الفساد في روسيا.. ملحمة وأسماء كبيرة

A photo made available on 26 July 2013 shows Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (L) during their vacation in the Tyva Republic and Krasnoyarsk Territory in Siberia, Russia, 20 July 2013. EPA/ALEXEY NIKOLSKY / RIA NOVOSTI / KREMLIN POOL MANDATORY CREDIT
ثروة بوتين (يمين) والمقربين منه كانت محل بحث في تقارير استخبارية غربية (الأوروبية)

بحسب تصنيف منظمة الشفافية الدولية لتصورات الفساد في العالم لسنة 2015، توجد روسيا في المرتبة الـ 119 من بين 168 دولة.

تقديرات شديدة التفاوت بشأن حجم الفساد في روسيا. بحسب تقرير من "معهد روسيا الحديثة".
ويذكر التقرير أن جهاز الإحصاء الحكومي الروسي "روستات" يقدر حجم "اقتصاد الظل" أو الاقتصاد الموازي بـ 15% فقط من الناتج المحلي الإجمالي في عام 2011.
من جانب آخر، يعتقد خبراء مستقلون أن الفساد يعادل 25% من الناتج المحلي الروسي، في حين يرى البنك الدولي أن الرقم يصل إلى 48%.

Report/Briefing by research service of European parliament in 2014
2 Calculations of the financial loss in terms of GDP caused by corruption differ significantly. They vary from Rosstat’s 2011 estimates of 3.5 to 7% of GDP, up to independent experts’ claims that the loss amounted to 25% of Russia’s GDP. The National Anti-Corruption Committee, a Russian non-governmental organisation (NGO), estimates that corruption amounts to US$300 billion a year. Sectors of the Russian economy particularly vulnerable to large-scale corruption are the military, the utilities sector and construction and infrastructure projects involving public procurement. The construction work for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics drastically exposes the extent to which corruption can drive up prices.

Russia corruption costs $318 billion – one-third of GDP

ChristianScienceMonitor
Despite efforts of Medvedev and Putin, Russia corruption forces businesses to add as much as 40 percent to production costs.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent NOVEMBER 23, 2009
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MOSCOW – Why does the price of everything, from housing to food, keep shooting up in Russia despite a harsh economic downturn that’s intensifying competition and dragging costs down just about everywhere else in the world?
There’s a simple answer to that question, say experts: corruption.
“We estimate that businesses must add up to 40 percent to their production costs,” due to the toll of bribery, official extortion and economic crime,” says Anatoly Golubev, chair of the grass-roots Committee to Fight Corruption, who says corruption is a bigger threat to Russian society than terrorism. “It corrodes peoples’ souls and destroys the state from within.”
Surveys show that the vast majority of Russians encounter corruption at almost every turn in their daily lives, from dealing with traffic policemen to securing a place in a good school or getting a vital personal document renewed. Most businessmen maintain a permanent line in their ledgers entitled “problem solving” – a euphemism for paying bribes to inspectors, cops and local officials.

The independent InDem Foundation in Moscow, which does the most comprehensive studies of the problem, estimates that Russians pay an estimated $318 billion in bribes each year – a whopping one-third of gross domestic product.

Robert Orttung American University December 2006
In September 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that an inability to make much progress in the battle against corruption was one of his administration’s greatest failures. In fact, rising corruption has been a direct consequence of Putin’s policies to strengthen the state and to crack down on many elements of Russia’s civil society. The results of this expanding corruption will be felt in the upcoming 2007-2008 parliamentary and presidential election cycle and in many other spheres of Russian public life.

The causes of corruption in Russia are no mystery. Transparency International recently conducted surveys examining the level of corruption across 40 Russian regions. The data demonstrate a strong correlation between a region’s level of corruption and the 2 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF CORRUPTION IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA number of bureaucrats in the region.

Putin’s focus on increasing the capacities of the Russian state is responsible for the expanding bureaucracy.

