Ariel Cohen: Russian "Justice"
[Ariel Cohen is a Washington-based foreign, economic and security policy expert.]
The new, Republican-majority Congress is starting its work with a jaundiced eye on what's going on in Russia. Just a week ago Moscow convicted Mikhail Khodorkovsky for crimes most legal experts believe he did not commit. Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov is in jail, albeit only for two weeks, for demonstrating in support of freedom of assembly. But it is the fourteen-year sentence meted out against Khodorkovsky which is particularly telling. It reflects not guilt on the part of the ex-chairman of Russia’s Yukos oil company, but the animus against the man by Russia’s rulers. Even if American companies want to do business in Russia, the verdict and the arrests don't help.
Granted, the 1990s were the years of "Wild West capitalism" in Russia, in which Khodorkovsky participated together with other businessmen, but his real “crime” was trying to liberate his company and himself from his country's system of bribes and political favors that nourishes Moscow’s power brokers. By pushing Yukos to function transparently after it went public, including by paying taxes, he tried to propel his company—and his country—toward Western-style corporate governance.
Yet Judge Viktor Danilkin declared it necessary to “reform [Khodorkovsky] by isolating him from society.” With these words, Danilkin unwittingly convicted the very system he serves of authoritarianism, injustice and corruption. The verdict proved that system to be incapable of self-correction and reform—despite desperate calls for both by its nominal leader, President Dmitry Medvedev.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is reasserting his power while Russia is facing political stagnation. This time, Putin effectively told the judge how to rule on a nationally televised Q&A. “A thief has to sit in jail,” Putin said. And sit for another six and a half years Khodorkovsky will. Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia still lives under “telephone law”—a system in which punishments are triggered by phone calls from higher ups...
Read entire article at National Interest
The new, Republican-majority Congress is starting its work with a jaundiced eye on what's going on in Russia. Just a week ago Moscow convicted Mikhail Khodorkovsky for crimes most legal experts believe he did not commit. Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov is in jail, albeit only for two weeks, for demonstrating in support of freedom of assembly. But it is the fourteen-year sentence meted out against Khodorkovsky which is particularly telling. It reflects not guilt on the part of the ex-chairman of Russia’s Yukos oil company, but the animus against the man by Russia’s rulers. Even if American companies want to do business in Russia, the verdict and the arrests don't help.
Granted, the 1990s were the years of "Wild West capitalism" in Russia, in which Khodorkovsky participated together with other businessmen, but his real “crime” was trying to liberate his company and himself from his country's system of bribes and political favors that nourishes Moscow’s power brokers. By pushing Yukos to function transparently after it went public, including by paying taxes, he tried to propel his company—and his country—toward Western-style corporate governance.
Yet Judge Viktor Danilkin declared it necessary to “reform [Khodorkovsky] by isolating him from society.” With these words, Danilkin unwittingly convicted the very system he serves of authoritarianism, injustice and corruption. The verdict proved that system to be incapable of self-correction and reform—despite desperate calls for both by its nominal leader, President Dmitry Medvedev.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is reasserting his power while Russia is facing political stagnation. This time, Putin effectively told the judge how to rule on a nationally televised Q&A. “A thief has to sit in jail,” Putin said. And sit for another six and a half years Khodorkovsky will. Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia still lives under “telephone law”—a system in which punishments are triggered by phone calls from higher ups...