They play for keeps in Russian business. And the organization
that polices this rough and tumble realm is none other than the
federal security service, the FSB, the lineal descendant of the old
KGB. In 2006 the deputy governor of the country’s central bank was
gunned down when he tried to revoke various banks’ licenses. The
chief executive officer of one of the private banks that was on the
revocation list was charged and convicted of the murder. The
investigators of the FSB were prominent in that prosecution even
though it supposedly was a matter for the local district attorney
— as all other felony murders are.
Now the new deputy governor, whose responsibilities include
supervision of regulations, has decided to resign for what he
termed “health reasons.” Independent journalists stated that this
new top banker was the designated “fall guy” for the politically
embarrassing takeover of the Bank of Moscow, whose management was
exposed as providing unsecured loans to ousted Moscow mayor Yuri
Luzhkov. This longtime feudal lord had become a personal foe of
ranking officers of the federal security service who do not approve
of private fiefdoms in an environment where they and only they are
“the guardian of the state.”
More importantly, Luzhkov had made an enemy of a crusading
Dimitry Medvedev, who intends to use the concept of cleaning up
“the old habits,” as he put it, as a centerpiece for his political
life. Of course everyone recognizes that none of this would have
happened without at least the tacit approval of the man credited by
all with the rejuvenation of the FSB, Vladimir V. Putin.
It is clear to most observers in Moscow that the FSB
(Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezoposnosti) has returned to the
style and authority of the old KGB, albeit with some administrative
revisions. In addition, they have now been officially charged with
the investigation and control of corruption and management
(sometimes the same thing) of key industries and financial
institutions.
When Putin wanted to block Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s nascent
political career funded by the latter’s control of the oil/gas
giant, Yukos, it was Putin’s old KGB friends at the FSB who
corralled the upstart. Similarly it was the existence of the FSB’s
technical and political apparat that forced Russian tycoon Boris
Berezovsky to flee the country to his havens in France and the UK.
Non-cooperative billionaires are very acceptable public targets —
even though they previously might have been of political value. The
expression in Russian is equivalent to “having become too big for
their britches.”
The list of FSB individual and corporate targets now spreads
globally — much to the consternation of Russia’s foreign
intelligence service, SVR, (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki)
that does not enjoy having FSB international operations active in
their patch. This is an area of constant fraternal conflict in
Russian official missions around the world.
The FSB has a particular interest in all military industrial
issues through its counter-intelligence department. Anything
involving foreign industrial groups falls into this category and as
a result so does joint Arctic exploration activities. For years
British Petroleum has been negotiating to be involved in Russian
Arctic exploration and only last week learned they had been
outmaneuvered when ExxonMobil signed a landmark deal with the
Russian petroleum organization, Rosneft.
Before BP could mount a protest, their offices in Moscow were
raided by court officers backed up by a team referred to in the
press as “armed special forces troopers,” otherwise known as
spetsnaz, under the direction of a specific highly
classified FSB counter-intelligence section. Supposedly proceeding
under an order by a West Siberian court, this FSB operation places
it squarely in a position of both influencing and controlling BP
Exploration & Operating Company activities in Russia.
While Dmitry Medvedev has launched a public campaign to “curb
excessive state interference in economy and boost private
investment,” the security authorities make sure that they keep
their hands in all aspects of Russian business. It is not unrelated
that the oil giant, Rosneft, that just signed the joint Arctic
exploration accord with ExxonMobil, is now the subject of a
government divestiture of its sizeable stake in Rosneft. That
Russian petroleum firm’s status was enhanced when it took over its
oil/gas competitor, Yukos, previously owned by Putin’s enemy, the
now-jailed Mikhail Khordorkovsky.
Vladimir Putin may have been the political instigator of the
Yukos takedown, but it was the FSB’s business and police powers
that placed the government-dominated Rosneft in control of its
assets. And it now will be the “pro-reform” Dmitry Medvedev who
returns the Russian government stake in the beneficiary Rosneft
back into private hands.
Whose hands will those be? Of course they will belong to someone
related to the FSB. That organization will ensure the strictly
legal change of Rosneft ownership. We now can be confident
everything will be on the up and up, and the “right people” will
win the business — Russian style!
