Fighting Corruption in Russia

"Alperovich" does not sound like an ethnic Russian name to me.

calripson wrote:"Alperovich" does not sound like an ethnic Russian name to me.

You are right. But from NATO propaganda you would think that Putin was an absolute despot. In reality
he can't even squash a collection of bugs like this.

Anyone paying attention will notice that capitalism is an intrinsically corrupt system. What we see in Russia
(and many other countries) is an attempt to rig the system in the American way. Have some local politicians
and bureaucrats in your pocket and they will rubber stamp your siphon of taxpayer money. If someone is too
honest and blows the whistle, then have them whacked Seth Rich style and blame it on Putin.

calripson wrote:"Alperovich" does not sound like an ethnic Russian name to me.

Jew

kvs wrote:

Some family of crooks going by the name of Alperovich is engaged in brazen abuse of the legal system to rip off
taxpayer money for their own gain.    In the case of the aqua-park they are not happy that regulations prevented them
from making additional money off the property and want to break up the agreement they signed themselves.   To do
this they are making up all sorts of BS claims (which are easily debunked) and even get some journalist saps to spread
their BS around.  

The above case points to the reality in Russia.   Putin the "tyrant" does not run every aspect of Russia and brazen
crooks practically spit in his face and those of most Russians.    Makes one wish for the good old days of the 1930s,
when some black sedan would visit Alperovich and his clan and round them up to the Gulag.

Most of these oligarch days are numbered. As evident from the video, they cant stay hidden anymore.

miketheterrible wrote:

Most of these oligarch days are numbered.  As evident from the video, they cant stay hidden anymore.

Why do you think this will happen now? He's just one out of many.
Anyway..
Becoming oligarch days are over and so it been for long time.
Oligarchs will disappear eventually, but not because of the laws. They don't carry their power, wealth and influence with their children. Their fortunes end up wasted by their kids. They leave nothing but trails of dollars that turn into dust.

For law they are fairly untouchable if they BEHAVE. Just like rich people in USA can get away with anything. Epstein stopped behaving and he died. This is reality in  Africa, Asia, Europe and so on.

Regular wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:

Most of these oligarch days are numbered.  As evident from the video, they cant stay hidden anymore.

Why do you think this will happen now? He's just one out of many.
Anyway..
Becoming oligarch days are over and so it been for long time.
Oligarchs will disappear eventually, but not because of the laws. They don't carry their power, wealth and influence with their children. Their fortunes end up wasted by their kids. They leave nothing but trails of dollars that turn into dust.

For law they are fairly untouchable if they BEHAVE. Just like rich people in USA can get away with anything. Epstein stopped behaving and he died.  This is reality in  Africa, Asia, Europe and so on.

Many oligarchs lost their wealth and power in Russia. Yes, there are others but they try to play somewhat nice. As soon as they step out of bounds like as you mentioned Epstein, they are done for.

I talk to a lot of Russians, from business people to old grannies living in the provinces. Their general take is that corruption in Russia is not getting better. As an example, one gentleman cited the fact that the head of Russian Railways (a state corporation I believe) makes $150,000 a day. He said Putin was dismissive when asked about this. Is it true that the head of a state corporation makes $150,000 a day???

Well, Anatoly Karlin, who I consider to be the number one Russia watcher/expert, seems to agree with that assessment.

[Disclaimer for those who will get triggered: 1. Karlin likes Putin overall, 2. he has very convincingly destroyed most anti-Russian propaganda tropes as far as I'm concerned and 3. he actually moved BACK to Russia a few years ago, though I don't think he's talking about personal anecdotes when it comes to corruption anyway, he's more of a facts and statistics kind of guy.]

Interestingly however, if you read his blog posts from pre-2012, he basically concluded that Transparency International's "perception" indexes etc. were outdated BS, and that Russia wasn't particularly corrupt by global and Eastern European standards. But then something happened, don't know what changed his mind. He has never written about that in depth for some reason, or maybe I have missed it. Either way, nowadays he thinks that Russia is generally quite (very) corrupt.

Okay, so I did some googling, and I think he based his views on this:
https://www.transparency.org/research/gcb/gcb_2015_16/0

That is the Global Corruption Barometer, sounds relatively objective and is certainly better than "perceptions" of foreign business leaders, or whatever.

Q. Did you or any member of your household make an unofficial payment or gift when using these services over the past 12 months? The road police, public agencies issuing official documents, the civil courts, public education (primary or secondary), public education (vocation), public medical care, public agencies in charge of unemployment benefits or any other public agencies in charge of other social security benefits?

