 Khodorkovsky bought off Yukos' most vocal critic, Dart, by paying him a reputed $120m-160m for his remaining shares, or roughly what Dart had invested in the first place. More importantly, Dart agreed to a gagging clause, so that even former employees like Papesh, who were so vocal in the 1990s, wouldn't comment for this report.

Yukos went public first by introducing quarterly international standard GAAP accounts an unheard of level of transparency in Russia, let alone the oil sector. The company then hired a dozen independent directors including the UK's Lord Owen, who joined the board in 2002. At the same time, the operational staff came under a huge amount of pressure to deliver ever growing levels of production, which it managed to keep up for years. (There are even rumours Yukos started to pump water down into its deposits extraction in an effort to keep the oil flowing, even though this wrecks the chances of late-stage oil.)

Khodorkovsky made over his own image in an echo of Margaret Thatcher's transformation at the hands of Maurice Saatchi at the start of her rise to power. Khodorkovsky came up through the Soviet-era Komsomol (and Sakwa alleges that Khodorkovsky used the organisation's money to fund his entry into business) and still had a very Soviet look. But he dumped his shabby suits in favour of black roll necks, shaved off his moustache and swapped his thick TV-frame glasses for wire-rimmed specs. In fact, if he had lost a bit of weight, he would've been a dead ringer for Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple.

That was the visible stuff. In addition, Yukos spent $30m of its own money buying up its own shares entirely legal in Russia a trader told bne at the time. "That $30m was probably the best marketing investment any Russian company has ever made," said the trader, who watched some of the orders come over his desk, but didn't want to be named.

The stock price started 2000 at about $0.20, but by the autumn it had risen to $0.80, at which point the press took up the story. At first investors were buying Yukos simply because everyone else was and remained extremely sceptical of Khodorkovsky's motives. But as Khodorkovsky continued his relentless PR campaign, they began to buy more and more into the reformation of a bad boy story, and by 2003 Yukos had been dubbed a "tourist" stock, as any investor interested in rising equity prices bought Yukos before anything else because they "knew" they wouldn't get screwed over by the majority investors. The makeover had taken less than three years to complete and climb to a peak price of $15.92 on October 16, 2003, nine days before his arrest.

I interviewed Khodorkovsky many times over that period and just after he had been named the richest man in the world under 40, I asked him why anyone should believe that he had really changed. "I am all three generations of the Rothschild family in one," he told me in the same clubhouse that I had been barred from entering only three years earlier. "The first generation were robber-barons, the second generation built up the business and the third generation were Americana royalty."

Jail and politics

The transformation of Yukos from pariah to paragon left Khodorkovsky with a very useful skillset, which he has employed to good use since he was arrested.

While oligarchs cannot match the Kremlin for power, they have a huge advantage over the both the state and their foreign partners if they clash with either, as they can play both sides of the game. The two-year showdown with the state was like a game of poker, but the game of "Kremlin Hold 'Em" has some strange rules: the Kremlin holds virtually the whole deck and both sides know what's in the other's hand. The Kremlin leads with low cards like tax raids or inspections. Khodorkovsky has only one card, but he is allowed to play it as many times as he likes: embarrass the Kremlin in the international media for abusing the state's power. The Kremlin eventually starts playing face cards like canceling production licenses and arresting executives. In the final stages, the state plays its king and jails Khodorkovsky, who counters with his embarrassment trump card, which only gets more powerful the longer the Kremlin plays. However, the Kremlin has yet to draw its final card, its ace of spades: murder charges.

On June 26, 1998, Khodorkovsky was celebrating his 35th birthday with friends yet again at the Yukos clubhouse when some of his minions arrived and announced that Vladimir Petukhov, mayor of Nefteyugansk, had been gunned down and found in a ditch riddled with bullets. Petukhov had bitterly opposed Yukos' attempts to intrude into the administration of the region, which is home to the Yuganskneftegaz production facility.

Khodorkovsky was furious, according to a bne source that was at the party. Yukos' head of security, Alexei Pichugin, was eventually convicted of carrying out the killing, but Khodorkovsky has never been formally charged in connection with it. Khodorkovsky's lawyer Robert Amsterdam told bne in a 2008 interview that his team has thoroughly investigated the killing and collected deputations, including one from Petukhov's wife, exonerating Khodorkovsky from any involvement in the slaying.

