Paul Robinson — Book Review – John Helmer

If you are aware of John Helmer's blog Dancing with Bears, frequently linked to here, you may be interest in this. Otherwise, not so much.

Irrussianality
Book Review – John Helmer
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Jack Peat — British Overseas Territories playing huge role in laundering dirty money from Russia

The amount of money held by Russians in the UK is dwarfed by the amount held in the British Overseas Territories, which include some of the world’s most significant tax havens.

The Global Witness report, Missing the Bigger Picture, is released as politicians have called for a crackdown on criminal and corrupt cash from Russia following the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and ahead of a crucial vote in parliament to increase transparency in the UK’s tax havens on Tuesday 1 May.

The analysis of figures from the IMF and Russian Central Banks shows nearly five times as much Russian money is invested in the British Overseas Territories (OTs) as is held in the UK....

Enabling bad behavior.

The London Economic
British Overseas Territories playing huge role in laundering dirty money from Russia

Jack Peat

John Helmer — We Are Back, Again – Just Two Years to Go Before the Profession of Journalism Disappears, but Will the Russian Oligarchs Go First?

Mostly on sanctioning Russian oligarchs that the US "advisers" in the Yeltsin years created the conditions for though speedy neoliberal privatization of state assets in the belief that "the market will sort it out." "The market" was assumed to be US control. When that blew up as the Russian economy collapsed and social unrest rose, the US decided on another tack to get back in the driver's seat.

Dances with Bears
We Are Back, Again – Just Two Years to Go Before the Profession of Journalism Disappears, but Will the Russian Oligarchs Go First?
John Helmer

See also

Fort Russ
WATCH: FSB Director Putin outs 'New World Order', 1999

Inessa Sinchougova | Editor and Journalist at Fort Russ News, as well as a research fellow and translator of the Belgrade based think-tank, the Center for Syncretic Studies

John Helmer — US Senate Strikes For Russian Equality – The Oligarchs Targeted In New Sanctions Bill

US Senate declares war on Russia — economic war, that is.

Not since the German government arranged for Vladimir Lenin to return to Russia, crossing German territory in a sealed train on April 16, 1917, has a foreign state at war with Russia done something as revolutionary as the US Senate did on June 15, 2017. That is when, by a vote of 98 to 2, the senators began the process of attacking the Russian oligarchs. They are the men who have dominated the Russian economy for more than twenty years, concentrating more national wealth in their hands than can be found in any other major state in the world today.

Unremarked by the senators themselves; unreported by the American press; and unnoticed, almost, in Russia, the new measure — if adopted by the full Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump — will target the oligarchs’ lines of credit to international banks; the brokers, repositories and clearinghouses of their shares and bonds; their trade with the US and Europe; their US companies, bank accounts, boats on the high seas and homes abroad. If targeting the oligarchs is followed by formal sanctions, the aim will be to destroy their power at home and abroad. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation hasn’t contemplated this much....

In this new Senate bill, the targeting is no longer crimes committed, or even the restraint of competition, but Russian wealth itself, and the oligarchs who have most of it. That is revolutionary. So is the exception in Section 241(a)(1)(A) for “their closeness to the Russian regime”. That’s a call for the oligarchs to join Mikhail Khodorkovsky in open rebellion. 

Have they really thought this through?

  Dances with Bears
US Senate Strikes For Russian Equality – The Oligarchs Targeted In New Sanctions Bill

John Helmer

Irina Reznik — A Fallen Russia Oligarch Sends Warning to Rest of Putin Insiders

This is a revealing article with respect to the views of Russian elite and the American elite.

[Vladimir Yakunin] was one of the most powerful men in Russia for a decade, an old pal of the president who oversaw a million workers and a rail network spanning 11 time zones.

But then Vladimir Yakunin was suddenly out, ending a career that included a stint as an intelligence officer at the United Nations in New York during the Cold War. Now Yakunin, 67, has some parting advice for the remaining members of what he dismissed as Putin’s “so-called inner circle”: know your place.

