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 olstered
by an impressive performance at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
summit in Shanghai, Russian President Vladimir Putin has returned
to Moscow to clean house — with a vengeance.
Last Friday,
a once-powerful railroads minister, Nikolay Aksyonenko received
the Russian political equivalent of a dead horse's head in the bed
— an interrogation at the prosecutor general's office and a
demand to sign a document promising not to leave Moscow.
Aksyonenko,
at one time a deputy prime minister in President Boris Yeltsin's
cabinet, and a one-time candidate to become Yeltsin's heir apparent,
was on his way out since his political godfather, the exiled tycoon
Boris Berezovsky, lost Putin's favor.
Aksyonenko
is accused of abuse of office, a criminal offense. Specifically,
he is charged with misspending $2.3 million and ministry's tax debt
of $370 million.
But this is
not all: the Russian media has been full of accusations of waste,
fraud, and abuse in the gargantuan and ineffectual Russian railroad
state monopoly for two years. Aksyonenko decided not to go down
quietly and did not resign. A public scandal around the attempts
to get rid of the minister-oligarch is anticipated.
Julie A. Corwin,
editor of Radio Liberty, noted that by opening criminal proceedings
against Aksyonenko, Putin has not followed his earlier modus operandi.
He did not find a high-level Yeltsin-era official another sinecure,
as he did with former Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, and Interior
Minister Vladimir Rushailo. Sergeev is now Putin's adviser on arms
control, whereas Rushailo is Secretary of the Russian Security Council.
In March 2001,
Putin moved against another Yeltsin-era minister widely accused
of corruption, Yevgeny Adamov, minister of nuclear industry, known
as Minatom. He reportedly created a number of privately held offshore
companies which were used as receptacles to siphon off Minatom's
profits. However, Adamov was never prosecuted.
Simultaneously,
Putin delivered another blow to Berezovsky's dreams of returning
to Russia: Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov issued an order for
his arrest.
Berezovsky,
the billionaire oligarch eminence grise of the Yeltsin era, is accused
of defrauding Russian companies, such as the national airline Aeroflot
and TV Channel One, known as ORT, of hundreds of millions of dollars.
According to
veteran Russian affairs analyst Victor Yassman at the conservative
American Foreign Policy Council, Berezovsky, who now is in exile
in Cape D'Antibe in the French Riviera, is also accused — together
with his associates, who are under arrest in Moscow — of having
been involved in money laundering the funds from Aeroflot through
the front companies Andava and Forus in Switzerland.
In late September,
a Moscow court recognized a claim by a minority shareholder to declare
Berezovsky's TV-6 opposition channel bankrupt. TV-6, the last remaining
TV channel not under direct or indirect government control has shown
a profit so far in 2001, and the claim leading to bankruptcy was
regarded as spurious by Russia's media watchdogs and political observers.
The criminal
investigation against Aksyonenko was long overdue for two reasons.
First, an important precedent is waiting to happen: the senior ministers
of the Yeltsin era remained immune to accusations of corruption,
and none of them served any jail time. Yet the Yeltsin era was a
time when multi-million dollar fortunes were allegedly created by
the likes of the former Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin and lesser
mortals. To this day, many Russians passionately believe that their
country desperately needs to clear the atmosphere of widespread
corruption left behind by Yeltsin's rule.
Secondly, Aksyonenko
was publicly resisting an economic reform of his railroad fiefdom
proposed by the Minister of Economic Development German Gref.
According to
the pro-reform Moscow Times, the minister resisted attempts
in July to eliminate hidden subsidies to the industry through referential
railroad tariffs. He demanded $785 million in state subsidies to
cover alleged losses, and was planning to turn profitable parts
of the ministry into a for-profit corporation, over which he and
his cronies would have control.
His departure
would open doors to reform yet another Soviet-era industrial dinosaur,
the outmoded railroad system which sprawls over 11 of the world's
24 time zones.
The arrest
warrant against the unpopular Berezovsky is also hardly surprising
and may be applauded in many quarters in Moscow. It ensures that
he will not volunteer to return to Russia in the foreseeable future,
and might even create unpleasantness for him in his luxurious exile,
as the Kremlin is likely to approach Interpol in an attempt to extradite
him.
It is doubtful
whether France will cooperate. In the past, French governments have
refused to extradite even Russian businessmen accused of murder.
But Putin may be targeting Berezovsky and if so, he could prove
ready to escalate the case all the way up to French President Jacques
Chirac.
Putin has good
reason to distrust Berezovsky and want him discredited. For Berezovsky
knows too much about Putin's rise to power and the internal workings
of the Yeltsin regime, of which Putin was part and parcel.
Today, Berezovsky
is an active proponent of the conspiracy theory, which pins responsibility
for setting off the 1999 apartment building terrorist explosions
in Moscow on the Russian secret services.
Until the World
Trade Center attacks, they caused the most loss of life of any terrorist
attack in a major industrialized country in modern times. And they
provided the political justification for the 1999 invasion of Chechnya
that boosted Putin's popularity as prime minister and lined him
up as Yeltsin's heir and successor in the presidency.
Putin's new
drive against the oligarchs already looks likley further strengthen
his already dominant position. In the past, Boris Yeltsin has maintained
a balance of power between the so-called "young reformers"
— politicians like Anatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar and Boris
Nemtsov — and the oligarchs and Soviet-era political managers
like former Prime Minister Chernomyrdin.
By getting
rid of the remnants of the Yeltsin "Family," Putin is
left with an administration dominated by his clones, the former
KGB secret police officers from Leningrad, now again known by its
ancient name, St. Petersburg. These are predominantly intelligence
professionals, skilled in political intrigues of both the communist
apparatus and secret police variety.
Berezovsky
may or may not be culpable of the crimes he is accused of. But his
loud political conflict with Putin and the earlier persecution of
NTV suggest that no Russian court today is capable of rendering
an impartial judgment against him.
As in the case
of another oligarch, Vladimir Gusinsky, Moscow political insiders
believe that any Russian court, first and foremost may well see
Berezovsky as Putin's political enemy — and will mete out "justice"
accordingly.
Putin's latest
moves against the oligarchs are likely to prove popular with the
Russian public who believe such probes into the corruption of the
Yeltsin era are long overdue. But Russian reformers fear that Berezovsky's
potential fiscal and legal demise, and the court decision to bankrupt
TV-6, it is Russia's freedom of the press which may be the real
victim of Putin's latest anti-oligarch campaign.
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