Well, Russia (34%!) is among the worst "performers" in "Europe," with Ukraine (38%), Romania (29%) and Kazakhstan (29%). However, that's not hugely different from Lithuania (24%), Hungary (22%) and Serbia (22%).

Asia: China isn't much better at 26%, and countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia are more corrupt, to say nothing of Sub-Saharan Africa or Mexico (52%!). Latin America in general is in the 20-30% range, even relatively "clean" and "democratic (tm)" Uruguay and Chile. Brazil is a curious case though, at 11% it's somehow one of the least corrupt countries in the region, despite having a very high inequality. What's up with that? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Portugal (3%) is doing surprisingly well, too.  

Western Europe? 1-5% generally, even Italy (7%) and Greece (10%) are not particularly corrupt.

---------------------------------------

I suppose the common trope that Putin has managed to considerably improve almost everything else but corruption is probably quite accurate. That said, it has certainly improved since the 90s in any case, no doubt about that. One positive thing too is that corrupt Russian officials are probably *relatively* loyal to the country. Western media is clearly very selective as well, and somehow manages to exaggerate the problem, as always. But "USSR-loving" boomers and oligarchs need to die off first. And of course Russia is always going to have regions like Chechenia and Dagestan. It takes time.

One last point regarding inequality, which is not the same thing as corruption, obviously: Russian Gini-index is around the global average, and it's still steadily decreasing (i.e. getting better), despite it already being quite a bit lower than the US figure. Also, as I mentioned earlier, Brazil's Gini is very high.

Kvs is going to disagree, as many large-scale projects are not (always?) behind schedule, unlike in the West, or something like that. I of course hope he's correct...

I have a question. for quite some time now, i have been subscribed to the Russia24 channel on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Russia24TV

Now i noticed that majority of the videos in this channel that features politics in Russia has a lot of Negative votes/ thumbs down. This makes me wonder, do Russian youtuber simply have a negative attitude towards politicians (specifically Putin's government) or is this the work of NATO influence operations to make people think that Russians dislike Putin and his government? I have a feeling that a NATO troll factory located in Ukraine is responsible for these down votes. It is not normal for videos featuring the Russian government to have 20% positive and 80% negative votes when Putin's government has majority favourable ratings inside Russia.

A couple of things:
- Russians are pessimistic people. They are never happy no matter if the world is handed to them on a plate, they will always find something to bitch about. It's something common among eastern Europeans.
- Corruption is decreasing but the reason why they view it isn't because sometimes they are told it isn't. Or maybe that they feel it isn't. Using example of Russian railways owner is silly because the question is - how does they know exactly how much he makes? $150,000 a day is a rather generic sum.  Why not $145,156.12 a day?  And the evidence is located where?

I recall watching a Vesti news article about eastern Russian city near China recently (couple months old now) and they interviewed this teacher who pushed to have a particular garden built. The teacher mentioned the locals all were initially against if because and I paraphrase: "people will ruin it. People will kill the birds. People will steal the flowers".  In the end, none of that happened. One guy did take some flowers but police dealt with it quickly. Since then things were fine.  That's just how pessimism works. Russians love to hate and love their nation and it's people at the same time.  This derives from the fact many are still butthurt the USSR doesnt exist anymore.

Plus, Russia's main anti corruption dealings is only a few years old now.  And many high profile people are in jail. But you can't fix 30 years with just two - four years.....

As for YouTube ratings. Ignore them. Ukrainians and other eastern Europeans watch Russian news online and love to down vote anything. Vesti news on other hand is opposite. Lots of likes.

I have yet to see from Karlin or any other source a real quantification of corruption levels in the squeaky clean NATO west and
Russia. Without proper metrics and a reference frame, it is all just subjective BS.

kvs wrote:I have yet to see from Karlin or any other source a real quantification of corruption levels in the squeaky clean NATO west and
Russia.  Without proper metrics and a reference frame, it is all just subjective BS.

Yeap.

Anyone can claim anything, especially when they don't need to provide evidence to their claims.

Kimppis wrote:But "USSR-loving" boomers and oligarchs need to die off first.

Agreed...maybe not die off but until the younger (post Soviet/post 90's) generation takes over the reigns properly, you will have this "rose tinted glasses" perception that everything was better in the USSR...what's funny. most of these people were probably just kids or teens during that period

kvs wrote:I have yet to see from Karlin or any other source a real quantification of corruption levels in the squeaky clean NATO west and
Russia.  Without proper metrics and a reference frame, it is all just subjective BS.

