From Ariel Cohen’s contribution to the New York Times:

Furthermore, Medvedev and Kudrin would like to see Russia join the
O.E.C.D. Herein lies the rub: Russia today doesn’t fit the
organization’s criteria for property rights, transparency and the rule
of law.

Corrupt Russian judges regularly take property away from foreigners,
such as Norway’s Telenor. Russian law enforcers seized shares of value
investors, such as Hermitage Capital, and then banished its owner,
William Browder, from Russia. Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partners and
staff are facing a second round of trials for made-up crimes.

The St. Petersburg Forum also demonstrated how easily President
Medvedev can be upstaged by Putin and Sechin. Putin did not deign to
show up at all. Instead, he went to Pikalyovo, a shabby corporate town
all but shut down by the crisis. There, on national TV, he tore into
the one-time Kremlin favorite and formerly the richest man in Russia,
Oleg Deripaska.

Not only did he blast Deripaska and other “city fathers” in
Pikalyovo for incompetence and greed, he threatened to nationalize
their cement and aluminum plants, echoing a bill pending in the Duma to
seize properties affected by the recession.

By voicing an unmistakable threat that the Kremlin may resort to
nationalization, Putin directly clashed with Medvedev, who called at
the forum “not to forget the freedoms which took centuries to achieve.”
The Russian president also said that large state-owned enterprises are
a temporary anti-crisis tool, and eventually need to be privatized –
something that Sechin and Putin publicly oppose.

Last 5 posts by Robert Amsterdam

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