Newsweek: Where Vultures Prey
October 17, 2009
Last month Dmitry Medvedev set out his bold new vision of a “more civilized” Russia, no longer prone to the “legal nihilism” that has rotted the fabric of Russian capitalism and turned the courts and police into tools for settling private business disputes. Many hoped that such a powerful signal from the president would set Russia on course to establish the rule of law. Now, a high-profile test case will show who runs Russia — crooks with official connections, or the state itself. This week a criminal suit filed in a Moscow court details a scam in which senior bureaucrats, judges, and police defrauded the Russian taxpayer of half a billion dollars — and then used the courts to persecute the scam’s victims when they tried to blow the whistle.
For more information please visit