FIMACO Shows All Hope Is Lost for Future of Russia


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Отправлено Чтец 12:52:14 11/03/1999:

Moscow Times 
March 9, 1999  
THE ANALYST: FIMACO Shows All Hope Is Lost for Future of Russia  
By Gary Peach 
Staff Writer 
 
If you ever again hear an optimist claim that Russia will defy the world's 
expectations, that the worst of the economic crisis is behind and an 
upswing is around the corner, that the country's leaders have learned from 
past mistakes and are ready to lay the foundation for a story-book 
recovery, just look them condescendingly in the eye and whisper one word: 
FIMACO.  
... 
 
This is what I must confess: Russia is going nowhere. Forget about it. 
Progress in a country that doesn't punish those who flagrantly rip off the 
state is impossible. Progress in a country where the FIMACO scandal is not 
only possible, but acceptable, is impossible.  
 
So long as shameless connivance continues to be the predominant value in 
Russia's political culture, we can get on with our lives knowing that 
nothing good will come out of this country in the next 30 to 40 years. If 
the entire system is so thoroughly apathetic, so hopelessly corrupt, that 
no one will stand up to these self-serving parasites who sucked the 
nation's reserves to a British Channel backwater and stuffed their pockets 
with part of it, then let Russia wallow in its own misery for another 
century. The country deserves no better.  
 
FIMACO, when all is said and done, adds new dimension to the Russian 
kleptocracy. All those years the nation's leadership f from Yeltsin and 
Chernomyrdin on down the ladder f whined and moaned about flight capital, 
about how the nation was bleeding hard currency by the billions, yet they 
and their cronies were doing the exact same thing f with the nation's 
strategic reserves. With money that belongs to the citizens of Russia.  
 
FIMACO, the Financial Management Co. based in the tax haven of Jersey, was 
used to conceal up to $50 billion of Russia's hard currency that churned 
through it between 1993 and 1998.  
 
We still have not received adequate answers to questions about the size of 
profits and management fees, and who exactly were the beneficiaries. In any 
civilized country Viktor Gerashchenko and Sergei Dubinin would have been 
arrested and put before judge or grand jury until every last question was 
answered in full. But in Russia they walk on water. Because f as far as 
this operation went f everyone was is on it. The blatant audacity and 
hypocrisy of FIMACO is so mind-boggling that its magnitude doesn't sink in 
straight away. At some point, a group of individuals, acting under the 
guise of the highest authorities in the land, decided to siphon off part of 
Russia's international reserves to a nameless fund manager located on a 
piece of mud between England and France and get rich in the process. It 
made everyone feel warm and fuzzy because there was plenty of profit to go 
around. It was an offshore orgy in which communist and capitalist alike 
could partake in.  
 
While there certainly may have been some justification in 1992 to transfer 
some reserves through an offshore investment operation and thereby beat the 
annual inflation rate on the U.S. dollar, the complete lack of transparency 
with which this operation was pulled off is stupefying. And herein lies the 
criminality of it all.  
 
If only these individuals could see themselves from outside, they could 
hear how false their preposterous "explanations" sound. One person stands 
out as a shining example of this: Sergei Alexashenko, the Dubinin-lackey 
who now wants to set up monuments to Central Bank chiefs and who equates 
the Jersey-island investment company FIMACO to an inviolable state secret.  
 
Former Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov, while deserving credit for 
revealing this disgusting episode of graft, obviously knew about FIMACO for 
quite some time, and only decided to blow the whistle out of desperation. 
(Which leads one to ask: What other nifty schemes is the prosecutor's 
office keeping mum on?)  
 
Russia is going nowhere because the nation's leadership is, and will 
continue to be, devoid of anyone who will undertake any real efforts to 
sweep up the widespread graft, budgetary misapproprations and endemic 
ineffectiveness that is typified by this nation's economy. How can there be 
improvement when those who are running the show are covertly pocketing 
profits and fees through an offshore operation? How can these people f 
Yeltsin, Chernomyrdin, Dubinin, Gerashchenko, even Kiriyenko f possibly 
understand things such as integrity, virtue and honest enterprise, the 
stuff needed to make an economy work? The truth is they can't. Which is why 
we should give up all hope. I know I have.


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