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The deniers are less vocal as we come to terms with our loss. I have to say that in my my grieving , to read the incessant ramping has got me mad & I regret this. We all put good money into this russian intrigue. I know I am a pessimist but we have no nomad. Period.
Putin's People by Catherine Belton review – a groundbreaking study that follows the money
A fearless, fascinating account of the emergence of the Putin regime also shines a light on the current threats posed by Russian money and influence
‘An unscrupulous and resourceful operator’ … Vladimir Putin.
‘An unscrupulous and resourceful operator’ … Vladimir Putin. Photograph: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
Daniel Beer
Published onWed 6 May 2020 07.30 BST
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ussia stepped decisively off a path of western-led global integration on the morning of 25 October 2003. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the country’s richest man and the chief shareholder in its largest energy company, Yukos, had touched down to refuel his private jet in Novosibirsk when Russian Federal Security Service commandos forced their way on to the aircraft and arrested him on trumped up charges of fraud and tax evasion. Khodorkovsky was swiftly remanded in Moscow’s notorious Matrosskaya Tishina jail while the Kremlin put the finishing touches on a show trial that would see the oligarch sentenced to nine years in a Siberian prison.
Khodorkovsky was no saint: he had amassed a vast fortune during the
chaotic and corrupt privatisations of the Yeltsin years while most of
the country was reduced to poverty, and few mourned his downfall. But the unceremonious seizure and dismemberment of his business empire by a shadowy clique of men surrounding the president Vladimir Putin ushered in a disturbing new era in Russian politics. The Kremlin’s destruction of Yukos forms the central chapter in Catherine Belton’s fearless and fascinating account of the emergence of the Putin regime from the ashes of the Soviet Union.
A renowned business journalist who spent years covering Russia for the Financial Times, Belton follows the money. She has an unrivalled command of the labyrinthine history of share schemes, refinancing packages, mergers, shell companies, and offshore accounts that lay bare the stealthy capture of the post-Soviet economy and state institutions by a coterie of former KGB officers, or siloviki. Belton combines this financial history with testimony from a dazzling array of Kremlin insiders, diplomats, intelligence officers, prosecutors, mobsters and oligarchs. The result reads at times like a John le Carré novel.
Putin with Angela Merkel at the Dostoyevsky Monument in Dresden, 2006.
Putin with Angela Merkel at the Dostoyevsky Monument in Dresden, 2006. Photograph: Denis Sinyakov/AFP/Getty Images
Hazy invocations of Putin’s KGB past have become something of a journalistic cliche. Belton, however, gives a granular account of Putin’s early years as an agent in Dresden not simply as an ominous feature of his biography but as the seedbed of the regime over which he would preside. Like Putin, the siloviki who came to form his inner circle cut their teeth in the KGB’s clandestine operations in the final years of the cold war. They learned sophisticated techniques for washing money throu
Well said djm1. I am indeed very sick. I was ambivalent but stupidly put my money in. The every idea of investing in Russia haunts me and I am projecting my self disgust on you rampers.
On the other hand, to suggest suspension is a good thing really is quite deranged. Our money has gone.
Suspension is shameful but to ram a positive spin on this is reprehensible. Decent people here have invested good money & I for one am grieving my loss. Our nomad resigned. Do you get this? The next minute you are going to suggest that our de-listing is the next great thing. All I know is that I am left with hope & this no basis for investment. It is pure desperation.
Where's Lucretious....
https://youtu.be/2f_Vjz66gh8