Павел Ивлев, председатель «Комитета российской экономической свободы» в Нью-Йорке в интервью Русской службе «Голоса Америки» о решении властей Евросоюза вывести из санкционного списка четырех граждан России:
https://www.golosameriki.com/a/pavel-ivlev-about-eu-sanctions-lifted-from-russians/7268616.html
Pavel Ivlev, Chairman of the Committee for Russian Economic Freedom, who used to be a legal counsel to the Yukos Oil Company and its CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has recently discussed the infamous Yukos Affair with Tom Firestone, a partner at Stroock law firm’s white collar & internal investigations practice, in commemoration of the Yukos case’s 20th anniversary.
Tom and Pavel talk about what was the real reason for the Putin’s government to start the Yukos affair and how it had influenced the business environment in Russia for the next two decades. As the recognized experts in the field of the Russian and international law enforcement, they also talk about the effectiveness of sanctions put on the Russian oligarchs by the foreign governments in response to the Russian military aggression against Ukraine.
Here is the link to the lively conversation for your kind attention
https://www.stroock.com/multim
Dear Friends,
We bring to your attention the Discussion Panel at the Atlantic Council, in which Chairman of the Committee for Russian Economic Freedom and Attorney-at-Law Pavel Ivlev took an active part.
The case of Yukos in Russia continues. Our expert Pavel Ivlev talks about the charges brought against him by the Russian authorities (Russian language only).
Economic sanctions imposed by the West on Putin’s friends and their enterprises, as well as on the most sensitive sectors of the Russian economy—the oil and gas industries and the capital market—have been in effect for more than two years. Read More “We Can Go Screw Ourselves”
As it often happens in movies, a multi-episode crime thriller entitled Bashneft that began in September 2014 with the arrest of the once-mighty Vladimir Yevtushenkov, head of the Sistema corporation, has ended in a prosaic finale that we had predicted from the very beginning: Bashneft has been expropriated from private owners and is being transferred to the state-run Rosneft. Read More “Privatization, Sechin-style”
Everyone knows from school textbooks that Russia is extremely rich in mineral resources with the most valuable of them being oil and gas of course. Had Siberia not been rich in oil and gas, Putin could have probably been unable to stay in power that long, since without the “oil needle” hungry Russians would have told the usurper from the KGB to get lost a long time ago. However, he has been fortunate so far, and despite the fact that the importance of hydrocarbons as a source of energy has been slowly but steadily decreasing worldwide, the current Russian tsar still has enough oil revenues to provide for himself and his friends and to silence his electorate that has grown stupid from watching government-owned TV channels broadcasting state propaganda. Russia still has enough available stocks of mineral resources to maintain the status quo in the immediate and medium-term. As for the distant future, the Kremlin does not seem concerned about that at all. It is no surprise then that exploration activity is hardly being carried out in Russia, and geology as a science is slowly dying.
In April 2016, on Minister of Education and Science Dmitri Livanov’s orders, the Russian State Geological Prospecting University Read More “Putinary Geology”
“You have no mercy on the woods, or the birds, or on women, or on one another…”
Uncle Vanya, А.P. Chekhov, 1896
Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard were written more than a century ago, but they remain a brilliant portrait of Russian society and its attitude toward the world around, woods included.
Forests cover around 45 percent of Russia’s territory, and the country accounts for 24 percent of the world’s timber resources. The Siberian taiga and its cedar trees are as much a symbol of Russia as the Kremlin and Sputnik. It would seem that Russian forests should be valued and protected as a national treasure. However, just like the people of Russia, Russian forests have their own peculiar fate full of suffering and tragic mistakes.
Back in 2013, an international team of scientists calculated that from 2000 to 2012, Russia had lost more forest area than any other country in the world. Such forest cover loss was caused by different reasons including forest fires, storms and insect pests. However, this was also due in no small part to human activity. According to World Wildlife Fund’s estimates, Russia annually loses around $1 billion due to illegal logging.
According to First Deputy Prosecutor General Aleksander Buksman, illegal logging is responsible for more than 800,000 hectares of Russia’s forest loss annually, which is more than half of the total wood harvest in the country. Read More “From The Cherry Orchard to the Khimki Forest”
Russian officials’ increasingly frequent statements about the lack of funds in the country’s budget to cover even the bare necessities of life make one almost believe their sincerity. It is not that officials themselves experience money problems. The most recent examples with Medvedev’s 35-billion-ruble country house or 8 billion rubles in cash discovered in the possession of the temporary acting head of Russia’s anti-corruption agency, colonel Zakharchenko, do not leave any doubts regarding Russian officials’ success in siphoning off the national wealth. However, besides a few million of ministers, lawmakers, policemen and prison officers who are comfortably settled in life, there are some 140 million citizens in Russia, whose living standards directly depend on budget funds left over after officials’ rent-seeking activities.
In late 2015 and early 2016, the country’s budget was adopted with a deficit and later subject to sequestration. According to the most recent official figures, in the first half of 2016, Russia’s budget deficit has reached 1.52 trillion rubles. Over this period, Russian tax and customs services have collected around 5.24 trillion rubles, and, all other revenues included, the country’s gross national income reached the lower-than-expected 5.87 trillion rubles, since the 2016 draft budget envisaged 13.74 trillion rubles in revenues. It is obvious that at the end of the year, this figure will prove to be unattainable, as Medvedev sincerely admits.
The government traditionally rejects the option of increasing taxes and thus suggests balancing the budget for the next three years by cutting spending by 3.5 trillion rubles. Read More “Sincerely yours at your expense”
Russia’s Far East, a region that is farthest from Moscow with more than 6,000 kilometers between them, has been going through difficult times for quite a while now. Since 1990, when the last population influx was registered, the region’s population has decreased by more than 20 percent with 90 percent of it being due to the migration outflow – not to natural population decline. A considerable part of the population leaves the region to seek jobs and a better life.
Making a speech at the 2016 Eastern Economic Forum, Putin promised to turn Vladivostok, the country’s largest city on the Pacific Ocean coast, into a Russian San Francisco. Our dreamer in the Kremlin must be counting upon investments from Japan and China, including a joint development of the disputed Kuril Islands. One has a hard time believing that though.
This year, a Federal Law No 119-FZ from May 1, 2016 dubbed “On the Far Eastern Hectare” was adopted on the government’s initiative. However, the attractive idea of giving away land for free to anyone interested is confronted by the greed of corrupt officials. Right after the law had come into effect, opposition activist Aleksei Navalny exposed fraud schemes used by officials with regard to allocated land plots, when, for example, the most attractive ones turned out to be occupied within minutes of the entry into force of the aforementioned law. This story just gets funnier as it goes. According to the project’s official website, in three months only 379 people out of 6 million who still live in Russia’s Far East submitted requests for complimentary land plots.
A few years ago, when skyrocketing oil prices provoked an investment urge, there were plans to build automobile-manufacturing plants Read More “The Earth’s Edge is Harsh and Embraced by Silence”
