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https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5w5j8/russia-fimaco-moneyland-corruption-offshore>
"As this extract from Oliver Bullough's book
Moneyland makes clear, it is
remarkably easy to loot a country providing you are in charge of it."
'Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World'
(Profile Books) is investigative journalist Oliver Bullough's 2018 book about
the corrupt world leaders who prosper at the expense of their people.
"Moneyland" is a concept of Bullough's creation, a "country" made up of the
services and laws of nations around the world that allow this class of
super-rich to hide their ill-gotten gains. Below is an extract from the book,
the chapter "Sex, Lies and Offshore Vehicles", about the beginnings of Russia's
oligarchy.
'The 1990s in Russia were disastrous. The army lost a war against Chechnya, a
region with fewer people than Russia had soldiers. The economy collapsed. The
government defaulted on its debt. Male life expectancy fell below 60 years.
Epidemic diseases spread fast. The country was ruled by an erratic alcoholic,
whose government was bullied by oligarchs and in hock to the International
Monetary Fund. Still, though, a late night news broadcast on the 17th of March,
1999 represented a new low, even by the standards Russians were used to.
For several minutes, the state-owned RTR station broadcast grainy but
unmistakable footage of a paunchy, pouchy, balding, nude man cavorting with two
much slimmer, far younger, equally naked women, neither of whom was his wife.
The women were not identified, but the man – the presenter said – was a "person
resembling" Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov, who was at the time clinging on
to his job despite pressure from President Boris Yeltsin that he resign. RTR's
implausible justification for airing this excruciating footage was that it
wanted to protect the country’s most senior lawman from blackmail. "The aim of
the All-Russia State TV and Radio Company was to protect the interests of the
state, society and the prosecutor general himself from the possibility of this
material being used to the detriment of the state, society and prosecutor
general," the channel said in a statement.
Skuratov's explanation for what had happened was more convincing. He said the
government had attempted to blackmail him with the video, because it wanted him
to stop investigating a corruption scandal that threatened to engulf everyone
from President Boris Yeltsin downwards, and had chosen to play dirty when he
refused. Central to his investigation were kickbacks supposedly paid by a
Swiss construction company for contracts to restore government buildings,
including both houses of parliament. There was a subsidiary scandal, too. It
attracted relatively little notice in the noise surrounding the video, but it
was perhaps even more consequential, since it involved far more money and
penetrated just as deeply into the heart of the state.'
Via libramoon and Diane A.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
