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... till, the Russian Duma's prescription of a return to state ownership,
central planning, and subsidies, if implemented, is likely to prove to
be the coup de grace rather than a graceful coup.
B. The FSB (the main successor to the KGB)
Note:
The KGB was succeeded by a host of agencies. The FSB inherited its
internal security directorates. The SVR inherited the KGB's foreign
intelligence directorates.
With the ascendance of the Vladimir Putin and his coterie (all former
KGB or FSB officers), the security services revealed their hand - they
are in control of Russia and always have been. They number now twice as
many as the KGB at its apex. Only a few days ago, the FSB had
indirectly made known its enduring objections to a long mooted (and
government approved) railway reform (a purely economic matter).
President Putin made December 20 (the day the murderous bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured Checka, the
KGB's ancestor, was established in 1917) a national holiday.
But the most significant tectonic shift has been the implosion of the
unholy alliance between Russian organized crime and its security
forces. The Russian mob served as the KGB's long arm until 1998. The
KGB often recruited and trained criminals (a task bad consolidation credit debt loan nebraska it took over from the
Interior Ministry, the MVD).
"Former" (reserve) and active agents
joined international or domestic racketeering gangs, sometimes as their
leaders.
After 1986 (and more so after 1991), many KGB members were moved from
its bloated bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured First (SVR) and Third Directorates to its Economic
Department. They were instructed to dabble in business and banking
(sometimes in joint ventures with foreigners). Inevitably, they crossed
paths - and then collaborated - with the Russian mafia which, like the
FSB, owns shares in privatized firms, residential property, banks, and
money laundering facilities.
The co-operation with crime lords against corrupt (read:
unco-operative) bureaucrats became bad consolidation credit debt loan very institutional and all-pervasive
under Yeltsin. The KGB is alleged to have spun off a series of "ghost"
departments to deal with global drug dealing, weapons smuggling bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured and
sales, white slavery, money counterfeiting, and nuclear material.
In a desperate effort at self-preservation, other KGB departments are
said to have conducted the illicit sales of raw materials (including
tons of precious metals) for hard currency, and the laundering of the
proceeds through financial institutions in the West (in Cyprus, Israel,
Greece, the USA, Switzerland, and Austria). Specially established
corporate shells and "banks" were used to launder money, mainly on
behalf of the party nomenklatura. All said, the emerging KGB-crime
cartel has been estimated to own or control c. 40% of Russian GDP as
early as 1994, having absconded with c. $100 billion of state assets.
Under the dual pretexts of "crime busting" bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured and "fighting bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured terrorism",
the bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured Interior Ministry and FSB used this period to construct massive,
parallel, armies - better equipped and better trained than the official
one.
Many genuinely retired KGB personnel found work as programmers,
entrepreneurs, and computer engineers in the Russian private sector
(and, later, in the West) - often financed by the KGB itself. The KGB
thus came to spawn and dominate the nascent Information Technology and
telecommunications industries in Russia. Add to this former (but on
reserve duty) KGB personnel in banks, hi-tech corporations, security
firms, consultancies, and media in the West as well as in joint
ventures with foreign firms in Russia - and the security services'
latter day role (and next big fount of revenue) becomes clear:
industrial and economic espionage. Russian scholars are already ordered
(as of last May) to submit written bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured reports about all bad consolidation credit debt loan very their encounters
with foreign colleagues.
This is where the FSB began to part ways with crime, albeit hitherto
only haltingly.
The FSB has established itself both within Russian power structures and
in business. What it needs now more than money and clout - are
respectability and the access it brings to Western capital markets,
intellectual property (proprietary technology), and management. Having
co-opted criminal organizations for its own purposes (and having acted
criminally themselves) - the alphabet soup of security agencies now
wish to consolidate their gains and transform themselves into
legitimate, globe-spanning, business concerns.
The robbers' most fervent wish is to become barons. Their erstwhile,
less exalted, criminal friends are on the way. Expect a bloodbath, a
genuine mafia gangland war over territory and spoils. The result is by
no means guaranteed.