“This circle will continue to rotate,” Yakunin said in his private office in Moscow during a 90-minute interview. Putin has yet to form a stable “ruling class like Russia had during czarist times,” the former head of state-owned Russian Railways JSC said.

This is reflective of the pre-revolutionary system in Russia in which the elite (boyars) vied with the Tsar for power.  The boyars were the feudal aristocracy that owned the means of production in the Agricultural Age. They were replaced by the plutocratic oligarchs that owned the means of production (financial capital and industrial capital) in the Industrial Age. Their goal was to expand their wealth, influence and power. The role of the Tsar was to bridle that in the interests of the country as a whole. A good Tsar represented the national interest from the viewpoint of all the people.

Of course, the elite resists this.

Some insiders are making the mistake of viewing their property and privilege as inalienable rights, but everything they have hinges on Putin’s shifting views of what’s good for Russia, according to Yakunin.

Duh.

He offered two examples from the president’s first term to illustrate the dangers of overreach.

“Remember what happened to Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky,” he said, referring to two post-Soviet oligarchs who lost their fortunes trying to influence Putin’s Kremlin the way they did Boris Yeltsin’s.

Remember than Yeltsin had allowed the oligarchs to loot Russia under the guise of neoliberal restructuring advocated by the Harvard boyz. There would be no Russian oligarchs without Yeltsin and the US advisors that recommended privatizing everything as quickly as possible based on the assumption of spontaneous natural order. The result was the rule of the Russian mafia that almost destroyed the country, which was arguably the intention of the US deep state. Whether there was a connection is unknown but the facts are suspicious.

Andrei Schleifer, Harvard professor of economics, who IDEAS/RePEc has ranked him as the top economist in the world,[2] and … is also listed as #1 on the list of "Most-Cited Scientists in Economics & Business" (Wikipedia), was "embroiled in a fraud scandal that cost Harvard $26.5 million to settle"(Harvard Crimson) without admitting guilt over his personal dealings in the course of advising Russian privatization.

The Russian economy and Russian society was on the point of disintegrating when Yeltsin's successor Putin stepped in and reversed the trend downward spiral.

Then the Bloomberg author expectedly inserts the USSR and communist memes.

Yakunin’s departure from the rail monopoly in August was the biggest shakeup in years within “the new politburo,” the highest authority under communism, and presages more to come, according to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who’s tracked the rise of the security services under retired KGB Colonel Putin.

Of course, it just might be that the guy was sacked (asked to resign) for poor performance.

The reasons Yakunin was kicked out of this exclusive club are disputed.…

Kryshtanovskaya, the sociologist, said it may have just been a matter of mismanagement at Russian Railways. The company had become bloated, inefficient and plagued by accusations of corruption, so new leadership was needed, especially with the economy mired in a recession, she said.

 The man picked to replace Yakunin, Oleg Belozerov, is a 46-year-old logistics specialist and deputy transport minister from St. Petersburg who has longstanding ties to the Rotenbergs.

Evgeny Minchenko, who runs the International Institute for Political Expertise in Moscow, said Yakunin was simply outmaneuvered by more aggressive insiders whose business interests were being hampered by the rail monopoly.

Then the kicker

Whatever the cause, Minchenko said one thing is indisputable: People close to Putin, who could extend his rule to a quarter century if he wins re-election in 2018, are increasingly focused on safeguarding their wealth and status to pass them on to their offspring.

Like the Western oligarchs from whom they have learned the rules of ownership and class

Still, nobody’s position but Putin’s will be secure until a governing elite like the one that existed before the Bolsheviks swept to power a century ago is fully formed, a process that may take decades, according to Yakunin.

“Trying to measure influence by proximity to political resources is a relic of the Soviet system,” he said.