Western Europe? 1-5% generally, even Italy (7%) and Greece (10%) are not particularly corrupt.

Seems to be quite straightforward to me. Have you paid a bribe over the past 12 months? Yes or no? No "perceptions" BS.

I do agree, however, that the issue is very complicated and it certainly seems some of the corruption in the West has been very successfully "institutionalized" and whatnot, especially and increasingly so in the US.  

PhSt wrote:
I have a question. for quite some time now, i have been subscribed to the Russia24 channel on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Russia24TV

Now i noticed that majority of the videos in this channel that features politics in Russia has a lot of Negative votes/ thumbs down. This makes me wonder, do Russian youtuber simply have a negative attitude towards politicians (specifically Putin's government) or is this the work of NATO influence operations to make people think that Russians dislike Putin and his government? I have a feeling that a NATO troll factory located in Ukraine is responsible for these down votes. It is not normal for videos featuring the Russian government to have 20% positive and 80% negative votes when Putin's government has majority favourable ratings inside Russia.

How are the comments? Actually Medvedev's government isn't particularly popular. Russia24 is the most mainstream of mediums in Russia, correct? So it's probably less popular among young people, who tend to watch online videos, though that doesn't make most of them anti-Russian liberals. Old people watch TV -- and Russia24.

Kimppis wrote:

kvs wrote:I have yet to see from Karlin or any other source a real quantification of corruption levels in the squeaky clean NATO west and
Russia.  Without proper metrics and a reference frame, it is all just subjective BS.

Western Europe? 1-5% generally, even Italy (7%) and Greece (10%) are not particularly corrupt.

Seems to be quite straightforward to me. Have you paid a bribe over the past 12 months? Yes or no? No "perceptions" BS.

I do agree, however, that the issue is very complicated and it certainly seems some of the corruption in the West has been very successfully "institutionalized" and whatnot, especially and increasingly so in the US.  

PhSt wrote:
I have a question. for quite some time now, i have been subscribed to the Russia24 channel on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Russia24TV

Now i noticed that majority of the videos in this channel that features politics in Russia has a lot of Negative votes/ thumbs down. This makes me wonder, do Russian youtuber simply have a negative attitude towards politicians (specifically Putin's government) or is this the work of NATO influence operations to make people think that Russians dislike Putin and his government? I have a feeling that a NATO troll factory located in Ukraine is responsible for these down votes. It is not normal for videos featuring the Russian government to have 20% positive and 80% negative votes when Putin's government has majority favourable ratings inside Russia.

How are the comments? Actually Medvedev's government isn't particularly popular. Russia24 is the most mainstream of mediums in Russia, correct? So it's probably less popular among young people, who tend to watch online videos, though that doesn't make most of them anti-Russian liberals. Old people watch TV -- and Russia24.

Sorry, your "straightforward" is BS:

1) It does not account for propaganda self-image. In NATO, citizens are reluctant to admit that anything is wrong with their
countries and that they engaged in criminal activity. You do know that paying bribes is a crime in most NATO countries
and not just taking them? By contrast, in Russia you will have people lying that they paid bribes to fit the 5th column narratives
and when they volunteered to pay basically species of bribes in the form of gifts, which is a traditional thing that actually applies
to the Orient and to the Middle East.

2) Petty bribes and gifts do not compare to massive corporate corruption:



Russia builds a full blown nuclear waste reprocessing plant for 240 million dollars which is operating today, but in the USA the contractor
blows 7 billion dollars and demands another 15 billion dollars. To you this may be pure virgin innocence, but to me,
who knows something about project planning, this is proof of 3rd world type corruption. No project is launched where the cost
uncertainty is around 200%. Modern civil engineering projects can be pinned down to the $100,000 dollar range even for large
projects. Every aspect from number of workers, to their exact tasks and the time it takes (with a buffer) and the cost of materials
and their delivery is accounted for. Demanding $15 billion extra after a project starts proves that there was no real project plan.
Non completion of projects is an establish graft and money laundering scam. The municipality of Rome routinely starts affordable
housing projects that are never completed. All that money is going somewhere and it ain't back to the taxpayer.

I dare Karlin and anyone else to provide equivalent cases of large scale corporate corruption in Russia. Don't waste my time with
semantics about gifts.

To be clear I am not denying there is corruption in Russia. But I am tired of hearing about how singular it is without any proof.
From what I can tell, the west has gotten good at hiding large scale corruption in plain sight and making sure that the petty kind you find
in the 3rd world is not apparent. So cops don't shake down motorists for some cash. But cops do go to bed with the mafia
as happened in Quebec where the drug dealing biker gangs were clearly flipping cops to serve their interests.