These charges aside, Khodorkovsky's trump card is always winner in this game of poker, because both the Kremlin and the foreign investors are committed to claiming that they are restricted by the rule of law (sincerely in the case of the foreign investors, less so in the Kremlin's case).

The "Oligarch Hold 'Em" version of poker has slightly different rules from the Kremlin game. Oligarchs can appeal to the courts and draw the same card as Khodorkovsky, claiming they have been abused when they lose. But they can bribe, pressure and pervert the courts to their own ends with impunity, drawing as many cards as they like from under the table when it suits them. The trick is to make sure there is no evidence to prove they are cheating and there never is. All Russia's oligarchs continue to play "Oligarch Hold 'Em" as a normal part of doing business routine.

And the problem is not just the venality of the judicial system, but also with the inadequacy of the laws. Following the collapse of the Soviet system, the newly minted democratic government found it had a body of law that was entirely unsuited to regulating a free market. For years, specific problems were fixed by adding a specific amendment to deal with the issue. But the upshot is that Russian law is so riddled with loopholes, it makes Swiss cheese look solid. Bad law is the price that young democracies pay for transition. And companies like Yukos are so rich and nimble that they can hire lawyers like Gololobov who can run circles around the Kremlin, using their own laws against it.

Khodorkovsky said the same to me when I interviewed him in 2002. He pointed out that western firms too spend millions on lawyers to allow them to operate as close to the edge of the law as possible. However, the difference is that US and UK law has had over 200 years to develop, while in Russia pretty much anything and everything can be justified in law.

Russian business daily Vedomosti wrote in a recent article: "What did the oligarchs want from their lawyers? We can say they demanded from the lawyer to identify the boundaries of the interpretation of the law. There is a law which is obvious enough for lawyers in 99% of the cases and can be explained to the manager by schemes, signs and a convincing 'moo' in five minutes; but there is also a space for manoeuvring We must recognize that the situation is similar in the West, only the rules of 'stretching' the law are different and much narrower."

Oligarchs hire lawyers when they are feeling nice. Most of the time they simply buy officials and Yukos is not alone in this, but more active than most at its peak. "Yukos was particularly active in placing state officials on its pay role and tried to buy executive officials wholesale to ensure that policy outcome was in its favour," concludes Sakwa in his book.

PR today

Even today, what's left of the Yukos oil company maintains a formidable PR and lobbying machine, spending millions of dollars a year to keep the Khodorkovsky cause alive.

And Yukos has been pushing at an open door. When relations with the US administration of George W. Bush began to decay as Russia became an economic power in the middle of the last decade, the international press were happy to demonise Vladimir Putin, while the inept Kremlin stumbled from one PR disaster to the next, culminating in the eight-day war with Georgia in August 2008.

Yukos has been able to rely on its dozens of independent directors as lobbyists around the world. In the UK, Yukos retained Lord Paddy Gilford as a consultant and his PR firm Gardant handles much of Khodorkovsky's European PR, with Claire Davidson as the point person. Lord Gilford is also extremely well connected and has actively campaigned for current PM David Cameron. J Dudley Fishburn, ex-executive editor of The Economist and one-time British Conservative MP, also helps with the UK PR effort. Dr Otto Graf Lambsdorff, a former leader of Germany's Free Democratic Party and economic minister between 1977 and 1984, handles Germany. And Stuart Eizenstat, a former US Deputy Treasury Secretary and ambassador to the EU, is a key lobbyist in the US. However, Margery Kraus, who is the founder and CEO of US PR firm APCO Worldwide has a reported $200,000 retainer and is the most important US lobbyist.

In addition, the following lobbying and law firms have also been retained by Yukos: BKSH & Associates, which has done work in Nigeria and Iraq; the well connected law firm Greenberg Traurig, seventh biggest in the US; Covington & Burling, another top-20 US law firm that was used by US oil company Halliburton to lobby Washington on behalf of its controversial KBR Government Operations division in Iraq, as well as Philip Morris during its battle with the US government.

