9 ms·

Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

244 points by krn 7y ago

thomasll 7y ago
Uncover the theft of hundreds of thousands will get you a bonus. Uncover the theft of millions will get you a big promotion. Uncover the theft of billions by corrupt state actors and international crime syndicates is only ever going to get you dead. Perhaps I have a different mindset, but if I had been looking into this, I think I would have stopped digging as soon as I got a hint of how deep this rabbit hole actually was. Risk vs Reward.
- bilekas 7y ago
  But with this mentality corruption will just go unchallenged. Its a huge risk, but the rewards for removing such a big chunk of corruption is huge. So I guess you're right, it is more of a mindset thing.
  - krageon 7y ago
    > reward This person is dead. We can thus deduce the reward is death. While that is a big reward, it's not one most people want.
    - bilekas 7y ago
      I understand, but some people don't want a life knowing the corruption they're seeing is degrading the lives of potentially millions. I am not saying go out and get yourself killed, just that I can see the reasons some people do try to get this info out.
    - bkor 7y ago
      > This person is dead. We can thus deduce the reward is death. You're mixing reward with outcome. The outcome is that the person was murdered. That's something entirely different from a reward.
    - mola 7y ago
      Maybe living with knowing about the thing was worse than the one time event of death?
    - hliyan 7y ago
      Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. - The Categorical imperative (Kant). Basically, it's the next level of "do unto others". To determine whether your action is right or wrong, ask yourself what would happen to society if every person performed that action as a matter of habit.
      - krageon 7y ago
        When I was 18, I'm sure I would have agreed with you. After some more time living among other people, I think I can say I've moved past that. If you have not, all the more power to you!
        hliyan 7y ago
        At 18, I thought Atlas Shrugged was the pinnacle of philosophy. I'm 40 now, it's been only 3 years since I've started to look at morality through the lens of CI.
      - tialaramex 7y ago
        Even this is a little unsophisticated for the same reason as the Golden Rule. The problem is that other people aren't just mirror versions of you. In small children "theory of mind" develops, the child supposes that perhaps this experience they're having, whatever that is, is also an experience the other people who look like them are having. And this theory works well, you can make useful predictions with it. Because Daddy is like you, and you like apple drink better than pond water, you can surmise correctly that Daddy will prefer the apple drink over the pond water too. Being smacked in the face (e.g. by your own unco-ordinated limbs) hurts, and so it's not a surprise that Daddy doesn't like a smack in the face either. But the explanatory power of theory of mind is limited if you stop there. I don't like Peanut Butter. But it turns out that other people _do_ like Peanut Butter, their minds are similar but not identical. If I see some bread with Peanut Butter spread on it, to me that bread is ruined, but to someone else that's a delicious snack. I don't want to marry. So for me a Categorical Imperative forbidding marriage is no problem. But it's clear to me that other people value marriage and so, against my better judgement, it should continue to be permitted. Some people feel marriage should be restricted, that couples ought to be of opposite biological sex, or the same skin colour, or of child-bearing age, or whatever other constraint. I have no dog in that fight but it's simplest if we're to allow something I have no need for, to assume that everybody will avail themselves of this custom only if they value it, and so it may as well be open to everyone until we see some clear evidence of ill-effects.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    It's no different than a peasant (or even a lesser lord) challenging a king in the feudal era. You spoke out against the king, you lost your head. Billionaires are our kings. Jeff Bezos' wealth is 3 times the GDP of North Kora, which has a standing army of over a million people. They are more wealthy than a number of independent states. Do you think he couldn't fund and equip 100,000 mercenaries if his monopoly were threatened? When a peasant threatens his power, he doesn't even need to do that: a single assassin is enough. Replace Bezos (who I doubt would order a hit but you never know) with a Russian oligarch (who absolutely would order a hit) and you have your explanation.
    - greggman2 7y ago
      If Jeff Bezos was to commit murder tomorrow and be caught I suspect the police would chase him, catch him, throw him in jail, he'd make bail and it would turn into a scene like OJ. I don't expect he'd be able to raise an army to break him out or defend is home. He might be able to flee the country but even that might be hard even with all his money. If he had covertly planned ahead and already had his mercenary army in place maybe. (though maybe he'll have the secret code for all the drones....)
      - Consultant32452 7y ago
        Recently a Mexican cartel outgunned the Mexican police and forced the release of El Chapo's son. It's hard to imagine something like that happening in a wealthy country, but it's not unheard of in the real world. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/el-chapo-son-operation-video/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/el-chapo-son-operati...
        learc83 7y ago
        Mexican cartels are much closer to terrorists, rebel groups, or rival states than they are to businesses operating in a functioning country. The difference in what's basically a warlord who already has loyal troops to command, controls territory, and assets that can't be easily seized and Jeff Bezos is too much to make a comparison remotely useful.
- mola 7y ago
  This is why humanity invented the Hero. We recognize that irrational selflessness can be extremely beneficial for society. The more heroes we have, the less corrupt the system, the stakes of corruption would be lower and the price of heroism should decrease, thus society at large and these selfless heros will probably benefit together.
  - mola 7y ago
