Posts Tagged ‘kudrin’

06
February 2013

Medvedev Seen Clinging to Job as Putin Frets About Economy

Bloomberg

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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22
August 2012

APEC and Pussy Riot

The Moscow News

At first sight, there should be no reason to mention the APEC summit in Vladivostok and the Pussy Riot trial in the same sentence, let alone suggest that one could affect the other.
Yet, bizarrely, that is exactly what is happening.

While there is acknowledgement by Russia’s international partners that the workings of the country’s judicial system are a sovereign matter, in today’s highly globalized economy, no country is ever completely an island when it comes to applying the rule of law.

Whatever one thinks of the rights and wrongs of the Pussy Riot protest, the case has troubled leading domestic and international business figures alike – precisely because it has presented Russian courts as subject to pressure from the authorities.

While staging a punk protest in a place of worship would likely lead to prosecution and minor charges in many countries, the severity of the punishment meted out to these three young women is clearly due to the political overtones of the case – no matter what the prosecutors may say about its strictly “anti-religious” nature.

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08
May 2012

Medvedev the Phony

Foreign Policy

The Russian political circus has extended its tour. Four years ago, Dmitry Medvedev was chosen to keep warm the seat of Vladimir Putin, and now as Putin returns to the presidency, Medvedev will assume the post of prime minister. This job swap, announced last September, might have been accepted by most Russians without a murmur several years ago, but Russia has changed dramatically since then. The swap instead has deepened resentment among many in the country, who view it as a slap in the face. In December, hundreds of thousands of Russians took to the streets against the rigged election, which in their eyes made Putin’s presidency illegitimate.

But where does this leave Medvedev? “Who?” some might ask dismissively. “Putin’s puppet?” others might sneer. To many Russians, the outgoing president is viewed as a nonentity whose primary concrete legacy will be the absurd reduction of Russia’s time zones from 11 to 9. During his putative presidency, the Russian system displayed unmistakable signs of decay, demonstrated by the growing role of repressive organs and their criminalization, the fusion of power with property, and the ruling elites’ attempts to pass their wealth and positions to their families and friends. Medvedev would often utter liberal-sounding ideas — his anodyne comment that “freedom is better than non-freedom” caused quite a flutter of excitement, briefly — but the follow-through on his proposals was never there. He had the power only to speak, not act. The more he tried to be taken seriously, the more comical and pathetic he looked. Often, Putin would be caught by cameras looking at his protégé with condescending amusement.

Why, then, would Putin keep Medvedev on as prime minister? Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, or nearly any other high-level official, would arguably be a more effective choice. But effectiveness isn’t Putin’s goal. Instead, his criteria are based on loyalty, keeping a corrupt architecture intact, and eliminating potential threats. This is how the personalized system in Russia works: By stepping aside and not running for reelection, Medvedev has demonstrated his loyalty to Putin, and in turn, Putin has shown that he rewards loyalty. The only silver lining of Putin’s return to power may be how it reveals Medvedev’s supposedly reformist presidency for the farce it really was.

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03
February 2012

Russia 2012 forum highlights the need to separate government and economy

Gazeta.Ru

Mass privatization, power body reforms, creation of a competitive political system and the pardon of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – these are the steps that foreign investors are waiting for from the Russian ruling elite, as the annual “Russia 2012” economic forum showed.

The forum was organized by Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, and investment company Troika dialogue as a continuation of the Davos economic forum.

Troika Dialogue head, Ruben Vardanyan, described Russia’s three main challenges. “First of all, corruption. Secondly, the problem of government’s interference in the economy and the high level of monopolization. Thirdly, the political system has outdated itself,” Vardanyan said while opening of the forum on Thursday.

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07
April 2011

Magnitsky Link in Tax Office Raids

The Moscow Times

Investigators on Wednesday searched the Moscow office of the Federal Tax Service and two other locations as part of a multimillion-dollar embezzlement case that could implicate officials under fire in another case — the prison death of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Investigators believe that tax officials might have assisted a St. Petersburg-based company, ES-Kontraktstroi, to make an attempt to embezzle 2 billion rubles ($71 million) in state money under the guise of value-added tax refunds, RIA-Novosti reported.

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06
April 2011

Russian TV investigates searches at senior tax official’s office, home

REN Tv

Text of report by privately owned Russian television channel REN TV on 6 April

[Presenter] Several tax offices in Moscow today were closed to ordinary visitors as they were receiving unusual ones: early this morning searches were conducted there, including in the Federal Tax Service central office. According to some reports, the searches were linked to an investigation into fraud with VAT refunds. Valentin Trushnin has more.

[Correspondent] Reports that a deputy head of the Moscow city directorate of the Federal Tax Service [Olga Chernichuk] may have been stealing, and stealing billions, did not come as a surprise to the country’s chief tax official, [Federal Tax Service head] Mikhail Mishustin. He knew of the impending searches in advance. Ordinary people were not shocked by this news either. It was probably only Olga Chernichuk who was surprised when investigators simultaneously appeared at her office, flat and dacha. At the Federal Tax Service’s Moscow directorate she was in charge of the most corruption-intensive area, that of VAT refunds.

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