So for me the question is actual corruption and not optics. Russia would not be ascending if it was as ridden with corruption
as NATO propaganda would have everyone believe. As I posted before, corruption will always exist in human societies since
humans are the sort of species that engages in such activity. But how much corruption is "normal" is not clear since nobody,
including Karlin, is actually doing a good job studying and reporting on this issue. It's too politically sensitive and obviously a
propaganda tool useful for regime change operations.

Kremlin: $169 mln stolen out of $1.4 bln allocated for Vostochny spaceport construction

https://tass.com/science/1088035

George1 wrote:Kremlin: $169 mln stolen out of $1.4 bln allocated for Vostochny spaceport construction

https://tass.com/science/1088035

Good article, but it kind of misses the target as it deals with corruption in the original build (for which Spetstroi was disbanded) but gives the impression the corruption is ongoing.

Subsequent article: https://tass.com/science/1088232

The corruption cases relate to 2014 when mass violations were exposed at the construction site, the Roscosmos chief said.

"The construction of the spaceport’s second stage is based on completely different principles. The process has been placed under the treasury’s control and funds are allocated through the treasury’s letter of credit. So far, we have no grounds today to get concerned that money is spent ineffectively. There are no alarming facts either,"

That said, they need to get these corrupt MFers and nails their severed heads to the wall for the public to p!ss on

The Vostochny spaceport case demonstrates that there are active measures against corruption in Russia. Expecting no corruption to
ever appear is unreasonable. In fact, in the precious NATO west, such cases are laundered with all sorts of bureaucratic tricks and the
corrupt contractors get away with murder. In Russia, they are busted and relatively hard. Of course, I would like to see them lined
up against the wall and riddled with machine gun bullets, but such dreams do not take away from the fact that Russia is one of the few
countries where the government is not a complete corporate whore.

The 169 million out of 1.4 billion is 12.1%. That is actually a very small number. Corrupt cost-overuns in large projects in the NATO
west are routinely in the multiple 100% range. For example, the California high speed rail debacle and the Berlin airport makeover
farce.

https://t.me/milinfolive/125433?single

More than 875 million rubles were stolen from the Ministry of Defense during the reconstruction of the main testing ground for military aircraft in Akhtubinsk, Baza reports.

According to the publication, a criminal case of theft on government contracts against unidentified persons was opened by the Main Military Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia back in 2022, but it is still pending.

In 2014, the Ministry of Defense allocated about 1.5 billion rubles for the reconstruction of the flight test center in Akhtubinsk, and the executor of the state order, FSUE Main Military Construction Directorate No. 14, through a chain of subcontractors, transferred more than 900 million to the accounts of the PromSpetsStroyGroup (PSSG) company.

As the investigation found, PSSG management completed only no more than 5% of the planned work, after which it withdrew funds and bankrupted the company.

I wonder how many hangars could be built for this amount?

Military Informant

My country (not only government) is fraught with corruption. It's a very destructive disease that has no easy cure. It would seem that the Russians are at least willing to get rid of the greedy bastards. Hope that those that are guilty will rot away in jail.

What happened to all those billions that disappeared in the Pentagon? All under the carpet I guess.

Mir wrote:
My country (not only government) is fraught with corruption. It's a very destructive disease that has no easy cure. It would seem that the Russians are at least willing to get rid of the greedy bastards. Hope that those that are guilty will rot away in jail.

What happened to all those billions that disappeared in the Pentagon? All under the carpet I guess. Mad

US MIC is a completely different beast. Corruption works in a different way and most of the money stays with private corporations. Most government officials are able to pick up only crumbs while in office. It is a system of corruption that was refined over several decades.
It is not a secret that most people in Pentagon or Congress cash in only after leaving public service. Usually, via consultancy contracts, think tanks or board seats. This is when real money is made.
In Russia, system of corruption is more rudimentary and government officials are more on the take. I would say very similar to Serbia.
As for RSA, what i hear from friends that live there, corruption is on a completely different level and even more "in your face" type of corruption is prevalent.
One thing, that is clear is that US is doing a much better job when it comes to soft power, while Russia is forced to do completely opposite and use military in near abroad. This is an area where much work need to be done. At least, after Ukraine, they should be more feared and elites in neighboring countries will think twice before going against them. It is very important to make an example out of Ukraine. It might sound cruel, but it is necessary.