    So we could call this guy stupid, or hail him as a hero. In which society would you like you and your children to live in, the one where heroes are acknowledged or the one they are dismissed as dumb and irrational? Mind you, calling someone a hero cost you next to nothing in utility so I think the choice is a no brainier.
    - thomasll 7y ago
      I'm getting flashbacks to numerous "Vulcans Vs Humans" debates I had with friends in my halcyon days...
      - mola 7y ago
        Vulcans are not real, we have no proof such a society could survive.
    - magduf 7y ago
      >In which society would you like you and your children to live in, the one where heroes are acknowledged or the one they are dismissed as dumb and irrational? I would like to live in the former, but you have to face reality: we do not live in such a society, we live in one where heroes like him will only be murdered, and no one will really care as it'll be forgotten quickly.
      - GVIrish 7y ago
        Sergei Magnitsky brought light to Russia corruption and paid with his life. But because of his sacrifice, the United States, UK, Canada, and others implemented the Magnitsky Act which allows for the sanctioning of individuals involved in human rights abuses. It shuts the sanctioned individuals out of banking systems and prevents their entry to the country with a ratified Magnitsky Act. More and more countries are implementing their own version of this law. People who expose corruption don't always live to see the day their efforts make a difference. But the bad guys don't always win either.
- Asooka 7y ago
  Хорошо сказал, товарищ.
- HashThis 7y ago
  People don't buy $200 billion worth of drugs. To get that much, the nation state and oligarchs need to be rigging the economy and stealing with massive crony capitalism.
- squarefoot 7y ago
  "I think I would have stopped digging as soon as I got a hint of how deep this rabbit hole actually was" Or maybe find a way of making the news public under anonimity, which brings us to the importance of being able/allowed to do so when necessary.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Maybe. The problem with a lot of stuff like that is that it's really hard to release information anonymously. The nature of the information is such that not many people would have had access to it, so for the assassins, the number of suspects is very low, and it's not that hard for them to figure out who did it.
    - ajross 7y ago
      I think the comment was making an analogy to a more contemporary issue. As far as whether they could figure out how to target Koslov personally, that requires more info than we have. The nature of any complicated scheme is that, while yes, information is compartmentalized, doing it at all requires a lot more "regular people" than you expect. Leaders alone can't effect a criminal conspiracy. At the end of the day, someone like, say, a mid-level foreign affairs analyst probably saw this stuff and could have blown the whistle too.
    - squarefoot 7y ago
      This is also true. In such a scenario probably an effective torture proof dead man switch (the one the whistleblower can't turn off once they kidnap him) could have helped. Something on the lines of "here's 500 pages of sensitive data in the wild about your crimes, if I or anyone of my family members disappear or die a thousand more pages will be published, and nobody can turn off this feature, including me". I know I'm making this a lot easier than it really is...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
freejulian85 7y ago
Let’s not pretend the US is any better. Epstein was assassinated. MLK was assassinated. Malcom X was assassinated. Assange is being murdered by the UK government as we speak.
jessaustin 7y ago
Oh Wikileaks, why would you publish more material that harms the leaders of the Russian state? It's as if you don't even care that you're contradicting the constant media accounts of your pro-Russian bias. Corporate-media stenographers have families to feed!
- andreigheorghe 7y ago
  > According to a telegram that remained buried until now in the cache of 250,000 diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010 care to try that argument again, taking into account how time works?
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    That's the point; WL have never had any bias. They just publish genuine documents. They don't care whose ox is gored. The ridiculous conspiracy theorizing on display for the last three years says nothing about WL and everything about USA.
    - andreigheorghe 7y ago
      Nice work moving the goalposts :) If, being aware of everything that's happening around us, you still choose to represent reality as "ridiculous conspiracy theorizing", then you're either in a cult, or a dedicated troll, neither of which I'm interested in wasting my time debating.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Russia have been accused of various things, few of which seem credible and none of which have been associated with any evidence available to the public. Even so, they haven't even been accused of anything besides excessive communication. That's 1A. No one has to be silent if they're talking about an election. If this democracy can't handle $4700 in AdWords spend [0], it ain't really a democracy. [0] https://9to5google.com/2018/12/11/numbers-sundar-pichais-testimony/ https://9to5google.com/2018/12/11/numbers-sundar-pichais-tes...
9c8675a8 7y ago
All tax money in Russia and elsewhere is stolen and therefore dirty and corrupt to begin with anyway. Try not paying taxes and you'll get jailed -- and if you refuse this you'll get gunned down. I think doing anything you can to avoid paying taxes without getting yourself into trouble is a moral obligation.
- a_imho 7y ago
  Avoidance has bad connotations, tax optimization is a better term.
- skinpop 7y ago