REUTERS
A U.S. Treasury official said the United States considers Russian President Vladimir Putin to be corrupt and that it has known this for "many, many years," the BBC reported on Monday.

Adam Szubin, acting Treasury secretary for terrorism and financial crimes, said in an interview with BBC Panorama that the Russian president has been amassing secret wealth.

The BBC report said Szubin declined to comment on a 2007 Central Intelligence Agency report that estimated Putin’s wealth at $40 billion, but he said the Russian leader’s stated wealth is an underestimation.

Since Vladimir Putin began cementing his grip on Russia in the 1990s, many of his friends have grown famously rich.
In April, Putin declared an income for 2014 of 7.65 million roubles ($119,000). He listed the ownership of two modest apartments and a share in a car parking garage.
His daughter Katerina is doing considerably better, supported by some of the Russian president’s wealthy friends, a Reuters examination shows.
After unconfirmed media speculation about Katerina’s identity, a senior Russian figure told Reuters that she uses the surname Tikhonova. Andrey Akimov, deputy chairman of Russian lender Gazprombank, said he had met Katerina when she was little and more recently, and that Tikhonova was Putin’s daughter.
Reuters has also learned that earlier this year Katerina, 29, described herself as the “spouse” of Kirill Shamalov, son of Nikolai Shamalov, a longtime friend of the president. Shamalov senior is a shareholder in Bank Rossiya, which U.S. officials have described as the personal bank of the Russian elite.

As husband and wife, Kirill and Katerina would have corporate holdings worth about $2 billion, according to estimates provided to Reuters by financial analysts.

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APRIL 2, 2014
by: Sergei Guriev

For many years corruption was perceived to be a domestic problem that Russians should be left to sort out by themselves. Western leaders also accepted Russian corruption for a more selfish reason.

BBC INVESTIGATION – January 2016

Palace – Secret Wealth – Oil Stakes – Yacht

Vladimir Putin has a vast personal fortune and may be one of the richest men in the world, according to a number of former Kremlin insiders.
From their exiles around the world, they spoke to the BBC for a Panorama investigation into the alleged corruption of the most powerful man in the world. Here’s what we learned.

Sergei Kolesnikov told the programme he worked for the Kremlin to collect money from the super-rich, which they believed was to be spent on healthcare, but which was ultimately used “to help build a $1 billion palace for Mr Putin on the Black Sea coast”.
Putin’s public financial disclosures depict a man of modest means, as far as world leaders go. In April, Putin declared 2014 income of 7.65 million roubles ($119,000). He listed the ownership of two modest apartments and a share in a car parking garage.
Adam Szubin, acting Treasury secretary for terrorism and financial crimes, said in an interview with BBC Panorama that the Russian president has been amassing secret wealth.
He declined to comment on a 2007 CIA report estimating Putin’s wealth at $40 billion, but he said the Russian leader’s stated wealth is an underestimation.
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The US Treasury told the BBC it has evidence to tie Putin to profits from a businessman on the US sanctions list, Gennady Timchenko, a long-time Putin acquaintance and then co-owner of Gunvor, which trades nearly 3 per cent of the world’s oil.

The US government imposed sanctions against a number of Kremlin insiders in 2014 and stated that Vladimir Putin had secret investments in the energy sector. However, the Americans did not directly accuse him of corruption at the time.
"Timchenko activities in the energy sector have been directly linked to Putin. Putin has investments in Gunvor and may have access to Gunvor funds," the department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.
Max Freidzon, another exiled businessman, told the BBC Mr Putin gave him the monopoly to provide oil to an airport in the nineties – in exchange for a secret, 4 per cent stake in his business.

Dmitry Skarga, who used to run the state shipping company Sovcomflot, says he oversaw the transfer of a $35m yacht to Mr Putin. Mr Skarga says the 57m-long Olympia was a gift from Britain’s most famous Russian – the Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.
"It’s a fact that Mr Abramovich, through his employee, transferred a yacht to Mr Putin," he said. "I was on board of this yacht at the end of March 2002, in Amsterdam. And there was a representative of Mr Abramovich… He said that Roman is the owner of this yacht."