And then there is the tireless Robert Amsterdam, the Russian-born Canadian lawyer who has been travelling the world meeting with politicians and journalists, unopposed as the Kremlin doesn't do PR. I met him in a swanky hotel just off Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt in 2008, where he had flown in for a few days to lobby German MPs, who then were increasingly worried about the resurgence of Russia. "It must be the first time in Russian history that someone was arrested on a plane flying to Siberia," says Amsterdam, who comes across as a jolly but highly intelligent man, completely on top of a brief that's as much about politics as about the law. "He could have got out to the West if he wanted to, but chose to go to jail instead."

Conclusion

Is Khodorkovsky a successful businessman who was martyred to the vested interests in the Kremlin that were greedily eyeing his oil company? That is too simple an explanation. Is he an outrageous corporate governance abuser who changed his spots? That doesn't cover it either. Certainly he is an opportunist of genius and very focused on making money. Unlike his counterparts at Lukoil and Surgutneftegaz, he is definitely not an oilman.

Having interviewed Khodorkovsky many times during his rise to riches, I came to like him, as he was clearly a visionary. Ironically, the oil pipeline to Daqing in northwest China that was actually largely responsible for getting him jailed (rather than the nominal fraud charge) went on line at the start of September built in the end by the same people in the Kremlin who had opposed it so vehemently when he wanted to build it.

But I never understood why he would choose to go to jail instead of cutting a deal with the Kremlin, which is always an option with the cautious and pragmatic Putin in charge. Indeed, most of the investors in Yukos who held on to their shares as they slid all the way back down from $15 to zero assumed he would negotiate a deal, as oligarchs put profits above principles. And no one has ever adequately explained to me why he would choose to spend what could be the rest of his life in jail. Clearly, he got some sort of religion along they way.

He introduced good corporate governance into Yukos because he was persuaded that he could make a stack of money if he pulled it off. Everything he did in his career was designed to make him money. It seems likely during the course of the transformation to doyen of corporate governance that he got religion in the sense he saw that to make his shareholders richer by doing all the right things instead of stealing their money, had the effect of making him richer which is the basis on which capitalism is built. However, is it possible to believe that he went to jail for the betterment of the Russian people? This is unlikely. The best explanation I have heard is that he refused to do a deal with the Kremlin simply because he is pigheaded and bitter about his treatment, in the same way that Hermitage Capital manager Bill Browder and one time largest investor into Russia seems to be bitter about the Kremlins effective destruction of his business.

http://businessneweurope.eu/story2271




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Re: The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:26 am

.

Everything about Seline Modeling on the Web appears to be the same bit about Fuisz from Wikipedia (citing the New York mag article). As the story goes, it was bought by the big Click Agency and doesn't exist under this name any more. And who knows to what extent it did, given the incredibly - no, truly unbelievable - range of Fuisz's business startups, and their transience. Very very very busy guy.

Fuisz + Khodorkovsky on the Web produces no more than that. What was this computer venture that was Mr. K's first business, with money from Fuisz?! Will look into Lexis-Nexis search later.

Here's the list of patents held or pending by Fuisz Technologies.

http://fuisz.com/patents.html

"About Us":

Fuisz is a family held company with broad technological interests and a long and proven track record in innovation.

Fuisz operates in various drug delivery systems, anti abuse for opiates technology, food systems, specialized women’s health, tobacco harm reduction, and web based systems such as electronic mail and internet marketing systems, as well as novel video based marketing systems.

Fuisz primarily originates patent pending systems. Fuisz does however acquire and license third party intellectual property from time to time.


Gotta think the John R. Fuisz law firm, also in DC and specializing in patents and intellectual property, must be somehow related. His son?

http://www.fuiszlaw.com/aboutus.html

Anyone have a clue how to figure out company records from the 1990s? Now this is where c2w? should resurrect herself.

Because we're talking possibility the Company itself financed the rise of Mr. K.

.
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Re: The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Dec 31, 2010 1:11 pm

More on Lindauer/Fuisz in that thread:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23140&p=374570#p374570

A review of Lindauer's new book, the review itself has little new.
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Re: The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Feb 06, 2011 7:10 pm

.

Damn but I'd like to see some meat on the bones of the Khodorkovsky-Fuisz (meaning CIA!) connection.