  I like paying taxes. I get "free" healthcare and education and so many other things here in Sweden that wouldn't be possible without taxes. Simply not having to ever think about the financials of those things is worth a good 5% taxes if you ask me. I wouldn't want to pay any less in taxes if it meant taking any of that away, but I would happily pitch in more if each additional krona would do as much or more than the one before it.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    Yeah that's all nice and shiny, but imagine if those taxes were simply stolen by corrupt government. Your mom would die from simple appendectomy infection because hospitals don't have enough money to do things properly. Plus if you got fired, you would have next to 0 support from the state, and either you have some savings you just eat through or your kids starve. And on top of that, any simple bureaucracy you want to do would require bribes left and right just to get things done that in normal society are done efficiently and almost effortlessly. Police would be corrupt too and chasing any dissent more than criminals. Roads you drive on would be semi-useless and getting worse. Etc... In that situation, you know your tax money is >90% spend just to enrich somebody, probably also helping mafia, you would have a different perspective. I don't claim I have a solution. I don't. I left my east/central European home that is nowhere as bad as failed state of Russia, but even with that corruption is still pretty bad, a-holes stealing from everybody are often well known, sometimes proper celebrities laughing off their supercars. I know I don't want to raise my kids in such a society, no matter how close to my heart it is and how easy life I had back home with my qualifications and savings. I know I wouldn't change anything back home and just be frustrated or apathetic, just like all my peers that stayed at home. Or I would get a sniper rifle and take those corrupt people down, without much remorse (actually I am very surprised not a single unbalanced person ever done that, anywhere). So, I moved and don't plan to come back in productive age.
anonymousBarker 7y ago
Please, don't tell Trump...
lazyjones 7y ago
Sure, in Russia they are assassinated and in the USA they fall victims to botched robberies ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich ), so the US media tell us.
- alexro 7y ago
  This is because in a democratic state there is no corruption, only state interests. Unless of course Trump is the president - then it the other way around!
- ALittleLight 7y ago
  Well, this guy was killed after exposing a massive conspiracy and even the official story is that he was assassinated - albeit by small time random crooks. Conversely, Seth Rich hasn't been shown to be involved in anything that might motivate someone to have him killed. The only evidence that he was involved in something, that I'm aware of, is a cryptic comment from Asange. Surely it's good to be skeptical, but being so skeptical that you draw incorrect equivalences between Russia and the US may be taking things too far.
  - powdertreason85 7y ago
    Found murdered with gunshot wound to the back. Police claimed it was robbery yet his wallet, cellphone, creditcards, and laptop weren't taken. > The only evidence that he was involved in something, that I'm aware of, is a cryptic comment from Asange. Well, that and basic commonsense. If it wasn't Seth Rich who leaked the e-mails, who was it? It's far more plausible that it was Seth Rich than the russia boogeyman thrown out by the media (without evidence, mind you).
    - codyb 7y ago
      US Intelligence as well as several independent cyber security firms concluded the DNC e-mails were leaked after an attack by Guccifer 2.0. This was followed up by several indictments issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller which would have to be tried in a federal courtroom were they ever to occur. That seems to be a fair bit of evidence. Is everything a conspiracy now? It’s quite clear Russia meddled in the 2016 elections, and they’ll probably do it again in 2020 (if they didn’t already do it again in 2018).
alexro 7y ago
Highly likely Putin himself (and probably he was riding a bear) has hunted down this honest man
alexro 7y ago
Is anyone able to explain how they have jumped from this "Andrei Kozlov was gunned down in 2006, weeks after trying to shutter the world’s biggest money-laundering scam" to this "—one reportedly used by Putin’s family and the FSB." ?
- krn 7y ago
  https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/the-russian-laundromat-exposed/ https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/the-russian-laundromat-e...
  - alexro 7y ago
    Your source is jumping big between the facts too
    - krn 7y ago
      The last paragraph: > FSB representatives served on the board of at least one of banks that wired billions out of Russia as did Igor Putin, Putin’s cousin. He was a manager and executive board member in the Russian Land Bank. This bank wired more than $9.7 billion to Moldindconbank in Moldova, most of which went on to Trasta Komercbanka and from there on to the world.
      - alexro 7y ago
        So, how this is considered to be corruption if money are moved to somewhere? Isn't it what every government is doing, including various US funds helping all kinds of crooks abroad?
        krn 7y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering > Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. The overall scheme of this process returns the money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way.
mensetmanusman 7y ago
The U.S. is not blameless in supporting money laundering through real estate: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kleptocracy-came-to-america/580471/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kle...
- tclancy 7y ago
  How is that relevant here and not just meaningless whataboutism?
  - chance_state 7y ago
    Is there a name for the phenomenon (eg. Poe's Law) where people leave comments on random world politics topics that basically consist of "but America..."? You can count on it on every single negative geopolitical story on most sites. Sad to see it on HN.
    - kthejoker2 7y ago
      Well, Nathan Poe was just the guy on the Internet who noted the "law" So let's name it after you, and call it .. Chance's Law...?
    - magduf 7y ago
      >Is there a name for the phenomenon (eg. Poe's Law) where people leave comments on random world politics topics that basically consist of "but America..."? Yeah, isn't it called "pot... kettle"?
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    The point is to say that there are things Americans can do to help this situation. Holding politicians accountable to corruption going on in our backyard can help. Being aware that corruption in the U.S. has effects all around the world is all...
sunstone 7y ago
Putin has a habit of reaching out and touching people that annoy him.