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Telegraph – 13 SEPTEMBER 2016 • 1:42AM
The Kremlin on Monday insisted it was serious about tackling endemic graft in Russia after a top anti-corruption official was busted with over $120 million in cash.
Dmitry Zakharchenko, the acting head of an anti-graft agency at the Russian interior ministry, was formally arrested on Saturday for receiving "especially large" bribes after police found banknotes worth more than $120 million in a raid on a Moscow flat.

Reuters investigation December 2014
ABINSK, Russia – As U.S. and European sanctions piled pressure on Russia earlier this year, the Kremlin hit back with an unusual weapon: apples.
From Aug. 7 Russia banned imports of fruit from various countries that supported sanctions, including Poland, which has been a strong critic of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The ban had real impact: Poland is the world’s biggest exporter of apples and last year sent more than $380 million worth to Russia, according to International Trade Centre figures.
While Poland’s apple growers are suffering, the ban has also been an opportunity for an old friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A day after Russia decreed Polish apples forbidden, Gennady Timchenko, who made a fortune from oil trading during Putin’s years in power, applied to buy a large stake in one of Russia’s biggest apple producers. Through his investment company Volga Group, he now owns 40 percent of Alma Holding, which has orchards in the Krasnodar region, southern Russia.
For Timchenko, 62, it is a chance both to profit from a market suddenly in need of homegrown apples and to support Russia in the face of Western sanctions. He portrays the investment as a patriotic act, a show of support for Putin, whom he has known since the 1990s, and of defiance against U.S. and European sanctions imposed on Russia over its meddling in Ukraine.
Reuters- May 2014
Part 1: Two associates of President Vladimir Putin profited from a state scheme to buy expensive medical equipment – and sent money to Swiss bank accounts linked to a property known as “Putin’s palace”
Русский язык (Russian translation)
MOSCOW – In 2005, President Vladimir Putin personally ordered up a vast programme to improve Russia’s poor healthcare facilities. Five years later, authorities found that suppliers were charging some hospitals two or even three times too much for vital gear such as high-tech medical scanners.
Dmitry Medvedev, serving as Putin’s hand-picked successor at the time, went on national television to denounce the alleged scam. The perpetrators, he said, had engaged in “absolutely cynical, loutish theft of state money.” Medvedev instructed Russia’s top law enforcement agencies to make sure that “everyone who participated in this is seriously and sternly punished.”
Suspects were rounded up in far-flung places, and in 2012 the police ministry said 104 people had been charged in connection with overpriced scanners. Several local officials and business executives were convicted of fraud and sent to prison.
But a Reuters investigation has found that two wealthy associates of Putin engaged in the same profiteering and suffered no penalty.
They sold medical equipment for at least $195 million to Russia and sent a total of $84 million in proceeds to Swiss bank accounts, according to bank records reviewed by Reuters. The records also indicate that at least 35 million euros ($48 million) from those accounts were funnelled to a company that then helped construct a luxury property near the Black Sea known as “Putin’s palace” – a nickname earned after a businessman alleged that the estate was built for Putin. The Russian leader has denied any connection to the property.

Reuters – May 2014
MOSCOW – In the world’s biggest country, railways are still a route to riches. With nearly 1 billion passengers a year and $42 billion in annual sales, the state company Russian Railways is a giant commercial opportunity.
At its head is Vladimir Yakunin, an old friend and long-standing ally of President Vladimir Putin. He oversees a company that strikes international deals, issues bonds to major investors and plans hugely expensive new high-speed lines. By many measures, Russian Railways is a standard corporate colossus.
But a Reuters investigation has uncovered another side to the state-owned company: Under Yakunin, it has paid billions of dollars to private contractors that disguise their ultimate owners and have little or no presence at their registered headquarters.

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