Bill Browder, Russia, and More in the Annals of Personal and Corporate Safety
We've discussed the failure to identify and prosecute those who ordered and paid for the murders of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Forbes' Paul Klebnikov and others. But what about that of Valery Kazakov, a Russian man slain on the way to testify against the former mayor of the town of Pushkino?
It's the subtext of a piece by Megan Stack of the L.A. Times, whose reporting suggests a couple of principal reasons why such cases don't get solved. One of course is official corruption. But another is that, even when cases have moved through the system in reasonably good order, Russians are hesitant to testify for reasons of personal safety. There's effective impunity not just for killers, but for those who murder witnesses intending to testify against the low-ranking triggermen who typically take the hit for everyone up the food chain.
That's one stubborn reality about Russia. Of a different order are the foreign firms and companies -- lawyers, bankers, investors -- who get fleeced, their local employees jailed, then indignantly scream for justice as though not pre-warned.
Over the last several days, this victim's slot has been filled by American Bill Browder, the once high-flying defender of investment in Russia as head of a $4 billion Russian fund called Hermitage Capital Management. In 2005, Russia effectively expelled the 45-year-old Browder, whose grandfather Earl headed the U.S. Communist Party in the 1930s and early 1940s, and since then he has had to run his fund from a distance in London.
As my colleagues at Business Week and others are writing, Browder now has hired former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to run an unusual case stemming from a subsequent assault on Hermitage in which a couple of subsidiaries were seized. It's a tax fraud and money-laundering case against a group of officials who he says conspired to defraud the Russian government of $230 million.
(Yawn)
We've seen this movie before. For instance, BP keeps returning for more despite its own experience with the rough-and-tumble Russian system.
To his credit, Browder's stratagem at least in part is meant to free one of his Moscow lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed after filing a court statement alleging official corruption in the seizure of the subsidiaries.
Yet BP and Browder stuck around because of the money -- in BP's case, despite it all Russia remains one of its main profit centers. As for outsiders, there's the entertainment value of gaping at the road wreck.
It's the subtext of a piece by Megan Stack of the L.A. Times, whose reporting suggests a couple of principal reasons why such cases don't get solved. One of course is official corruption. But another is that, even when cases have moved through the system in reasonably good order, Russians are hesitant to testify for reasons of personal safety. There's effective impunity not just for killers, but for those who murder witnesses intending to testify against the low-ranking triggermen who typically take the hit for everyone up the food chain.
That's one stubborn reality about Russia. Of a different order are the foreign firms and companies -- lawyers, bankers, investors -- who get fleeced, their local employees jailed, then indignantly scream for justice as though not pre-warned.
Over the last several days, this victim's slot has been filled by American Bill Browder, the once high-flying defender of investment in Russia as head of a $4 billion Russian fund called Hermitage Capital Management. In 2005, Russia effectively expelled the 45-year-old Browder, whose grandfather Earl headed the U.S. Communist Party in the 1930s and early 1940s, and since then he has had to run his fund from a distance in London.
As my colleagues at Business Week and others are writing, Browder now has hired former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to run an unusual case stemming from a subsequent assault on Hermitage in which a couple of subsidiaries were seized. It's a tax fraud and money-laundering case against a group of officials who he says conspired to defraud the Russian government of $230 million.
(Yawn)
We've seen this movie before. For instance, BP keeps returning for more despite its own experience with the rough-and-tumble Russian system.
To his credit, Browder's stratagem at least in part is meant to free one of his Moscow lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed after filing a court statement alleging official corruption in the seizure of the subsidiaries.
Yet BP and Browder stuck around because of the money -- in BP's case, despite it all Russia remains one of its main profit centers. As for outsiders, there's the entertainment value of gaping at the road wreck.
Labels: browder, hermitage, Klebnikov, Politkovskaya, renaissance capital
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home