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> That's what Putin did 20 years ago (with oil companies which are the dominant sector in Russia). That's an interesting spin on history. https://en.wikipedia

> That's what Putin did 20 years ago (with oil companies which are the dominant sector in Russia). That's an interesting spin on history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos > The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled unanimously upon awarding compensation of $50 billion for the company's assets, that Yukos was the target of a series of politically motivated attacks by Russian authorities that eventually led to its destruction, and that Russia had expropriated Yukos' assets in breach of the Energy Charter Treaty. The treaty does not prohibit governments seizing or nationalizing commercial assets, but requires investors to be fairly compensated. Though Russia never ratified the full treaty, these clauses were still legally binding under both the treaty and Russian law until 2029. According to the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling, the primary objective of the Russian Federation was not to collect taxes but rather to bankrupt Yukos, appropriate its assets for the sole benefit of the Russian state and state-owned companies Rosneft and Gazprom, and remove Khodorkovsky from the political arena. > Although weak at the time of the auctions and the economic downturn of the mid-1990s, from 2000 the government under new leader Vladimir Putin grew in strength, until it became able politically to outweigh the power of the oligarchs. On October 25, 2003, Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion. Leonid Bershidsky, founder of Russian business newspaper Vedomosti, wrote: "Any of the oligarchs could have faced similar charges; Khodorkovsky's imprisonment made them so docile that Putin confined himself to making an example of just one victim".

m0zg 5y ago
It's not a "spin", that's exactly what happened. The Hague has no bearing on these facts whatsoever. Khodorkovsky at the time owned half the Duma (Russia's Congress) and was basically writing his own laws. Imagine, if you will, Charles Koch or Jeff Bezos deciding unilaterally how to spend the US tax revenues, and what regulations to have. That's what Knodorkovsky was. Ask a Russian who was there at the time about this, they'll confirm. "Regular folks" outside liberal intelligentsia wondered the same thing as Bershidsky - why the fuck aren't more of them in jail. I was wondering the same thing, even though the obvious political motivations and the sheer speed and mercilessness with which this was carried out irked me a bit. Yet the fact remains - the dude deserved every bit of what he got just on the stated charges alone. Every single Russian oligarch evaded a shit ton of taxes illegally - it was not possible for businesses to operate without that back then. The reasons became clear later on - the government understood that oligarchs can serve a useful function in the power hierarchy and so it wasn't interested in eradicating them as a class, which they could do, by the way, with very broad popular support (at least 90%). They have extensive kompromat on every single one of them, without any exceptions. Putin, at the time, wasn't entirely in charge either in spite of nominally being the president - the national security apparatus has just installed him, so I doubt the decision to make an example of Khodorkovsky in particular was entirely his own. But this was a success in the end, and now the oligarchs know their place and do not try to undermine the state like they used to in the 90s. Boris Berezovsky (another odious oligarch who could, in the 90s, do whatever he wanted in the Kremlin) "hanging himself" in London in 2013 might have done something as well to reinforce their non-interference.
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m0zg 5y ago

It's not a "spin", that's exactly what happened. The Hague has no bearing on these facts whatsoever. Khodorkovsky at the time owned half the Duma (Russia's Congress) and was basically writing his own laws. Imagine, if you will, Charles Koch or Jeff Bezos deciding unilaterally how to spend the US tax revenues, and what regulations to have. That's what Knodorkovsky was. Ask a Russian who was there at the time about this, they'll confirm. "Regular folks" outside liberal intelligentsia wondered the same thing as Bershidsky - why the fuck aren't more of them in jail. I was wondering the same thing, even though the obvious political motivations and the sheer speed and mercilessness with which this was carried out irked me a bit. Yet the fact remains - the dude deserved every bit of what he got just on the stated charges alone. Every single Russian oligarch evaded a shit ton of taxes illegally - it was not possible for businesses to operate without that back then. The reasons became clear later on - the government understood that oligarchs can serve a useful function in the power hierarchy and so it wasn't interested in eradicating them as a class, which they could do, by the way, with very broad popular support (at least 90%). They have extensive kompromat on every single one of them, without any exceptions. Putin, at the time, wasn't entirely in charge either in spite of nominally being the president - the national security apparatus has just installed him, so I doubt the decision to make an example of Khodorkovsky in particular was entirely his own. But this was a success in the end, and now the oligarchs know their place and do not try to undermine the state like they used to in the 90s. Boris Berezovsky (another odious oligarch who could, in the 90s, do whatever he wanted in the Kremlin) "hanging himself" in London in 2013 might have done something as well to reinforce their non-interference.

deleted 5y ago
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