Alexander Lebedev responds to KP article
Last Thursday your newspaper carried an amusing article titled "Rich Russians Don't Moderate Their Appetites Even in a Crisis". "In the morning they beg the Government for money and in the evening they relax on overseas islands and buy property abroad," Andrei Lavrov writes. He cites as a vivid example of such egregious behaviour my purchase of the British newspaper Evening Standard. "Meanwhile, in Russia the weekly magazine Ogonyok, which has more than a hundred year-long history, was shut down," the author laments.
By tradition the "accused" is given the final word, so let us set the records straight.
First, regarding the Evening Standard. Free media is a key element of civil society. It is as much an institution of democracy as an independent judiciary, a strong parliament, and independent competing parties. It is an axiom, a universal rule for any country. Therefore, I believe that supporting independent media is a social mission, a civic responsibility. It does not matter that the newspaper is not published in this country; you will see terrific synergy, I am sure. After all, we could learn a thing or two from the British press.
Today many publications all over the world are in a difficult situation. This is an objective economic reality. In Russia, I have long had a stake in a quality independent opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, and support it with my own money. By the way, I believe that it is an honour to become the owner of a publication dating back to 1827. If a hypothetical "new Russian" just dropped by at the Daily Mail publishing house and asked to buy the oldest evening newspaper (not for a pound, but for any amount of money) they would take him for a madman.
Now, as for the "rich Russians" who "beg the Government for money". I for one have never begged my country's Government for money, neither today nor in the past. For five years I have been fulfilling and over-fulfilling the Putin Plan.
In 2004, a National Reserve Corporation was set up, and more than $2 billion in proceeds from the sale of accumulated paper and other assets (blue chip shares, bonds, real estate, a bank in Ukraine, etc.) have been invested in socially important projects such as aircraft building and air carriage, the building of low-rise and affordable housing, mortgages, agriculture, and small businesses. I have derived no profits from this. I spend my personal money on culture and charity - for example, to restore the theatre and the Chekhov Museum in Yalta, to build an oncology clinic for children in St Petersburg, the largest in Russia, and so on.
Meanwhile, every day we open our newspapers to read some surprising news: trillions of roubles are pumped into government banks, which will buy dollars and undermine the rouble; money from the National Welfare Fund will go to finance the participation of oligarchs in the building of Olympic facilities; somebody will get $5-10 billion borrowed from Government banks under the pretext of "consolidation and transfer to the state" of minority stakes; a couple of billion dollars are given to the Ukrainians under the guise of "bailing out a bankrupt bank," Prominvestbank. All that is true. One of the heroes of our time, the ill-fated developer Polonsky, said at a party he threw in Cannes, "Those who don't have a billion can go to hell". I think our bureaucrats have tweaked that formula: they tell all those whose debts are less than five billion to go to hell.
State banks have become rather like fiefdoms. They strike "deals" and waste their own money. The (official) cost of the upkeep of personnel was a "mere" 7 billion dollars over three quarters in 2008. A youthful vice president (a government manager) brings Mariah Carey to his wedding (as KP reported). The president of one of the state-owned banks has his own jet and a $130-million yacht. Officially the banks are state-owned, but their executives behave as if they own them. They are asking for another $70 billion. Apparently they don't have enough money to buy their yachts, villas, diamonds for their mistresses, and new private jets.
Putin is telling them "to support the real sector". The guys are annoyed by his lecturing, which distracts them from real business. You will recall a Soviet-era classic: after being forced to buy a hefty bag with horns from a peasant, the roguish hero exclaims: "Enough working for the Government. It's time to do some real business."
The total amount of money that has fled the so-called "government sector" in 2004-2008 is in excess of hundreds of billions of dollars. No other country has seen such large-scale corruption in human history. It is a new phenomenon of epic proportions. Like Soviet citizens used to do in the past, I have been writing letters to the Government for many years, making rational proposals and blowing the whistle on corruption. The response has been silence. For example, there is a Government agency called the Financial Leasing Company that was generously financed out of the budget in order to build domestic planes. The planes have never materialized, but the managers have bought two shipbuilding plants in Germany on behalf of their private firm. For four years I have been writing letters to every Government agency: "Gentlemen, you had 200 million, 300 million, 400 million, 500 million stolen from you." When the amount reached 750 million, the Interior Ministry went after the Financial Leasing Company.
The country enjoyed almost 9 years of growth and stability, enough time in which to build roads, replace decrepit housing deemed to be unsafe (we have 1 billion square meters of slums), build bridges, modernize seaports and airports. Our national pride, the mining enterprises acquired in the course of loans-for-shares auctions, were built 50 years ago (Norilsk was built in 1939). I have often criticized the Mayor of Moscow. However, compared with the federal bureaucrats, Yuri Luzhkov is an outstanding manager. He has built the Beltway around Moscow and several trade and entertainment compounds in Moscow's squares, tunnels, interchanges and "rings", the City. True, the city and its people have something to complain about: traffic jams that stretch for miles, and a terrible environment. But no one can deny that all these things have been built. I owe an apology to the mayor.
In conclusion, in order to clear up all these issues a broad public discussion in the independent media is needed. I hope that my response in KP will mark a step in that direction.
Alexander Lebedev