244 points by krn 7y ago

Uncover the theft of hundreds of thousands will get you a bonus. Uncover the theft of millions will get you a big promotion. Uncover the theft of billions by corrupt state actors and international crime syndicates is only ever going to get you dead. Perhaps I have a different mindset, but if I had been looking into this, I think I would have stopped digging as soon as I got a hint of how deep this rabbit hole actually was. Risk vs Reward.

bilekas 7y ago
But with this mentality corruption will just go unchallenged. Its a huge risk, but the rewards for removing such a big chunk of corruption is huge. So I guess you're right, it is more of a mindset thing.
- krageon 7y ago
  > reward This person is dead. We can thus deduce the reward is death. While that is a big reward, it's not one most people want.
  - bilekas 7y ago
    I understand, but some people don't want a life knowing the corruption they're seeing is degrading the lives of potentially millions. I am not saying go out and get yourself killed, just that I can see the reasons some people do try to get this info out.
  - bkor 7y ago
    > This person is dead. We can thus deduce the reward is death. You're mixing reward with outcome. The outcome is that the person was murdered. That's something entirely different from a reward.
  - mola 7y ago
    Maybe living with knowing about the thing was worse than the one time event of death?
  - hliyan 7y ago
    Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. - The Categorical imperative (Kant). Basically, it's the next level of "do unto others". To determine whether your action is right or wrong, ask yourself what would happen to society if every person performed that action as a matter of habit.
    - krageon 7y ago
      When I was 18, I'm sure I would have agreed with you. After some more time living among other people, I think I can say I've moved past that. If you have not, all the more power to you!
      - hliyan 7y ago
        At 18, I thought Atlas Shrugged was the pinnacle of philosophy. I'm 40 now, it's been only 3 years since I've started to look at morality through the lens of CI.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      Even this is a little unsophisticated for the same reason as the Golden Rule. The problem is that other people aren't just mirror versions of you. In small children "theory of mind" develops, the child supposes that perhaps this experience they're having, whatever that is, is also an experience the other people who look like them are having. And this theory works well, you can make useful predictions with it. Because Daddy is like you, and you like apple drink better than pond water, you can surmise correctly that Daddy will prefer the apple drink over the pond water too. Being smacked in the face (e.g. by your own unco-ordinated limbs) hurts, and so it's not a surprise that Daddy doesn't like a smack in the face either. But the explanatory power of theory of mind is limited if you stop there. I don't like Peanut Butter. But it turns out that other people _do_ like Peanut Butter, their minds are similar but not identical. If I see some bread with Peanut Butter spread on it, to me that bread is ruined, but to someone else that's a delicious snack. I don't want to marry. So for me a Categorical Imperative forbidding marriage is no problem. But it's clear to me that other people value marriage and so, against my better judgement, it should continue to be permitted. Some people feel marriage should be restricted, that couples ought to be of opposite biological sex, or the same skin colour, or of child-bearing age, or whatever other constraint. I have no dog in that fight but it's simplest if we're to allow something I have no need for, to assume that everybody will avail themselves of this custom only if they value it, and so it may as well be open to everyone until we see some clear evidence of ill-effects.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  It's no different than a peasant (or even a lesser lord) challenging a king in the feudal era. You spoke out against the king, you lost your head. Billionaires are our kings. Jeff Bezos' wealth is 3 times the GDP of North Kora, which has a standing army of over a million people. They are more wealthy than a number of independent states. Do you think he couldn't fund and equip 100,000 mercenaries if his monopoly were threatened? When a peasant threatens his power, he doesn't even need to do that: a single assassin is enough. Replace Bezos (who I doubt would order a hit but you never know) with a Russian oligarch (who absolutely would order a hit) and you have your explanation.
  - greggman2 7y ago
    If Jeff Bezos was to commit murder tomorrow and be caught I suspect the police would chase him, catch him, throw him in jail, he'd make bail and it would turn into a scene like OJ. I don't expect he'd be able to raise an army to break him out or defend is home. He might be able to flee the country but even that might be hard even with all his money. If he had covertly planned ahead and already had his mercenary army in place maybe. (though maybe he'll have the secret code for all the drones....)