That Putin as president is the one who stands for election and not the oligarchs is irrelevant in this way of thinking. The unelected oligarchs seem to think that they are entitled by privilege, just as did the aristocracy. This is a feature of capitalism, where ownership of capital as primary means of production replaced title based on land as primary means of production.

The key difference between Russia and the US seems to be that in Russia the oligarchs are determined by the political process while in the US the political process is determined by the oligarchs.

Bloomberg Business
A Fallen Russia Oligarch Sends Warning to Rest of Putin Insiders
Irina Reznik

John Helmer — Walking On Water – Ousted From The Russian Senate, Leonid Lebedev Risks Sinking His Billion-Dollar Us Lawsuit, And More Besides

Keeping up with Russian oligarchs. Murky stuff.

Dances with Bears

Walking On Water – Ousted From The Russian Senate, Leonid Lebedev Risks Sinking His Billion-Dollar Us Lawsuit, And More Besides

John Helmer

John Helmer — Ziyavudin Magomedov And Arkady Dvorkovich Fail To Save Summa’s Rotterdam Terminal Project Revealing Power Shift In Russia’s Maritime Sector, Kremlin Too

A source close to the Kremlin comments: “The Americans, as usual, haven’t realized what their scheming leads to. So far the sanctions have had one clear outcome. The pro-westerners and liberals – Medvedev, Dvorkovich, [former deputy prime minister Alexei] Kudrin – are neutralized; they are all finished.”

Dances with Bears

Ziyavudin Magomedov And Arkady Dvorkovich Fail To Save Summa’s Rotterdam Terminal Project Revealing Power Shift In Russia’s Maritime Sector, Kremlin Too

John Helmer

Vineyard of the Saker — Two post on the Russian economic liberals and the neoliberal plan for Russia

Two post on the Russian economic liberals and the neoliberal plan for Russia.

Russian economic policy is still run by economic liberals. For example, Central Bank of Russia head Elvira Nabiullina and Minister of Economical Development Alexei Ulyukayev are both economic liberals.

The Vineyard of the Saker

Ukraine SITREP June 11th, 2015 by Scott

Ukraine SITREP June 18th, 2015 by Scott

For background, see also Joseph P. Farrell. A Look Back: Anne Williamson And The Rape Of Russia

John Helmer — New Cat’s Paw Award – Financial Times Makes Igor Zyuzin Hero For Standing Up To Vladimir Putin

In publishing on Russia, there comes a time when a writer, journalist, bank analyst, television presenter, or academic produces something so lacking in truthfulness, so replete with fawning and meretriciousness, that this website must kill and skin another goat; dry out the vellum; and have a fresh scroll inscribed with the Cat’s Paw – that’s the Personal Abasement Award (PAW).

This award is designed to encourage accountability and ethical reporting on Russia. The PAW committee decided to suspend the Cat’s Paw awards when the start of the Ukraine civil war threatened to overwhelm the supply of vellum and the goat population on which it depends. The goats who have earned the Cat’s PAW scroll have also multiplied exponentially.

At the Financial Times’ Moscow Bureau there has been a tradition of viewing Russian business figures as agents of regime change, making them appear the harbingers of democracy, and pitting them against the Kremlin; that is, once Boris Yeltsin’s destruction of the Russian parliament in 1993, and his election steal in 1996, failed to do the Russian reform trick. For FT reporters this has meant advertorial promotion of the oligarchs applying to the City of London to raise debt and equity finance; buying London and country real estate; promoting themselves with British public relations and deterring investigation of their business with British libel law firms.

The FT reporters have been closely pressed by rivals at The Times, the New York Times, the Guardian, and other print and broadcast media....

TPTB have never forgiven Putin for taming the oligarchs to whom Yeltsin and the Harvard Boyz turned Russia over to. This is what regime change in Russia is really all about — reinstalling the rule of the oligarchs in an oligarchic democracy modeled on the developed countries of the West. This their model for neoliberal globalization, and they will do whatever it takes to impose it.

