It's been a busy month for Russians in our news. From Berezovsky, to the younger Abramovich to the mess of miner ENRC...
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First off we have the grotesque mess surrounding the FTSE 100 mining giant ENRC. With its opportunist origins in the grab for former Soviet mines that were privatised in Kazakhstan in the early 1990s, ENRC’s London float in 2007 was never going to produce a run-of-the-mill UK stock market company. Almost half the shares were controlled by three oligarchs who made their fortunes in the chaos that followed the collapse of communism. However, even in the volatile world of natural resource mining it would be hard to find a more rum story out there at the moment, involving, as it does, alleged perfidious behaviour in Africa and a Serious Fraud Office investigation.
The latest twist is that the bunch of charmers who control ENRC, Alexander Mashkevitch, Aiijan Ibragimov, Patokh Chodiev and Kazakhstan’s autocratic ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev are going to try to take the ailing company private. As usual the mugs look to be the institutions who were talked by the investment banks into taking the shares at the market launch. (The shares which floated at 540p in 2007 and later soared to over £14 have crashed, losing nearly 60% of their market capitalisation in the last year.) It is hard to escape the conclusion that such an operation should never have been allowed to float in London in the first place. ENRC has become a byword for corporate dysfunction and possessing a very poor gasp of the rules of corporate governance. London has suffered reputationally by its association with such an outfit.
Secondly we should offer our hearty congratulations to Arkadiy Abramovich who at the grand old age of 19 has completed his first big oil deal. For $46 million his shell company Zoltav Resources has acquired a chunk of Western Siberia into which to drag the drilling rigs. Arkadiy, who appears to be a genuine chip off the old Roman block, was also linked to an attempt to buy the football club FC Copenhagen a short while back. The reaction to young Arkadiy’s success has been predictably acid in its resentment. Being both Russian and born with an oligarch’s silver caviar spoon in your mouth is not a recipe for attracting widespread popular warmth these days. A typical comment on the Telegraph’s website was: "he doesn’t look so good for 19. As Dorothy Parker quipped: If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." Suffice to say, noted another observer, when he writes his autobiography it’s quite unlikely to be entitled called "My Struggle."
Then, of course, the next bombshell in the drama-fuelled world of Russian émigrés was the demise of Boris Beresovsky. He appears to have been subjected to the ultimate haircut while his Mossad-trained bodyguard had popped off to Lidl in Ascot for a pint of milk. Beresovsky and Arkadiy’s dad, Roman, kept us all entertained - and half London’s lawyers in gravy last year - with their bitter legal battle which ended up with Beresovsky vanquished and plunged into a suicidal depression during which he penned an, as yet unpublished, note to Vladimir Putin begging to be allowed back to the Motherland.
You couldn’t make it up, could you? They don’t do anything by halves, these Russians. Their country remains a wild place which can make the other BRIC’s look a quiet Scandinavian social democracy. Nobody ever said the post-Communist path was going to be easy for a nation brutalised by sixty years of Stalinist Leninism but Russia’s complete failure to establish the rule of law remains the single great block to development. Owning vast quantities of oil and gas is a long way from turning it into a Norway.
It is a problem that taints the texture of daily life, running much deeper than high-profile rub-outs such as the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya or the robbing of BP of its assets. The country is 133rd out of 174 nations on the Transparency International Corruption index. It’s beaten by Iran, Uganda and Albania. Russia is, to put it bluntly, as bent as a nine rouble note.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia has a serious image problem. It is viewed by wary outsiders as coarse, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous. Indeed much like a bear. Which leads us to Cyprus, the destruction of whose economy appears to be largely down to the Russians and their eagerness to get their cash offshore. Just imagine, for one second, if the Cypriot bailout mission to Moscow had succeeded and the Russians has come to Cyprus’s rescue. Imagine if you take a loan from Putin’s government and find yourself unable, for whatever reason, to repay. A spell in the salt mines would be a picnic compared to being invited to dine on a piece of Polonium-laced sushi.
Despite the fact that Nicosia has gone for the ugly German solution, the Russians have unfinished business in Cyprus, as their PM Medvedev has hinted "The stealing of what has already been stolen continues."
What has occurred to the hapless Cypriot population is largely down to German politics and an impending election. If it had been a few Africans or Chinese with their dirty money hidden offshore in the bank of Cyprus nobody would have been overly exercised. But the poor Russian image is what comes into play here. There’s nothing your average German approves of less than a tax-avoiding Russian blinging it up in the Med. Bashing a Russki goes down well on the doorstep in Bavaria in an election year.
Indeed when they are led by an individual like Frau Merkel who saw what it was like living under Russian rule as an East German in her youth, the response was always going to be chilly. Cyprus is yet another chance to get one back for the grim events of 39-45. History runs deep everywhere and nowhere more so than in Germany where, for all the talk about the unifying effects of the Eurozone, it’s every nation for itself in the harsh world of austerity.
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