printThe criticism leveled at Russian justice by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for the prosecution and subsequent conviction on theft and money laundering of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. As the Russians rightly countered, the sentences Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev received pale compared to comparable prosecutions by American justice:
Take Bernard Madoff in the United States. He got a life sentence and no-one blinked – Putin told reporters who asked him about the case during a trip to Paris to negotiate new gas pipeline and auto manufacturing deals.
You can’t argue with that come-back.
Nevertheless, the trial of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky looks a lot like a politically motivated show trial, ordered, ostensibly “by the Kremlin to punish Khodorkovsky for financing Russia’s beleaguered opposition.”
Dimitri Simes, “president of the Nixon Center, a foreign policy research organization,” takes a nuanced look at Mikhail Khodorkovsky:
“He started as a tycoon. He was a very ruthless tycoon. He took a lot of government property, paying very little, and actually using government loans, which he never repaid, to become very wealthy.
He was, politically, very ambitious. He wasn’t just supporting opposition parties, but he was entertaining the possibility of becoming prime minister himself, curtailing Putin’s power.
Having said that, once he was arrested, he proved to be a man of courage, determination, eloquence. The government wasn’t able to break him. And when he was arrested first time in 2003, I really liked Khodorkovsky personally, and I was sorry for him, but, politically, I had mixed feelings, because he was threatening the government in a very ruthless way, using the money he got illegally to mount a political challenge.
What they are doing to him now is totally beyond the pale. It is not just selective justice. It’s really no justice at all.”
Says Anna Vassilieva, “head of the Russian studies program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies”:
“What does it tell me and tells all of us is that the power belongs to someone who exercises strength, not justice, not pardon, as we were hoping until the most recent phrase that Putin announced.
What we see is history repeating itself. Russian rulers are afraid to make compromises. And, obviously, allowing Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev free would be a sort of a compromise that no one can afford, because they know they will lose the trust.
We have to remember that — the trust of the population — we have to remember that the highest ratings Putin and Medvedev enjoyed were during August 2008, during the war with Georgia. And there was no chance that they would exercise the opportunity to compromise.”
[SNIP]
Let’s remember this: Be it in the US or in Russia, the masses are foursquarely behind their governments when it comes to the zealous, over-prosecution of the rich. Putin has the support of the pitchfork-wielding Russian folks. That’s democracy in action.
My, but the convicted has such beautiful, refined features.
I really don’t know all the facts behind how Khodorkovsky “earned” or did not “earn” his fortune. The difficulty with a “corporate socialistic” (or pseudo-fascist) economic system which (sadly) most of the world operates under these days is that it becomes nearly impossible to know how any person X made money – via government contracting, favorable regulations inhibiting competition, bargain basement mineral leases, subsidies, etc.
When there is 17% unemployment, gas prices rising 15% this year, more paperwork at the doctor’s office, and people’s pensions and “entitlements” looking like some never-attainable dream – people get pissed off. Nothing like stringing up some GM CEO, Lockheed Martin retired-general-turned-executive, Archer Daniels Midland ethanol bunko-artist, or Bankster to satisfy the angry, bloodthirsty mob just like they used to throw the previous Caesar’s family to the lions in the Coliseum.
But while stringing up some wealthy zillionaire who is currently on the political-outs may be emotionally satisfying, it calls into question the entire concept of PRIVATE PROPERTY. In other words, the corruption of the process only leads to even further corruption.
In a free system, we would not have a Putin “negotating” gas pipeline and auto manufacturing “deals”.
But Putin had the support of Russian folks also during the war in Chechnya and his popularity then rose from zero to 60 % even though the war caused that thousands of innocent people were forced to leave their homes and it consequently prompted an international outcry.