LexisNexis news search:
fuisz: 999 results (since 1980), probably that's the limit. Most everything is about Fuisz Technologies.
fuisz + Selene: 0
fuisz + modeling: 4, including NYT on "Susan Lindauer's Mission to Baghdad" but nothing else relevant (modeling in relation to simulation).
fuisz + khodorkovsky: 0 (tried variant spellings)
fuisz + russia: 19 (mostly about Fuisz business but not Selene or anything to do with K, also one piece about Lockerbie).

Might as well run the latter in the other thread...

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Re: The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Jun 04, 2011 1:23 am


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/bl ... print=true

Okay, Enough: Stop Feeling Sorry for Misha Khodorkovsky
Taibblog


Image
Mikhail Khodorkovsky stands behind a glass wall at a courtroom in Moscow, on May 17, 2011.
Alexey SAZONOV/AFP/Getty Images



I don't want people to think I'm busting on Joe Nocera of the New York Times – that's not my intention at all – but I feel like I have to say something about his column, "Russian Justice." It's yet another in a long line of pieces written by Western reporters criticizing the Putin administration for throwing "businessman" Mikhail Khodorkovsky in jail on trumped-up charges as part of an ongoing power play.

These Western critics are absolutely right to jump down Putin's throat for using prisons and cops (to say nothing of assassinations) as weapons to deal with unwelcome political challenges. Putin has behaved like a tinpot dictator and this over-the-top thuggery should definitely be condemned.

But I'm getting tired of reading about how Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former chief of the oil company Yukos and the bank, Menatep, is some kind of martyr to free capitalism. Western reporters always introduce Khodorkovsky by mentioning his "murky" activities in the mid-nineties, activities that may have been legally questionable, but were "emblematic of the times" and "part of the Wild West atmopshere of the Yeltsin era." This has become a self-justifying cliche and I think those American reporters who didn't live there don't really understand what they're saying when they write these things.

Here's how Nocera put it:

The founder of Yukos, the country’s best-run oil producer, Khodorkovsky undoubtedly played fast and loose in building the company in the early 1990s.

The plutocrats had no problem with that. But then Khodorkovsky did two things that made him intolerable. He began transforming Yukos into a legitimate company that played by the rules of Western capitalism.


On the part about transforming Yukos into a legitimate company ... I have no comment on that, at least not today. But Nocera, in describing how Khodorkovsky played "fast and loose" in building Yukos, leaves out one important detail: he stole the fucking company!

Khodorkovsky acquired his controlling stake in Yukos via the "loans-for shares" privatization auctions in the mid-nineties. In those auctions, the Russian state essentially sold off stakes in giant government-owned industrial companies in exchange for cash, the ostensible object being twofold: raise money for the cash-strapped state and also speed up the transformation from a Soviet command economy to a capitalist system.

But Khodorkovsky didn't do much to add cash to the state's coffers, because he got the money to buy Yukos from ... the Russian government! In those days the Russian Central Bank farmed out some of its operations to private banks. As part of that policy, Menatep ended up holding billions in state funds that were meant to be distributed for government actions, like for instance the prosecution of a war in Chechnya. A state audit eventually found that some $4.4 billion in Russian government money was never returned to the state by Menatep. And a research paper by the Harvard Business School concluded that Menatep was many billions in debt to the the Russian state when it made its winning bid for a controlling stake in Yukos for the preposterously low price of $350 million.

Even better, Khodorkosky got his buddies in the Yeltsin administration to allow Menatep to administer the Yukos auction; it naturally excluded its rivals from bidding on the stake, making the Yukos auction a one-horse race. As the late Paul Klebnikov of Forbes put it:

Khodorkovsky's Bank Menatep was put in charge of processing the bids in the Yukos auction. The winner turned out to be a company controlled by … Khodorkovsky and his partners. A rival bid by three big Russian banks, which offered more money than Khodorkovsky's outfit, was disqualified on technical grounds.

The $350 million that Khodorkovsky and his partners paid for control of 78% of Yukos was quite the bargain. It implied a value for the whole company of $450 million. When the shares began trading less than two years later, Yukos' market capitalization was $9 billion. Today the market cap is closer to $15 billion.


Thus Khodorkovsky not only got his stake in Yukos with other peoples' money, he did so through a rigged auction that left him bidding on one of the biggest companies in the world with no rivals, for a ridiculously low price.

