#6
The Russia Journal
November 2-8, 2001
Prosecutors play for power
By DMITRY PINSKER
A fight against corruption or a witch hunt? That question arises in connection to the Prosecutor General’s Office’s burst of activity over the last two weeks. But to answer it, we first have to examine just what kind of an organization the Prosecutor General’s Office is.
If we take it to be an "independent organization," as state officials and Kremlin representatives love to tell us, then what we are seeing is undoubtedly a fight against corruption. Then we have grounds to believe the political analysts who tell us that power in this country has finally stopped being a corporate affair – that President Vladimir Putin has put his stake on more effective management of state resources and is building a transparent power vertical.
Criminal investigations, scandalous evidence against high-placed officials and ripple-causing court cases will be an inevitable part of this process – the level of corruption in the Russian state machinery has long since surpassed all reasonable norms.
If we accept the argument that the Prosecutor General’s Office is independent and honest, then we can also believe those who say that, unlike the Yeltsin administration, the current authorities will not get in the prosecutors’ way, will not restrict their freedom of action and will not grant de facto immunity to this or that official. But none of this applies to Russia, at least not to today’s Russia.
In reality, today’s authorities are no different from their predecessors. Like the Yeltsin administration, Putin’s team has come from under the wing of the old Soviet Communist Party. But unlike Yeltsin’s people, Putin’s team does not even try to hide the fact – rather, it cultivates the familial affinity. It is just as corporate, just as much built on personal loyalty and back-scratching and gets its support above all from the security forces.
As for the Prosecutor General’s Office, proclaimed the "state’s eye" 300 years ago, it never has been independent and is not today. Quite the contrary, as can be seen by the events of the last two years (18 months of which were under Putin), which have seen the prosecutors valiantly pursuing open opponents of the Kremlin and trying to frighten potential opponents. Also, the tradition of obtaining authorization from the top before investigating high- or even middle-ranking officials has not changed since Soviet times.
If this is so, then the events of recent days have been no more than a move to get "outsiders" or inconvenient opponents out of the way. This goes for the case against Railways Minister Nikolai Aksyonenko; the inspections being carried out at the Emergency Situations Ministry; the promises to bring to account people at the State Customs and State Fisheries Committees; visits to the Media Ministry and the Environment Ministry by Audit Chamber auditors; and, finally, for the Prosecutor General’s Office’s request that the State Duma revoke the parliamentary immunity of Vladimir Golovyev, who is accused of violating privatization procedures in Chelyabinsk Oblast.
This last case is potentially dangerous because it also brings up the question of revising the results of privatization carried out over the last decade. The prosecutors have tried in the past to reverse privatizations.
There was, for example, the time in the summer of 2000 when Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Biryukov wrote to Vladimir Potanin, head of Interros. The letter, which asked Potanin to pay another $200 million for shares in Norilsk Nickel acquired in 1997 in a loans-for-shares deal, sent the business community into shock. The letter promised to close a criminal case against Potanin if he "restored justice" by paying the money. But the case ended up closed anyway – even after the power in the Kremlin changed hands, it still looked as though revision of privatization was taboo.
The issue is not whether or not these ministers, officials and Duma Deputy Golovyev actually did what they are accused of. The economic situation in the country certainly lent itself to theft and scams, and the porous Russian legal system meant that not a single state official, not even the most upright and honest among them, had never broken a law.
The most "lucrative" spot has been long since considered by the government to be the State Fisheries Committee. Likewise, it is no revelation that Aksyonenko loves looking after his relatives, children and countless nephews who run various companies looked after by the generous Railways Ministry. (Perhaps Aksyonenko’s family feelings come from his being the 12th child in his family.)
And there have long been conversations about how Environmental Ministry head Vitaly Artyukhov, who used to run the Tax Service, has not kept his hands clean. Finally, state officials all agree quite openly that the State Customs Committee is the most corrupt organization of all and that its director, Mikhail Vanin, rather than fighting corruption, actually encourages it.
So the prosecutors do indeed have plenty of work on their plates. The problem is that all the people they have singled out have one thing in common – they were all at one point or another linked to the old Yeltsin team known as the "Family," or they had connections to oligarch Boris Berezovsky. (Golovyev, who heads the Liberal Russia party, is still linked to Berezovsky, who is the party’s main sponsor.)
Therefore, what is happening now is not about fighting corruption, and the Prosecutor General’s Office is not motivated by a purely economic or legal interest in the people it is investigating. This is about a new carve-up of assets and power. It is also about the new people in the Kremlin – the "Petersburg Chekists," allies, former classmates and colleagues of Putin – expanding their sphere of influence at the expense of the waning "Family" that once held a monopoly on key political decisions.
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