Today we're featuring two translations from the German media about the rising corruption problem in Russia - a trend that we have often argued is present in resource nationalist states where rule of law has eroded. This first one comes from Die Welt:
Who swigs the blood of the entrepreneurs?
Medvedev takes fight against corruption seriously
By Manfred Quiring, August 6, 2008, page 5
Moscow - Russian President Dimitri Medvedev gave a clear signal to public authorities and legal protection agencies to leave Russian entrepreneurs alone when he visited the provincial town of Gagarin. To this end, Medvedev and his attendants flew in two helicopters to the small town 170 kilometres west of Moscow, where he presided over a consultation on the situation of small and middle-sized entrepreneurs in Russia. While, during the 1990s, these were the target of raffish bandits, nowadays, public administration has taken over their role as "Kryscha", as "canopy". "No", said Andrej Gaiduk, the owner of the restaurant "Traktir 88", just before he met the President. "I don't have problems with criminals. I have a private security firm and the militia." That he pays both of them he did not say – it goes without saying.
Who disrupted them in their job, Medvedev asked the entrepreneurs, "who swigs the blood of the entrepreneurs?" He must have known the answer to this question: The entrepreneurs are permanently browbeat and "cashed up" by the various authorities through scheduled and unscheduled controls - hygiene, fire brigade, militia, tax investigation.
Angrily Medvedew had to discover that his four-months-old Ukas, which called upon the public administration to refrain from constant assaults on the business community, has been ignored. "The legal protection agencies and the administration have to stop being the entrepreneurs’ nightmare", demanded Medvedev and added, addressing the civil servants: "In our country, signals have an important meaning. Assume that this signal has now been given."
The entrepreneurs of Gagarin listen to this with mixed feelings. It would all be correct what the President had said, but the president would go back to Moscow while they would stay and would have to surrender to the administration that would be disgruntled due to their openness. According to observers, Madvedev's signal shall also have an effect on foreign investors, who have once again been deeply unsettled by the recent scandals around the oil company TNK-BP and the steel and coal behemoth Mechel. It shall appease them and convince them that the state will not interfere in their business. But that is exactly what happens in the Mechel-Case. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently accused the conglomerate in a rude manner, amongst others of tax evasion. The conglomerate had delivered its coke to foreign countries for a third of the domestic price. After a second attack of the Prime Minister, the Mechel share crashed at the New York Stock Exchange, the Russian Stock exchange sank to the status of February. Putin became the "nightmare" of Mechel. Was Medvedev's signal then also directed at his mentor?
According to insiders, the background of the affair, in which the anti-monopoly-authority is assigned a major share, is a quarrel over another state-corporation. The Russian edition of Neewsweek reported that Mechel-Boss Igor Sjusin has resisted a request to merge into a metallurgy-holding led by Putin's crony Viktor Tschermesov. Thereupon, Putin had led his attack on Mechel. Putin champions a policy of capital concentration in state-holdings. Medvedev called entrepreneurship a "possibility for the resurrection of Russia". Here also gaps an antagonism.
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