Dances with Bears

New Cat’s Paw Award – Financial Times Makes Igor Zyuzin Hero For Standing Up To Vladimir Putin

John Helmer

Graham Stack — The rise and fall of the Russian oligarchy

Must-read for understanding developments in Russia post-USSR and why Western liberalism is unlikely to make a comeback. Putin is actually much more liberal than the alternative, traditional Russian conservatism.

Business News Europe
The rise and fall of the Russian oligarchy

Graham Stack

John Helmer — The Loophole To End, Er Open, All Loopholes – The New Russian Trust

Russian oligarchs emulate their Western counterparts in legal tax avoidance. Neoliberalism is catching.

Putin conceded defeat, a powerful international banker believes, when the president announced late last month that he accepts the establishment of Russian trusts to hold assets and income onshore and offshore without liability to pay domestic tax. According to Putin on March 25, “this is an innovation in our legislation, which before we didn’t have.”

The West considers the influence of Russian oligarchs to be cronyism and corruption, while in the West similar influence is considered meritocratic. Go figure.

Dances with Bears

The Loophole To End, Er Open, All Loopholes – The New Russian Trust

John Helmer

Graham Stack — The rise and fall of the Russian oligarchy

Newly declassified U.S. documents, released to bne IntelliNews, show how Vladimir Putin’s candidacy was a compromise after a fierce battle between pro-US oligarchs and pro-state conservatives.

Johnson's Russia List
The rise and fall of the Russian oligarchy

Graham Stack | Business New Europe

John Helmer — The Oligarchs To Lead Russia A Dance In 2015 – Choosing Your Partners When You Are At War

Machinations in Russia. Alexei Kudrin is the person to watch.

Alexei Kudrin, the former finance minister (right), started by criticizing Putin and Nabiullina last week for their timing on managing the rouble crisis. For Kudrin’s tweets, click. This week Kudrin has announced through the Financial Times that Putin is obliged to choose between capitulation in eastern Ukraine and capitulation on the home front. 

“As for what the president and government must do now,” Kudrin declared, “the most important factor is the normalisation of Russia’s relations with its business partners, above all in Europe, the US and other countries.” Kudrin claimed to the newspaper that 40% of the rouble depreciation is due to the sanctions war. 

Kudrin announced his candidacy for prime minister in Washington in September of 2011, before he was fired; Putin said at the time that Kudrin had suffered abreakdown. This time Kudrin’s candidacy to run Russia is sponsored from London, as he places himself at the head of what the Kremlin faction of security officials is calling the Fifth Column. The security faction is led by chief of staff Sergei Ivanov; it is represented in public by the Novorussian commander Igor Strelkov. Read more. 

Look back at the table setting — at Friday’s meeting with the oligarchs, Ivanov was in first place on Putin’s right.

Dances with Bears

The Oligarchs To Lead Russia A Dance In 2015 – Choosing Your Partners When You Are At War

John Helmer

John Helmer — Sergei Pugachev Is The Boy On The Burning Deck – Condemned By The Uk High Court, Only The Financial Times To Hang On To

High finance, Russian style. How an oligarch got his money. The City seems to think it is just fine?

Dances with Bears

Sergei Pugachev Is The Boy On The Burning Deck – Condemned By The Uk High Court, Only The Financial Times To Hang On To

John Helmer

Clara Weiss — Mikhail Khodorkovsky announces his return to Russian politics

And in the neoliberal corner, challenger Mikhail Khodorkovsky. 

In the Vedemosti interview, Khodorkovsky explained the background to his release at the end of last year. “When they came to send me to Germany,” he said, “I told these people ‘you understand that I won’t just stay sitting quietly’. They said that they understood. That means that on this point, there is full and mutual understanding between Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and me.”

WSWS
Mikhail Khodorkovsky announces his return to Russian politics
Clara Weiss