All of which makes passages like this one written by Nocera, describing Khodorkovsky's later detention/repression at the hands of Putin, seem more absurd:

Yukos was taken from Khodorkovsky and the shareholders in a bogus transaction, and handed to Rosneft, a more pliable oil company run by executives aligned with Putin’s cronies. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, his longtime business partner, were arrested, convicted of trumped-up tax fraud charges and sentenced to eight years in prison that began in 2003.


Putin is definitely a thug and he should be condemned for using these tactics. But making Khodorkovsky out to be a symbol of fair business practice doesn't make sense either. This isn't about ideology. To quote Goodfellas, this is all "real greaseball shit." Khodorkovsky was an ex-Komsomol insider communist hack who was handed a huge company by his thug pals, but when his gang asked him to toe the line and his Don, Vladimir Putin, asked him to do a service, he balked and went solo. So they took back his cheese and threw him in jail. That's all that went on here. It sucks for him, and it's not a particularly great sign for the future of Russian business, but the whole nnarrative falls pretty far short of lofty terms like "injustice."



A couple of the comments:

Muarlie Sheedhafi
May 26, 2:48 AM ET

Not a particularly great sign for Russian business? Are you kidding? You write a pretty decent article (aside from the obligatory Putin-bashing here and there, but that's pretty much a rite of passage for "serious" Western journalists) and then you top it off with that? Do me a favor, tell me about what condition the Russian economy, financial institutions, etc. were in when Putin came to power (hint: crippling debt, government default, the resources of the world's most resource rich nation owned by a dozen people whose only concern was to transfer them out west for piles of cash as quickly as possible [I should know, I worked for them], essentially being one step above Zimbabwe). Now tell me what they were like a couple years later ("impossible" debt paid off, currency stabilized, one of the world's largest financial reserves created, uncertainty over salaries eliminated, economy growing with a stable influx of Western goods and services). You know what pretty much all Putin did to bring about this economic miracle was, more or less? Flat 13% tax rate for everyone who plays by the rules, and, most importantly, punishing Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky for all to see. You know, drawing a line in the sand - "come into Russia, obey all the laws, pay taxes, support an art gallery here and there and you'll make billions of dollars without us breathing down your throat". For all the bad things people like to associate with Putin, and there are quite a few out there (not the frivolous nonsense about him being a journalist repressing democracy hating tyrant, but actual drawbacks such as his allowance of government pressure on the academy of sciences, tolerance of Luzhkov or lenience on United Russia), you'd be lucky to find one Russian out of twenty who, in hindsight, would want anyone other than Putin in charge of Russia from 1999 to at least 2004, if not 2008.
Also, here's some food for thought. Madoff got 150 years. Enron boys got something like that as well. Neither of them did a 10th the damage to the US that Khodorkovsky did to Russia. Who's benevolent now?


Ulrika Karlsson Paszkowska
May 26, 3:17 AM ET

A surprising number of Russians in exile I've spoken to tend to lean towards supporting Putin. Not because they think he's a democratic leader but rather because they miss being "proud" to be Russian.
People have always been poor and powerless in the hands of their elite and "strong man", but in the old days at least they were considered a superpower (Tea Party?).
If you're going to loose anyway, I guess it's better to loose to a strong man than to an a**hole.
Fun fact: During Putin, Russia dropped from number 46 to number 154 on Transparency Internationals corruption list.
Another fun fact: Olga Stepanova, the head of Moscow tax office 28 makes 35 000 dollar a year and has recently bought villas in Moscow, Dubai and Montenegro.


Matt Matheny
May 25, 2:34 PM ET

Khodorkovsky was put in jail and his company was taken from him, because he
was about to sell it to US vulture capitalists Exxon Mobil. Then Russia would be repeating
Arab countries fate, when all the money goes to US banks and few wealthy
individuals, and nothing stays in treasury for social programs. Putin
couldn't allow that.


Slavix Tube
May 25, 9:03 AM ET

'They could have neutralized Khodorkovsky in a hundred different ways that didn't involve throwing him in a Siberian prison and essentially institutionalizing extralegal, strong-arm solutions to political disputes.' - says Mr. Taibbi
What ways might those be? The mega thief was convinced not 'extra-legally' but LEGALLY through a trial and conviction. What 'strong-arm' solutions are you talking about?


