Posts Tagged ‘russia profile’
What the Market Will Bear
A new survey by a Russian small and midsized business interest group claims that pressure from government officials seeking bribes has risen dramatically in the last several years. While corruption in Russian businesses gained the spotlight in recent years after the Hermitage affair and the death of Firestone Duncan lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in police custody, business owners claimed that corruption is a systemic problem that is particularly targeting small business in Russia today. In the past half-decade, the number of those who say that they regularly face extralegal government pressure has nearly quadrupled.
According to the research, which is conducted yearly by the Russian Union of Manufacturers and Entrepreneurs, the number of business owners who “regularly experience pressure from state establishments” has climbed to 36 percent of all the business owners polled in the anonymous survey. Those who have faced “at least one case” of pressure for bribes from the government stood at 36 percent, while those who responded that they had never encountered government interference dropped just below 50 percent. Those numbers show a significant jump from the first survey put out by the organization in 2006, with just 19 percent saying they faced regular pressure from government and 61 percent responding that they had never been targeted by corrupt officials.
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A Bitter Pill
In the hours after anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny was detained at a December 5 rally protesting falsified election results, he continued tweeting cheerful pictures snapped with his cell phone, showing a tight cadre of fellow protesters in the back of a police van and himself penning an official protest of his arrest. Yet in the same detention center from which Navalny will be released today, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov declared his latest hunger strike, which once again landed him in critical condition in a local hospital over the weekend.
This evening Navalny, along with Solidarnost Youth Coordinator Ilya Yashin and other protesters, will be released 15 days after they were arrested at the first mass rally against alleged election fraud on December 5. For the opposition, the return of one of their most recognizable and popular leaders Navalny will be a welcome boon as they prepare a 50,000-person demonstration on Sakharov Street in downtown Moscow on December 24.
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Dead Before Trial
Two Deaths in Pretrial Detention Show that Little Has Changed Since the Magnitsky Case.
Andrei Kudoyarov, a former principal of a school in Moscow, was facing 12 years in prison for attempting to solicit bribes, when he died of a massive heart attack in a Moscow pretrial detention center last week. With an eye to the drawn-out investigation and international furor over the earlier death of Firestone Duncan lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, investigators responded quickly by opening an inquiry into the death on Tuesday. Yet when a second prisoner in a Russian pretrial detention center died on the same day, rights activists cried foul, claiming that substandard care in detention centers has led to an “epidemic” of prisoner deaths.
Kudoyarov was arrested in May on charges that he had taken a bribe of 240,000 rubles in exchange for giving a student a spot in the first grade at Moscow School 1308. Other parents came forward with similar claims, some voiced as recently as this week, yet Kudoyarov’s lawyers and many at the school continued to claim he had been set up. It all became moot when he died on Saturday in pretrial detention of a fatal heart attack. An article published in Moskovsky Komsolets claimed he waited 43 minutes for an ambulance to arrive at the scene.
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Only the Brave
This Wednesday, demonstrations in support of the Strategy 31 campaign took place not only in Russia, but also abroad, as a group of people gathered outside the Russian Consulate in west London to show solidarity with the protesters back home. It has been a year since this movement started in Britain, with people hoping to draw the attention of the West to the plight of those Russians who demand that their Constitution be respected. Their aim is to make the Russian government comply with Article 31, which reads “Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets.”
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Lawlessness Unlimited
Despite the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to combat legal nihilism, there is little or no evidence on the ground of a change in support for the rule of law in Russia, a new study has found. Russia fared the worst of its BRIC peers (Brazil, India And China) when it came to upholding the principle of separation of powers and the observance of fundamental human rights, according to the Rule of Law Index report released on Monday.
“The country shows serious deficiencies in checks and balances among the different branches of government (ranking 55th), leading to an institutional environment characterized by corruption, impunity, and political interference,” said the report, which was prepared by the World Justice Project and funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “Violations against some fundamental rights, such as freedom of opinion, freedom of association, and arbitrary interference of privacy are areas of concern.”
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Impudence and Impunity
Russia Profile.org
As Russia prepares for this year’s Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, the long-running saga of the Hermitage Capital Management will loom large in the minds of potential investors and could cast a shadow of uncertainty over Russia’s shaky investment climate. Last week, one of the individuals accused by the British hedge-fund firm of involvement in a $230 million tax scam, finally broke what looked like a sacred vow of silence.
In an interview with the Vedomosti business daily published on Friday, Vladlen Stepanov, the husband of a Russian tax official who allegedly embezzled millions through the tax rebate scam, denied any connection between his wealth and the fraud. He announced that he had filed a lawsuit to protect his honor, dignity and business reputation against the Echo of Moscow radio station, which aired the allegations, and against Jamison Firestone, a managing partner at Firestone Duncan who voiced them.
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President Dmitry Medvedev Craves a New Economic Order Both at Home and Abroad
While an international legal forum is hardly the perfect setting for delving deep into the intricacies of economic governance, in Russia’s highly convoluted regulatory environment the exception is quite often the rule. As in many international discussion forums hosted by Russia lately, economic issues loom large at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum that kicked off on Friday. “We now need to start discussing new advanced standards in banking, finances and accounting, and common corporate governance standards,” Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev told participants in a keynote address on Friday.
The three-day legal forum, organized to discuss the role of law in the innovative and safe development of global peace, was attended by nearly 500 legal experts and politicians that included Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Cecilia Malstrom, EU Home Affairs commissioner and Hans van Loon, secretary general of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. Akira Kawamura, the president of the International Bar Association and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder also attended the forum, which was organized at the behest of the Russian president.
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