Word: russian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
First there was Gusinsky; then came Berezovsky; now it’s Khodorkovsky’s turn to face the Kremlin’s fickle wrath. The list of media moguls and industry titans that Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to arrest continues to grow. This time it looks like Putin is after the brass ring—Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man and owner of OAO Yukos, the fourth largest oil company in the world. As in earlier arrests, the Russian government claims that the oil tycoon violated regulations during the fast-and-loose privatization...
Certainly, violators of Russian law should be prosecuted fairly and uniformly. Just because Khodorkovsky controlled a large portion of the Russian oil industry is no reason to grant him carte blanche to defy the law. But the timing of the industrialist’s arrest—he has been more critical of the Kremlin of late and appeared to be considering a presidential run—and Putin’s demonstrated penchant for strong-arm politics make it impossible to believe that Khodorkovsky is sitting behind bars right now because of tax evasion. Indeed, if anything, Khodorkovsky...
...arrest could damage international confidence in the Russian economy, which had been rebounding nicely from its slump in the late 1990s. The prospect of Yukos being forcibly renationalized sent the Moscow stock market, which has performed strongly this year, down 10% in one of its biggest one-day declines since the debt crisis...
Putin insists the Khodorkovsky case is about rooting out corporate corruption and doesn't herald any shift in the Kremlin's pro-business stance, a view he reinforced at a meeting last week with Western bankers. (Putin was on hand at the opening of the Russian-owned Lukoil's first U.S. gas station, in September, in Manhattan.) For the moment, big foreign players are giving him the benefit of the doubt. "We haven't changed our long-term perspective," says Peter Elam Hakansson, who manages a $250 million Russian-stock fund out of Stockholm for East Capital. "It's still...
...RUSSIAN AFFRONT: A tycoon is jailed, and some cry politics...