Ruslan Poddubny
May 25, 6:04 AM ET

Khodorkovsky is criminal and it's true. But the main reason for his arrest in another. Other Russian oligarchs have also acted in criminal practices in the 90th. Khodorkovsky has prepared a transfer of control over Yukos western companies. Ie Russia should become a colony of the West. Putin stopped the process.


Andrew Hennigan
May 25, 1:20 AM ET

Hey Matt, it's interesting that you preface your post by establishing the fact you are not busting on Nocera, because he doesn't seem to mind taking potshots at you.

I'm referring to a firedoglake book salon* wherein I asked Nocera and Bethany McLean about there thoughts on Janet Tavakoli's charge that they pulled punches in their book. Well they both hastened to respond, so I'm guessing I must have touched a nerve (which after reading their book, I am not surprised by their hypersensitivity in this regard). In any event, Nocera explained "I don’t think we pulled any punches at all. We called it as we saw it, but we also tried to remain fair to all involved, even if that meant not called Goldman a 'vampire squid.' Which we didn’t."

I thought this was an "I am an American in good standing because I accused my neighbor of being a member of the communist party" thing to say, not to mention his premise implies your work is unfair (and therefore inaccurate) because you happen to employ colorful/descriptive prose rather than the neutral/"objective"/conflict-averse language of The Grey Lady and other establishment rags, which I find to be a presupposition without merit.

What I guess I am saying is: Nocera is fair game

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Re: The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Jul 28, 2014 10:41 am

So I watched the German Khodorkovsky documentary on Netflix and it's really not bad. It goes into plenty of his past but depicts him (in keeping with the Nocera narrative) as the one oligarch (by definition highly criminal figures) who had seen the light and wanted to implement transparency and reform. My own view after watching that and Vlast (Power, a much more conventionally pro-K, American-financed apologia for Yeltsin, the West, capitalism and K, which even manages to start with a nod to the Liberator Reagan) has come around to the idea that K and the rest of the early Russian oligarchs were never fully autonomous private owners in the way of the Western/global billionaires. They were always working as front-men or CEOs or dons and capos if you will of power groups.

The Khodorkovsky Documentary Nobody in Russia Wants to Screen

By Andrei Kozenko / Kommersant / Worldcrunch Friday, Nov. 25, 2011
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... 54,00.html

MOSCOW — A German film about imprisoned Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is set for release in Russia next week, but it is unlikely that many in the country will actually have an opportunity to see it. That's because most Russian theaters have declined to screen Khodorkovsky, as the documentary is titled. In Moscow, only one movie house has agreed to show the film, which tells the story of the former Yukos Oil owner arrested in 2003 on charges of fraud.

SNIP

According to Papernaya, the first cinema network to refuse to show the film was Moskino, a group owned by the city government of Moscow. Then another theater decided to show the documentary only once, on Dec. 2. Papernaya says that after these refusals, there was a "chain reaction," with a total of 19 refusals. "It seems like there was a decision made at some point by theater managers and owners, and it seems like that was connected to calls from government officials," she said.

The movie theaters in St. Petersburg also refused, as did those in Novosibirsk, where Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 and where the film's director — Cyril Tuschi of Germany — had hoped to appear for the premier. The film was first unveiled this past February during the Berlin Film Festival.

The documentary was shot from 2005 to '11, although both the Russian government and many of Khodorkovsky's partisans refused to cooperate with the project, thinking that the main character was portrayed as being too controversial. There were also constant problems with sponsors. Filming took place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Chita in Russia, Strasbourg in France, New York City, Tel Aviv and London — all cities that were connected in some way to the Yukos affair. The film contains many high-profile interviews, including with Khodorkovsky and members of his family.(See photos of the Bolsheviks' October revolution.)

A Professional Break-In

The documentary was finished in time for the Berlin Film Festival, but five days before the festival opened, the production company's office was broken into and the final version of the film was stolen. German authorities described it as a very professional break-in. Luckily Tuschi had other copies of the final cut, and the film was shown at the festival as planned. Berlin police never found the thieves.