The Energy Sector
The pension fund of the Russian oil giant, Lukoil, a minority
shareholder in TV-6 (owned by a discredited and self-exiled Yeltsin-era
oligarch, Boris Berezovsky), this week forced the closure of this
television station on legal grounds. Gazprom (Russia's natural gas
monopoly) has done the same to another television station, NTV, last
year (and then proceeded to expropriate it from its owner, Vladimir
Gusinsky).
Gazprom is forced to sell natural gas to Russian consumers at 10% the
world price and to turn a blind eye to debts owed it by Kremlin
favorites.
Both Lukoil and Gazprom are, therefore, used by the Kremlin as
instruments of domestic policy.
But Russian energy companies are also used as instruments of foreign
policy.
A few examples:
Russia has resumed oil drilling and exploration in war ravaged
Chechnya. About 230 million rubles have been transferred to the federal
Ministry of Energy. A new refinery is in the works.
Russia lately signed a production agreement to develop oilfields in
central Sudan in return for Sudanese arms purchases.
Armenia owes Itera, a Florida based, Gazprom related, oil concern, $35
million. Itera has agreed to postpone its planned reduction in gas
supplies to the bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured struggling republic to February 11.
Last month, President Putin called for the establishment of a "Eurasian
alliance of gas producers" - probably to counter growing American
presence, both economic and military, in Central Asia and the much
disputed oil rich Caspian basin. The countries of Central Asia have
done their best to construct alternative oil pipelines (through China,
Turkey, or Iran) in order to bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured reduce their dependence on Russian oil
transportation infrastructure. These efforts largely failed (a new $4
billion pipeline from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea through Russian
territory has just been inaugurated) and Russia is now on a charm
offensive.
Its PR efforts are characteristically coupled with extortion. Gazprom
owns the pipelines. Russia exports 7 trillion cubic feet of gas a year
- six times the combined output of all other regional producers put
together. Gazprom actually competes with its own clients, the
pipelines' users, in export markets. It is owed money by all these
countries and is not above leveraging it to bad consolidation credit debt loan personal bad consolidation credit debt loan people political or economic gain.
Lukoil is heavily invested in exploration for new oil fields in Iraq,
Algeria, Sudan, and Libya.
Russian debts to the Czech Republic, worth $2.5 billion in face value,
have just been bought by UES, the Russian electricity monopoly, for a
fraction of their value and through an offshore intermediary. UES then
transferred the notes to the Russian government against the writing off
of $1.35 billion in UES debts to the federal budget. The Russians claim
that Paris Club rules have ruled out a direct transaction between
Russia (a member of the Club) and the Czech Republic (not a member).
In the last decade, Russia has been transformed from an bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured industrial and
military power into a developing country with an overwhelming
dependence on a single category bad consolidation credit debt loan people of commodities: energy products.
Russia's energy monopolies - whether state owned or private - serve as
potent long arms of the Kremlin and the security services and implement
their policies faithfully.
The Kremlin (and, indirectly, the security services) maintain a tight
grip over the energy sector by selectively applying Russia's tangle of
hopelessly arcane laws.
In the last week alone, the Prosecutor
General's office charged the president and vice president of Sibur (a
Gazprom subsidiary) bad consolidation credit debt loan unsecured with embezzlement. They are currently being
detained for "abuse of office".
Another oil giant, Yukos, was forced to disclose documents regarding
its (real) ownership structure and activities to the State Property
Fund new_kwds in connection with an investigation regarding asset stripping
through a series of offshore entities and a Siberian subsidiary.
Intermittently, questions are raised about the curious relationship
between Gazprom's directors and Itera, upon which they shower contracts
with Gazprom and what amounts to multi-million dollar gifts (in the
from of ridiculously priced Gazprom assets) incessantly.
Gazprom is now run by a Putin political appointee, its former chairman,
the oligarch Vyakhirev, ousted in a Kremlin-instigated boardroom coup.
Foreign (including portfolio) investors seem to be happy.
Putin's
pervasive micromanagement of the energy titans assures them bad bad consolidation credit debt loan people consolidation credit debt loan unsecured of
(relative) stability and predictability and of a reformist,
businesslike, mindset. Following a phase of shameless robbery by their
new owners, Russian oil firms now seem to be leading Russia - albeit
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