Russia Reform Monitor No.755, March 17, 2000
American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, D.C.
Moscow political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky accuses President Clinton of aiding Putin's presidential campaign. Writing in the Russia Journal, he says, "bestowing a barrage of lavish praise on him [Putin] is tantamount to direct interference in the Russian electoral campaign. Certainly, Putin's PR managers immediately seized on the opportunity and put it to use. The day after Clinton's CNN appearance [praising Putin], the interview was shown on all Russia's main TV channels with the appropriate commentary on the lines of 'our brilliant leader has taken a firm and uncompromising stand with regard to all Western attempts to interfere in our domestic affairs. This stand has won only respect from the West both for Putin and for Russia.'"
The long-suppressed report was made public last week by Marina Salye, who headed the January 1992 inquiry. Putin was then deputy mayor and head of the city's committee for external relations, responsible for "a complex bartering system to help feed the city." Putin signed many of the licenses and contracts. "Despite contracts worth more than $92 million signed by Putin's office," the Times of London reports, "the city was receiving little food." City council officials investigated Putin's possible involvement. "Their conclusions, compiled in a report dated March 23, 1992, were damning."
"Putin and his deputy, Alexander Anikin, were accused of 'complete incompetence bordering on lack of conscientiousness' and of 'unprecedented negligence and irresponsibility in providing the investigating commission with documents,'" according to the Times, quoting from the report. The panel recommended "that Putin and Anikin be dismissed and that the material gathered be passed to the city's prosecutors. Their evidence was sent to Moscow."
"Yuri Boldyrev, then a member of Yeltsin's presidential administration and the chief inspector of the Russian Federation, wrote that Putin should not be considered for any other position until the evidence [concerning St. Petersburg City Council allegations of Putin's involvement in or toleration of corruption in the early 1990s] had been examined," the Times of London reports. "City prosecutors do not appear to have followed up Salye's report. [Mayor Anatoly] Sobchak also stood by his former pupil." [Note: Boldyrev then was Yeltsin's top anti-corruption fighter. He is now with the Accounts Chamber of the State Duma.]
Putin "tried to conceal" an $11 million discrepancy between receipts for the sale of state-owned oil or rare metals and the original contracts, Salye tells the Sunday Times. The paper adds, "Examination of the files showed Putin and his office had signed agreements allowing companies to receive thousands of tons of raw metals at prices which, in some cases, were up to 2,000 times lower than their true value on the world market."
The panel never accused Putin of profiting personally, and Putin has denied allegations of wrongdoing, according to the Sunday Times. "Most of the contracts signed were fraudulent," says Salye. "The companies were highly dubious, the contracts were riddled with mistakes, fictitious sums and irregularities meant that in practice they were legally non-binding. Millions of dollars were earned, and millions of dollars vanished."
--J. Michael Waller
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