Refused residency in Austria and Latvia, we know learn that the disgraced former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov has been granted an entrance visa to the UK. According to an ITAR-TASS source, it was granted on the basis of “reunifying the family.”
His daughters have already been transferred to a London university. His wife Baturina has also taken to Albion’s shores. Apart from owning a luxurious 18th century palace in the capital, her massive investments in the British economy entitle her to a business visa, and the right to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship.
Coinciding with these developments are stunning revelations in the Russian media about the extent of corruption on Luzhkov’s watch. The Audit Chamber, called in to inspect Moscow’s finances by its new mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, uncovered as much as 230 billion rubles ($8 billion) in financial irregularities over the past two years. More details are to be made public on February 4th.
Back on October 8th, I predicted that “within the next 3 months Luzhkov is going to get hit with corruption charges and will either go on trial or seek political asylum in the West.” It appears my forecast is coming to fruition just a bit late.
Why is Russia so full of traitors anyway?
@Petri: Up until now Luzhkov hasn’t necessarily been traitor, just bigtime thief and crook. Now that he is in exile he will probably BECOME traitor by joining other exiled oligarchs seeking to illegally overthrow more-or-less legitimate Russian government.
To answer your question, I think answer is: Too much capitalism!
Well, my point is that whenever a rich Russian gets into troubles with authorities he or she flees to Britain and takes his billions with him. I don’t see this kind of behaviour elsewhere, at least not in this magnitude.
This is bad for Russia for many reasons, one of them being that it only increases the capital flight out of the country.
In my country Finland I see this problem as well. Wealthy Russians are willing to buy Finnish land and property with highly inflated prices, sometimes even paying the double of the real value.
Russians paying stupid money to get land near lake Saimaa when they could purchase land with a lot cheaper prices in lake Ladoga or lake Onego. The capital would stay in Russia, Russia would get new infrastructure and more jobs for Russian construction workers.
This is actually disgusting. When I read that Baturina was going to buy a $100 million mansion from London I wanted to punch her to the face.
Screw Russia for years, invest stolen money in British economy! Russian elites – yes they can!
Unfortunately elites are only a reflection of the people. Russians are corrupt. If the elite was going to replaced with other Russians the situation would remain the same.
Until Russian people change starting from bottom the situation will remain like it is now. Stop paying bribes to cops for starters. Refuse to pay bribes to teachers to get better grades. This is where it should start.
Every nation has a ruling class it deserves. Right now Russia does not deserve any better.
Tying the personality of every citizen of a country with the profile of tycoons is extremely dubious. This is basically an implicit assumption that the dynamical system called society is linear with every individual or smallest subsystem being the dominant factor in the dynamics. This is patently wrong. There are many layers of organization in society and macroscopic features are not a trivial reflection of the microscopic features. These macroscopic features reflect the history of the development of the society and act to shape the microscopic components.
In the case of Russia the rot that set in under communism did not disappear in 1991. Yeltsin and Luzhkov are two examples of this rot. Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky are two others. Russia’s fledgling democracy, thankfully, did not follow the practice of the communists and exterminate everything that came before. But it is going to take generations to find a new equilibrium and clear out the communist rot. This is not going to conform to the whims of some impatient, prejudiced people.
Great, another parasite clogging up our streets. Although he will no doubt be warmly welcomed by the British establishment, bloodhounds for the scent of money, always giving refuge to crooked scum from around the world. A pity for the Russian people too, that money built on their toil will be wasted in the overblown London property market
“A pity for the Russian people too, that money built on their toil will be wasted in the overblown London property market”
It is not a pity really. Each nation deserves it’s ruling class (whether the ruling class is good or bad) because the ruling class is a reflection of the people of the nation.
Billions have been stolen and billions will be stolen and carried abroad until Russia is able to grow a generation of people that will not allow this to happen.
I disagree. These people killed a lot of people to get their money. They have their enablers in the West, who nudge them to call themselves “democracy activists.” That is why they head to London or France where they feel they will never have the past catch up with them. They have been able to brush off all activism.
I do not think this means the West is anyway better. After the Russian Revolution, Europe was flooded with Russian money and grain while millions of peasants in the East starved to death. The enablers have to be stopped as well, and no generation of Europeans has thought to stop this. So you have billions of pissed off people in Egypt, China, India, Russia, etc.
Agree with hrem. You can’t just say that “people deserve their leaders”, that’s too simplistic. Look at what is happening in Egypt, for example. Mubarak (who is corrupt as well as brutal, and has stolen billions from his country) has been in power for 30 years, and no one could ever get rid of him. Current events make it seem pretty clear that millions of Egyptians, probably the majority, hate his guts, and yet they had no choice except to just suck it up and carry on. I am guessing these very nice Egyptian people also had to pay bribes every day, just to get anything done. It seems to be part of the human condition that once an elite is in power, they are extremely difficult to dislodge. Not sure why. Reality is complicated.
What a pity – for Luzkhov – that property ownership is not an automatic rubber stamp in every country. Were that the case, Baturina’s ownership of a hotel in Austria might have been able to swing things in his favour.