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      Recently a Mexican cartel outgunned the Mexican police and forced the release of El Chapo's son. It's hard to imagine something like that happening in a wealthy country, but it's not unheard of in the real world. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/el-chapo-son-operation-video/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/el-chapo-son-operati...
      - learc83 7y ago
        Mexican cartels are much closer to terrorists, rebel groups, or rival states than they are to businesses operating in a functioning country. The difference in what's basically a warlord who already has loyal troops to command, controls territory, and assets that can't be easily seized and Jeff Bezos is too much to make a comparison remotely useful.
mola 7y ago
This is why humanity invented the Hero. We recognize that irrational selflessness can be extremely beneficial for society. The more heroes we have, the less corrupt the system, the stakes of corruption would be lower and the price of heroism should decrease, thus society at large and these selfless heros will probably benefit together.
- mola 7y ago
  So we could call this guy stupid, or hail him as a hero. In which society would you like you and your children to live in, the one where heroes are acknowledged or the one they are dismissed as dumb and irrational? Mind you, calling someone a hero cost you next to nothing in utility so I think the choice is a no brainier.
  - thomasll 7y ago
    I'm getting flashbacks to numerous "Vulcans Vs Humans" debates I had with friends in my halcyon days...
    - mola 7y ago
      Vulcans are not real, we have no proof such a society could survive.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >In which society would you like you and your children to live in, the one where heroes are acknowledged or the one they are dismissed as dumb and irrational? I would like to live in the former, but you have to face reality: we do not live in such a society, we live in one where heroes like him will only be murdered, and no one will really care as it'll be forgotten quickly.
    - GVIrish 7y ago
      Sergei Magnitsky brought light to Russia corruption and paid with his life. But because of his sacrifice, the United States, UK, Canada, and others implemented the Magnitsky Act which allows for the sanctioning of individuals involved in human rights abuses. It shuts the sanctioned individuals out of banking systems and prevents their entry to the country with a ratified Magnitsky Act. More and more countries are implementing their own version of this law. People who expose corruption don't always live to see the day their efforts make a difference. But the bad guys don't always win either.
Asooka 7y ago
Хорошо сказал, товарищ.
HashThis 7y ago
People don't buy $200 billion worth of drugs. To get that much, the nation state and oligarchs need to be rigging the economy and stealing with massive crony capitalism.
squarefoot 7y ago
"I think I would have stopped digging as soon as I got a hint of how deep this rabbit hole actually was" Or maybe find a way of making the news public under anonimity, which brings us to the importance of being able/allowed to do so when necessary.
- magduf 7y ago
  Maybe. The problem with a lot of stuff like that is that it's really hard to release information anonymously. The nature of the information is such that not many people would have had access to it, so for the assassins, the number of suspects is very low, and it's not that hard for them to figure out who did it.
  - ajross 7y ago
    I think the comment was making an analogy to a more contemporary issue. As far as whether they could figure out how to target Koslov personally, that requires more info than we have. The nature of any complicated scheme is that, while yes, information is compartmentalized, doing it at all requires a lot more "regular people" than you expect. Leaders alone can't effect a criminal conspiracy. At the end of the day, someone like, say, a mid-level foreign affairs analyst probably saw this stuff and could have blown the whistle too.
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    This is also true. In such a scenario probably an effective torture proof dead man switch (the one the whistleblower can't turn off once they kidnap him) could have helped. Something on the lines of "here's 500 pages of sensitive data in the wild about your crimes, if I or anyone of my family members disappear or die a thousand more pages will be published, and nobody can turn off this feature, including me". I know I'm making this a lot easier than it really is...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

