31 Samuel A. Greene, Book Review Andrei Soldatov & Irina Borogan’s The Red Web ’’
Open Democracy, Sep. 8, 2015. Raphael Satter et al., Russia Hackers Pursued Putin Foes, Not Just US Democrats
Asso-ciated Press, Nov. 2, 2017. Shaun Walker, Russian Cellist Says Funds Revealed in Panama
Papers Came From Donations The Guardian, Apr. 10, 2016.
162
Ibid. 163
Ibid. 164
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project,
Putin and the Proxies, https:// www.occrp.org/en/putinandtheproxies, Oct. 24, 2017.
165
Ibid. 166
Steven Lee Myers
et al., Private Bank Fuels Fortunes of Putin’s Inner Circle
The New York Times, Sept. 27, 2014. money.’’
159
According to an investigation
by the Associated Press, the Kremlin has also directed state-sponsored hackers to infiltrate the email accounts of political opponents, dozens of journalists, and at least one hundred civil society figures inside Russia—a signal of tactics it would later use against international targets. Its domestic target list includes Mikhail Khodorkovsky, members of Pussy Riot, and Alexey Navalny.
160
CORRUPTING ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
When news of the so-called Panama Papers broke in 2016, shining alight on corruption
networks around the globe, a Russian cellist named Sergey Rodulgin found himself center stage. The documents alleged that Rodulgin, an old friend of Putin’s, was tied to offshore companies valued at $2 billion that are suspected fronts for stashing pilfered wealth.
161
The documents allegedly showed that Rodulgin directly holds as much as $100 million in assets a surprising figure fora professional cellist.
162
When pressed tore- spond to the papers, both Putin and Rodulgin attributed the latter’s wealth to his successful philanthropic efforts collecting donations from Russian businessmen for the purchase of fine rare instruments for Russian students use. ‘‘There’s nothing to catch me out on here said Rodulgin. I am indeed rich I am rich with the talent of Russia.’’
163
In fact, the estimated $24 billion that Putin’s inner circle of friends and family controls is mostly drawn from business with state-controlled companies, particularly in the oil and gas sector.
164
An October 2017 report, jointly compiled by the Organized Crime and Corruption Project (the investigative network which helped to bring the Panama Papers to light) and Russian newspaper
Novaya Gazeta, details the wealth of several members of Putin’s inner circle and notes that, Though
they hold enormous assets, they stay out of the public eye, seem largely unaware of their own companies, and are at pains to explain the origins of their wealth suggesting these individuals are proxies for holding resources that Putin may have amassed.
165
The wealth that Putin may have accumulated for himself is the tip of a larger iceberg of crony capitalism in Russia that has turned loyalists into billionaires whose influence over strategic sectors of the economy has in turn helped Putin maintain his iron- fisted grip on power.’’
166
This political-economic ecosystem is distinct from the Yeltsin era, when many oligarchs independently built fortunes out of the chaos of the Soviet Union’s collapse and thus represented potential political threats to the government. The Russian population, beset by the economic tumult of the s, grew to resent the entrepreneurial oligarchs
and their individual VerDate Mar 15 2010 04:06 Jan 09, 2018
Jkt PO 00000
Frm 00037
Fmt 6601
Sfmt 6601
S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\COMMITTEE PRINT 2018\HENRY\JAN. 9 REPORT
FOREI-42327 with DISTILLER