Word: putin
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...Since President Vladimir Putin came to power, the Russian economy has staged a dramatic comeback after its near collapse in 1998. But along with red tape and corruption, companies face political and government meddling, primarily in the form of a highly unpredictable tax-enforcement policy. The most battered victim to date is Yukos, the former Russian oil giant that is currently in its death throes after being hit with multibillion-dollar back-tax claims that its erstwhile owners say were part of a Kremlin campaign against them. A Moscow court is expected to deliver its verdict this week on Mikhail...
...authorities recently slapped BP's oil joint venture in Russia, TNK-BP, with a $1 billion back-tax bill for 2001. The move has caused dismay at BP in London and prompted Chief Executive John Browne to schedule a trip to Moscow last week, where he met personally with Putin. Meanwhile, the Japanese tobacco company JTI, which makes Winston and Camel brands at a $400 million state-of-the-art factory it built in St. Petersburg, is embroiled in a furious court battle with authorities over a more than $80 million tax demand from 2000 that has prompted complaints from...
...year ago). But Weafer cautions about the middle layer: energy and other areas that could be construed by the Kremlin as being of strategic value. There, investment risk is greatest due to the lack of legal enforcement of ownership rights and increased meddling by the state. "Putin will have to follow through on his promise to end some of the unsettling actions that are driving capital flight and blocking investment," says Weafer. According to Russia's Central Bank, capital flight quadrupled last year as worried investors moved their assets offshore. Net capital outflow jumped from $1.9 billion...
...Russia in danger of falling apart? Last week Dmitry Medvedev, the head of the presidential administration, warned that Russia could disappear if the political élite did not "consolidate" around President Vladimir Putin. "The disintegration of the [Soviet Union] would seem like a kindergarten in comparison," he told the magazine Expert. A day later, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov mused in the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets about 2008, when Putin is required to step down. "I can't see anyone other than Putin" running the country, Luzhkov said. After uprisings in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, some fear for Russia's own future...
...disturbing sign for former Soviet states like Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where opposition calls for reforms have been repeatedly repressed. Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko put down a protest over the weekend, and some analysts believe the dominoes could even start falling in the Kremlin's direction, though Vladimir Putin's grip seems pretty secure. "Nobody rushed to defend Akayev," says Alexey Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center. "All these post-Soviet authoritarian regimes are proving colossuses with feet of clay...