freejulian85 7y ago

Let’s not pretend the US is any better. Epstein was assassinated. MLK was assassinated. Malcom X was assassinated. Assange is being murdered by the UK government as we speak.

jessaustin 7y ago

Oh Wikileaks, why would you publish more material that harms the leaders of the Russian state? It's as if you don't even care that you're contradicting the constant media accounts of your pro-Russian bias. Corporate-media stenographers have families to feed!

andreigheorghe 7y ago
> According to a telegram that remained buried until now in the cache of 250,000 diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010 care to try that argument again, taking into account how time works?
- jessaustin 7y ago
  That's the point; WL have never had any bias. They just publish genuine documents. They don't care whose ox is gored. The ridiculous conspiracy theorizing on display for the last three years says nothing about WL and everything about USA.
  - andreigheorghe 7y ago
    Nice work moving the goalposts :) If, being aware of everything that's happening around us, you still choose to represent reality as "ridiculous conspiracy theorizing", then you're either in a cult, or a dedicated troll, neither of which I'm interested in wasting my time debating.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Russia have been accused of various things, few of which seem credible and none of which have been associated with any evidence available to the public. Even so, they haven't even been accused of anything besides excessive communication. That's 1A. No one has to be silent if they're talking about an election. If this democracy can't handle $4700 in AdWords spend [0], it ain't really a democracy. [0] https://9to5google.com/2018/12/11/numbers-sundar-pichais-testimony/ https://9to5google.com/2018/12/11/numbers-sundar-pichais-tes...

9c8675a8 7y ago

All tax money in Russia and elsewhere is stolen and therefore dirty and corrupt to begin with anyway. Try not paying taxes and you'll get jailed -- and if you refuse this you'll get gunned down. I think doing anything you can to avoid paying taxes without getting yourself into trouble is a moral obligation.

a_imho 7y ago
Avoidance has bad connotations, tax optimization is a better term.
skinpop 7y ago
I like paying taxes. I get "free" healthcare and education and so many other things here in Sweden that wouldn't be possible without taxes. Simply not having to ever think about the financials of those things is worth a good 5% taxes if you ask me. I wouldn't want to pay any less in taxes if it meant taking any of that away, but I would happily pitch in more if each additional krona would do as much or more than the one before it.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Yeah that's all nice and shiny, but imagine if those taxes were simply stolen by corrupt government. Your mom would die from simple appendectomy infection because hospitals don't have enough money to do things properly. Plus if you got fired, you would have next to 0 support from the state, and either you have some savings you just eat through or your kids starve. And on top of that, any simple bureaucracy you want to do would require bribes left and right just to get things done that in normal society are done efficiently and almost effortlessly. Police would be corrupt too and chasing any dissent more than criminals. Roads you drive on would be semi-useless and getting worse. Etc... In that situation, you know your tax money is >90% spend just to enrich somebody, probably also helping mafia, you would have a different perspective. I don't claim I have a solution. I don't. I left my east/central European home that is nowhere as bad as failed state of Russia, but even with that corruption is still pretty bad, a-holes stealing from everybody are often well known, sometimes proper celebrities laughing off their supercars. I know I don't want to raise my kids in such a society, no matter how close to my heart it is and how easy life I had back home with my qualifications and savings. I know I wouldn't change anything back home and just be frustrated or apathetic, just like all my peers that stayed at home. Or I would get a sniper rifle and take those corrupt people down, without much remorse (actually I am very surprised not a single unbalanced person ever done that, anywhere). So, I moved and don't plan to come back in productive age.

