In Russia, corruption cases pile up

Spate of recent high-profile embezzlements further sinks public’s trust

Sunday, December 9, 2012

— More than 200 years ago, the renowned Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin summed up the situation in his country in two words: “They steal.”

They still do, and the news in Russia lately has been dominated by one high-profile corruption scandal after another. Allegations of wrongdoing have reached high into the Defense and Agriculture ministries and the Russian space program, among other institutions. Nearly nine in 10 Russians say corruption is the nation’s biggest problem.

The spate of corruption cases has led to a cynical argument among politicians, analysts and people on the street: Has President Vladimir Putin, who has long talked about combating corruption, finally turned from words to deeds? Or is the apparent crackdown a mere publicrelations gambit or, worse, a sign of behind-the-sceneswarfare among powerful interests close to the Kremlin?

It may not matter much to Feofan Bondarenko, a pioneering businessman who applauds Putin’s apparent campaign against corruption as it plays out almost daily in newspaper headlines about leading Kremlin figures. Closer to home, corruption remains a fact of everyday life.

Bondarenko, 83, fought the Nazis as an adolescent during World War II and helped stave off a national food crisis by importing commodities with U.S. credits in 1991. Today, he finds himself caught up in a nightmarish corruption case.

“I could never imagine,” he said, “that I would live to be charged with fraud.”

Bondarenko’s case reflects not just the depth of corruption but also the shifting nature of its winners and losers.

Sitting in his cozy office in a downtown mansion protected by hired police, Bondarenko described how, for more than two decades, his company, Soyuz, successfully invested in an array of products, from chicken to vodka to airplanes. (Soyuz, which means “union,” is also the name of the longtime Soviet and Russian manned space rocket.)

In 2007, his company invested about $8.3 million in a private bank. To guarantee the deal, he said, the bank put up as collateral a two-story house in central Moscow. In 2009, police raided the bank and discovered that its vaults were empty. The banker was arrested on charges of illegal banking activities and money laundering.

With his investment in the bank now worthless, Bondarenko sank more than $2 million into the reconstruction of the house in an effort, he said, to enhance its value. But when charges against the banker were dropped 14 months later and he emerged from custody, he said he had never agreed to the house deal and that his signature on the document was forged.

The tables turned; Bondarenko was charged with fraud in 2011. He now risks losing real estate valued at more than $23 million and could go to jail for up to 10 years, assuming he lives that long.

“I have no doubt we are dealing with a huge corruption factor here,” he said. On that, everyone would agree.

Bondarenko’s case is just one drop in a sea of corruption that Russians experience on a daily basis. Recent polls conducted by the Levada polling agency show that less than one-third of thepeople trust Russian law enforcement and only about 20 percent trust Russian courts. Eighty-eight percent consider corruption to be the country’s main problem.

Transparency International, which conducts annual surveys of international corruption, ranked Russia 143rd out of 183 nations on its most recent Corruption Perceptions Index.

The cases getting the most attention, of course, are those at the top. Consider these recent examples:

Early in November, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was fired over a corruption scandal involving a group of his subordinates and associates who allegedly embezzled more than $200 million. Serdyukov has not yet been questioned in the case. But the woman who is alleged to be his mistress, the former property chief of the Defense Ministry, was putunder house arrest in her $10 million, 13-room Moscow apartment, which formerly belonged to the ministry.

Also in November, the head of the Russian Space Systems company was fired amid the exposure of an embezzlement of about $217 million, roughly a third of the funds allocated for the construction of the GLONASS system, an analogue of GPS.

Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov called this a betrayal and said in televised remarks that corruption “is a direct threat to national security.”

In the most recent major case, police in St. Petersburg alleged that about $100 million was embezzled in a scam that involved the purchase of low-quality pipes for the city’s heating system. The city’s Energy Department chief was detained.

Analysts argue about themotives and scope of the anticorruption campaign.

“What we see today is the implementation of Putin’s plan to make peace with the active part of our society, which has challenged Putin over this past year, accusing his regime of corruption, among other things,” said Stanislav Belkovsky, president of the National Strategy Institute, a Moscow-based think tank. “But this won’t help him to distance himself from all these crimes, as the active and thinking Russian people will continue to associate him with corruption whatever he does now.”

Belkovsky predicted more scandals, which could weaken Putin’s hold on power. As it is, Putin’s popularity dropped 4 percentage points in the wake of the recent exposes.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, denied that the anti-corruption campaign was “aimed to distract people’s attention.”

“Vladimir Putin did this during his previous terms in office too,” Peskov told the Interfax news agency. He said that fighting corruption had been “a priority issue of his program during the election campaign.”

Andrei Piontkovsky, a political analyst and a member of the opposition Coordinating Council, said he thinks the current chain of arrests in corruption cases is happening against Putin’s will and testifies to his increasing weakness.

“The clans close to the Kremlin are sensing that Putin is getting weaker as a leader and they are now going for each other’s throat,” Piontkovsky said in an interview. “Putin certainly didn’t want to sack Serdyukov but was pressed to do so by a flood of revelations he suddenly couldn’t control.”

Front Section, Pages 13 on 12/09/2012