Medvedev: Corrupt Officials Run Russia

"Corrupt officials run Russia -- they have the power in the Russian Federation," Medvedev said, adding that Russia needed broad social and economic reforms.

While Medvedev has made corruption a plank in his presidential platform, the wide range of his harsh criticisms last week – in both an article on his proposed changes and his talk at Valdai – prompted the Wall Street Journal to think about the relationship between Medvedev and his predecessor/mentor/appointer, Vladimir Putin and what it will mean for Russia.

"This article was the first day of Mr. Medvedev's presidency," said Nikolai Zlobin, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Washington think tank Center for Defense Information, and a member of the Valdai group. But he and other analysts cautioned against seeing Mr. Medvedev's setting out of his vision as a bid to challenge Mr. Putin for power.

Russia's presidency already has been stripped of some powers since Mr. Putin became prime minister, Mr. Zlobin said, and could be diluted further to the point that Mr. Putin doesn't want it. That would allow him to stay in charge as prime minister, while Mr. Medvedev could run again for the less-important presidency, Mr. Zlobin said.

Power-jockeying aside, another prominent Russian has some ideas about how to curb corruption in the country: Fire at least half the bureaucrats. So suggested banking magnate Alexander Lebedev at an investment summit last week.

“They are wealthy people. Let them go to Saint-Tropez,” he said.

One could wonder how billionaire Lebedev gets away with criticism of the Kremlin while his peers who had dared to challenge authorities had to flee to London or are serving prison terms in Siberia, like the oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Lebedev, a former KGB agent like Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, says Putin is open to criticism and these are mainly mid-level bureaucrats who are causing trouble. “Putin is a hostage to the tradition of a corrupt country,” says Lebedev.
Corruption of another sort was one focus of a Western report last week. The Committee to Protect Journalists released “Anatomy of Injustice,” a 10-part study of the unsolved killings of journalists in Russia. Seventeen journalists have been killed in the country since 2000; only one of the cases has seen killers convicted, but in even that case, the authorities didn’t find out who ordered the killing. From the report:

For all their differences, the victims shared one thing: They covered sensitive subjects in probing ways that threatened the powerful, from government officials to businesspeople, military to militants, law enforcement officers to criminal gang members.

Two of the cases show the insidious relationship between attacks on journalists and police corruption. One St. Petersburg journalist who covered police corruption for a weekly publication disappeared in 2004. A website publisher in Ingushetia who covered government corruption and disappearances was shot in the head by an Interior Ministry officer in 2008. CPJ has the details of those uninterested and shoddy investigations here , and asks whether Medvedev can end the killings of journalists without addressing corruption in the police forces.

EU to Bulgaria: Squared Away, or Else…

Or else nothing. EU foreign ministers last week admonished Bulgaria to curb corruption and organized crime, as they’ve been admonishing Bulgaria to do for the better part of 18 months. But while last year, the EU backed up its rhetoric with some action – freezing hundreds of millions of euros in aid to the country – this year it doesn’t seem as if the EU is going to wield either carrots or sticks to get Bulgaria moving. The Sofia News Agency reports:

The conclusions of the Foreign Ministers council, which took place in Brussels, makes no mention of punitive measures such as tying the press for improvements in Bulgaria at European level to its accession to the Schengen area.

The no-threats-attached attitude might be because Bulgaria’s new government has only been in power since July. The party in power, GERB, seems to be making the right noises. They ran on an anti-corruption platform, adopted a package of measures to fight organized crime and corruption and, most recently, sent the new interior minister out to say that the ministry’s priorities are organized crime and corruption. But while the EU might be giving the new government the benefit of the doubt, one parliamentarian said last week that prosecutors are doing just as lackluster a job as they were doing under the former Socialist-led government. And a German journalist who wrote a book (“Die neuen Daemonen,” or “The New Demons”) about the links between Bulgarian organized crime and the country’s political structures called on the authorities to investigate a well-connected business network.

As to how Bulgaria’s problems (as well as those of Romania, which was also admitted to the EU in 2007) could affect other countries trying to get into the EU, the Financial Times last week reported that the prognosis for the non-members – Croatia in particular – is not good.

But with the prevailing political climate in western Europe cool towards enlargement, it would be rash for Croats to think the EU will welcome them with open arms just because corruption and organised crime are a little less rampant than in Bulgaria and Romania.

There is a tendency in Croatia to assume that the country is self-evidently at the cultural and geographical heart of Europe - it was, after all, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - and that entry into the EU is therefore automatic. But as a result of its experiences with Bulgaria and Romania, the EU sets the bar higher than it used to.

Southern Italians Fight Back against OC

While news out of Italy might be disturbing on the organized crime front – particularly the news that the Calabrian mafia probably sank more than 40 ships containing toxic and even radioactive waste in the Mediterranean – two articles last week profiled a few people who’re trying to fight back.

The UK-based Tribune covers a local councilor in a region that the Calabrian mafia, or ‘Ndrangheta, runs as its private fiefdom. Antonio Baglio, 36, has had his car burned and receives threats regularly for not kowtowing to the families that make up the ‘Ndrangheta.

“The families who exercise this occult authority are very powerful on our territory”, he says. “For us, the young ’Ndrangheta has a name and a face. He’s a school friend, a next-door neighbour. For us, it’s the physical presence of the people we live with.”

Unlike the Sicilian Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta does not have a hierarchical structure, but is built around parallel family groups or ndrine. Unassailable family loyalties create an almost total absence of pentiti (informers). “It would mean betraying your family, your brother, your father maybe”, explains Baglìo.

The Times of London, meanwhile, ran a much sexier story about Sicilian women involved in a group that stands up to mob demands for protection money, or pizzo. The alluring photo of three Addiopizzo (Goodbye, pizzo) activists leads the story, which talks about the progress the organization has made in Palermo. Some 300 businesses belong to the group; one activist reckons, however, that 80 percent of Palermo businesses are still paying protection money.

Fighting back is as hard as it is because the mobs are so powerful. The Tribune, in its story about Baglio,  explained why that’s the case:

The mob constitutes an alternative economic power, running companies, factories, shops and restaurants. Because the state does not generate enough legitimate jobs, people turn to it for work and, once indebted, there is no way out. A 2007 report also revealed that half of all businesses in Calabria pay the pizzo (protection money) – as many as 70 per cent  in the city of Reggio Calabria. Those who do not pay often have to be “baptised”, by means of an expensive gift to the local boss. “If you don’t pay, they make sure your business doesn’t survive, because people stop coming”, explains Baglio.

Most damaging of all are the “grey” collaborators: the local lawyers, doctors, politicians and professionals who choose not to go to the police or use the democratic structures. “They keep the ’Ndrangheta in existence.” Since last year, local councils in three of the most economically important towns in Calabria have been dissolved because of mafia infiltration. Gioia, Rosarno and San Ferdinando are now ruled by government appointees. “This means 100,000 people have no democratically elected mayor. There’s no real democracy”, says Baglio.