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Re: The verdict that may shake Russia

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 24, 2018 4:17 pm

US resident becomes defendant in theft of 195mn tons of oil from Russia organized by Khodorkovsky back in 2003

11:11 / 24.05.2018
US resident becomes defendant in theft of 195mn tons of oil from Russia organized by Khodorkovsky back in 2003
Pavel Ivlev
Pavel Ivlev is accused of misappropriation or embezzlement of someone else's property on an especially large scale and legalization of money or other property acquired by a person as a result of committing a crime.

Tomorrow Khamovnichesky Court of Moscow will start proceedings in absentia in the case of former Deputy Executive Partner of law firm ALM Feldmans Pavel Ivlev. At one time he was a defendant of the "big YUKOS affair," but following materials concerning the lawyer were severed since he managed to flee for the United States. The Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) charges Ivlev with the appropriation of more than 195 million tons of oil belonging to YUKOS subsidiaries as part of an organized group led by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The investigation estimates the damage from these actions at 1.067 trillion rubles ($17.3bn).

Preliminary hearings on Pavel Ivlev's case are scheduled for Thursday in Khamovnichesky court, according to the law, they will be held in camera. State prosecution and defense will have the opportunity to file motions.

Lawyer Konstantin Rivkin, who represented the interests of Pavel Ivlev during the preliminary investigation, remarked in an interview with Kommersant that the outcome of this trial would not affect the fate of his client in any way.

"Pavel Ivlev left Russia when he was a witness in the case, and immediately left for the United States, where he had his own house," Rivkin said. "There he first received a residence permit and then obtained citizenship. Therefore, when the Russian Prosecutor General's Office demanded his extradition to his homeland, it was denied." According to the lawyer, Interpol refused to declare Pavel Ivlev internationally wanted, finding his case to be "political." "Consequently, my client could safely move around the world except for the CIS and Russia," said the defender.

According to Rivkin, the case of Pavel Ivlev was separated from the "big YUKOS affair," initiated in 2003. "This is an eternal case, in which many have hyped themselves and received promotions," said the lawyer. "And given that it is also win-win, the investigation decided to win new laurels on it."

Pavel Ivlev is accused of Misappropriation or Embezzlement on an especially large scale (Art. 160 of the Criminal Code) and Legalization of Monetary Funds or Other Property Acquired by a Person as a Result of an Offence Committed by Him/Her (Art. 174.1 of the Criminal Code). According to the investigation, between 2001 and 2002, Pavel Ivlev, as part of an organized group created and helmed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, participated in the theft of over 195 million tons of oil from YUKOS subsidiaries - Yuganskneftegaz, Samaraneftegaz and Tomskneft VNK. The total amount of damage from criminal transactions with oil, according to the calculations of the ICR, amounted to at least 1.067 trillion rubles ($17.3bn). At the same time, according to the investigation, about 133 billion rubles ($2.1bn) of this sum was legalized.

As stated in the investigation materials, the members of the criminal group bought oil from oil refiners at cost and then resold it several times more expensive. At the same time, the oil producing companies did not receive any profit, and purchase and sale transactions were made through firms located in tax havens. The gain was also transferred to offshores, where it was later legalized under the guise of transferring dividends to companies Nassaubridge and Dansley Limited, whose accounts were opened in DIB and MENATEP-SPb banks. Incidentally, in the framework of the criminal "YUKOS affair," the affected oil companies filed a civil suit against all the accused of 398.9 billion rubles ($6.4bn).

The role of Pavel Ivlev, the investigators believe, boiled down to providing legal support and the appearance of legal purity of all these transactions. He never acknowledged either any claims against himself or a charge in absentia. "I consider them absurd and senseless," he says. Earlier, the lawyer clarified that "with unbiased justice, it would be enough to merely prove that in the case of YUKOS there was no theft of oil from its mining companies." "Firms registered in tax havens, which the investigation calls the shell, took oil from YUKOS subsidiaries not for free, but transferred money to YUNG, Samaraneftegaz and Tomskneft VNK for each delivery," he explained. "And they even received profit from transactions with the mentioned alleged shell companies. It is no mere chance that the Federal Tax Service, revealing similar schemes of tax ‘optimization’ at TNK, Sibneft, and LUKOIL, limited itself to recovering delinquent taxes and fines from them, while the Prosecutor General's Office did not classify their actions as stealing oil from their subsidiaries."
https://en.crimerussia.com/financialcri ... kovsky-ba/
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