anonymousBarker 7y ago

Please, don't tell Trump...

lazyjones 7y ago

Sure, in Russia they are assassinated and in the USA they fall victims to botched robberies ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich ), so the US media tell us.

alexro 7y ago
This is because in a democratic state there is no corruption, only state interests. Unless of course Trump is the president - then it the other way around!
ALittleLight 7y ago
Well, this guy was killed after exposing a massive conspiracy and even the official story is that he was assassinated - albeit by small time random crooks. Conversely, Seth Rich hasn't been shown to be involved in anything that might motivate someone to have him killed. The only evidence that he was involved in something, that I'm aware of, is a cryptic comment from Asange. Surely it's good to be skeptical, but being so skeptical that you draw incorrect equivalences between Russia and the US may be taking things too far.
- powdertreason85 7y ago
  Found murdered with gunshot wound to the back. Police claimed it was robbery yet his wallet, cellphone, creditcards, and laptop weren't taken. > The only evidence that he was involved in something, that I'm aware of, is a cryptic comment from Asange. Well, that and basic commonsense. If it wasn't Seth Rich who leaked the e-mails, who was it? It's far more plausible that it was Seth Rich than the russia boogeyman thrown out by the media (without evidence, mind you).
  - codyb 7y ago
    US Intelligence as well as several independent cyber security firms concluded the DNC e-mails were leaked after an attack by Guccifer 2.0. This was followed up by several indictments issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller which would have to be tried in a federal courtroom were they ever to occur. That seems to be a fair bit of evidence. Is everything a conspiracy now? It’s quite clear Russia meddled in the 2016 elections, and they’ll probably do it again in 2020 (if they didn’t already do it again in 2018).

alexro 7y ago

Highly likely Putin himself (and probably he was riding a bear) has hunted down this honest man

alexro 7y ago

Is anyone able to explain how they have jumped from this "Andrei Kozlov was gunned down in 2006, weeks after trying to shutter the world’s biggest money-laundering scam" to this "—one reportedly used by Putin’s family and the FSB." ?

krn 7y ago
https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/the-russian-laundromat-exposed/ https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/the-russian-laundromat-e...
- alexro 7y ago
  Your source is jumping big between the facts too
  - krn 7y ago
    The last paragraph: > FSB representatives served on the board of at least one of banks that wired billions out of Russia as did Igor Putin, Putin’s cousin. He was a manager and executive board member in the Russian Land Bank. This bank wired more than $9.7 billion to Moldindconbank in Moldova, most of which went on to Trasta Komercbanka and from there on to the world.
    - alexro 7y ago
      So, how this is considered to be corruption if money are moved to somewhere? Isn't it what every government is doing, including various US funds helping all kinds of crooks abroad?
      - krn 7y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering > Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. The overall scheme of this process returns the money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way.

mensetmanusman 7y ago

The U.S. is not blameless in supporting money laundering through real estate: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kleptocracy-came-to-america/580471/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kle...

tclancy 7y ago
How is that relevant here and not just meaningless whataboutism?
- chance_state 7y ago
  Is there a name for the phenomenon (eg. Poe's Law) where people leave comments on random world politics topics that basically consist of "but America..."? You can count on it on every single negative geopolitical story on most sites. Sad to see it on HN.
  - kthejoker2 7y ago
    Well, Nathan Poe was just the guy on the Internet who noted the "law" So let's name it after you, and call it .. Chance's Law...?
  - magduf 7y ago
    >Is there a name for the phenomenon (eg. Poe's Law) where people leave comments on random world politics topics that basically consist of "but America..."? Yeah, isn't it called "pot... kettle"?
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  The point is to say that there are things Americans can do to help this situation. Holding politicians accountable to corruption going on in our backyard can help. Being aware that corruption in the U.S. has effects all around the world is all...

sunstone 7y ago

Putin has a habit of reaching out and touching people that annoy him.