Lawyer: Ill Former Yukos executive freed on bail

Lawyer: Ill Former Yukos executive freed on bail

11 hours ago

MOSCOW (AP) — A lawyer says the former executive of dismantled oil giant Yukos, who was jailed in 2006 and suffers from AIDS and cancer, has been freed after posting a $1.8 million bail.

Vasily Aleksanian faces money laundering and embezzlement charges in a host of criminal cases against Yukos and its jailed founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Aleksanian is currently in a hospital in Moscow, where he was moved in February while lawyers demanded he be freed from custody because of his health.

The Moscow City Court set bail for Aleksanian this month, with rights groups calling it too high.

Drew Holiner, a lawyer for Aleksanian, said Tuesday that the cash had been raised through private donations. Holiner said guards surrounding Aleksanian's ward have been dismissed.

Terminally ill Yukos executive released at $1.8 mln bail

MOSCOW, December 30 (RIA Novosti) - Terminally ill ex-Yukos official Vasily Aleksanyan has been released at 50 million ruble ($1.8 billion) bail, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

"Guards have been removed from Aleksanyan's hospital room an hour ago," Yelena Lvova told RIA Novosti.

The Moscow City Court ordered on December 8 that Aleksanyan be released as soon as the money is received.

Aleksanyan said earlier in a statement, "The court's decision to set bail at such an unbelievable sum instead of granting an unconditional release appears to be a cynical travesty of the law and of good sense."

Aleksanyan, 36, diagnosed with AIDS and cancer, is accused of embezzling about $330 million from former Yukos production unit Tomskneft and shares worth $493 million from other oil companies, as well as laundering stolen assets.

The last time the court set bail at such a high sum was for Vasily Boiko, who was released after being arrested on charges of illegally purchasing nine agricultural enterprises in the Moscow Region to implement an ambitious luxury housing project.

Radio Free Europe or Radio Free Putin?

Did BBG End U.S. Surrogate Broadcasting in Russia on Radio Liberty in an Attempt to Appease Mr. Putin and Pursue Its Marketing Strategy?

As Radio Liberty’s Russian radio programs were becoming more innocuous in recent years due to pressures from the BBG to make them sound more acceptable to anti-Western Russians in the interest of pursuing the questionable marketing goal of “marrying the mission to the market,” Voice of America journalists based in Washington have tried to offer more hard-hitting news and comments and thus serve the role of a surrogate radio broadcaster that RFE/RL is no longer able to play in Russia. This year, however, the BBG made good on its threat to end all VOA Russian radio broadcasts and implemented its decision just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia last summer. When the war started, the Voice of America was prevented by the BBG from broadcasting Russian radio programs. The two now former BBG members who were most responsible for this public diplomacy and foreign policy blunder were James K. Glassman, the BBG’s most recent neoconservative chairman who is now the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, and liberal Democrat, Edward E. Kaufman, who was subsequently appointed to succeed Vice President elect Joe Biden as a U.S. Senator from Delaware.

The original BBG marketing strategy was developed in the early years of the George W. Bush Administration by another liberal Democrat Norman Pattiz, founder of the U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One who was the architect of privatizing U.S. broadcasting to the Middle East and terminating Voice of America radio services. His vision produced similar programming scandals at Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. Only one BBG member was reported to have voted against ending VOA radio broadcasts to Russia.

In a letter to U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, Lev Roitman, a former Radio Liberty Russian service broadcaster, has described a recent example of how Radio Liberty continues to fail in its mission to expose Mr. Putin’s anti-democratic rule. Mr. Roitman’s wife, Snjezana Pelivan, is one of the two two foreign RFE/RL female employees (the other employee, Anna Karapetyan, is the mother of three minors) who are suing RFE/RL for violations of their labor, civil and human (national equality) rights when their were dismissed from their jobs in the Czech Republic, where RFE/RL has its headquarters.

A national Czech newspaper described the RFE/RL’s treatment of its foreign employees as offering them “equality with preconditions” and engaging in a practice that “contradicts ideals” of American democracy. Former Czech president Vaclav Havel has promised to follow this case as a human rights issue. RFE/RL has its headquarters in the Czech Republic. Senator Brownback has sponsored a bill that would reform U.S. public diplomacy and eliminate the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The BBG is ultimately responsible for RFE/RL’s policies with regard to its employees in the Czech Republic and in Russia and for the content of Radio Liberty’s Russian broadcasts.

CASPIAN BASIN: RUSSIA FACES A COLLAPSE OF ITS ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CLOUT

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav123008_pr.shtml

Sergei Blagov: 12/30/08

The global economic crisis is forcing Russia to rethink its economic and geopolitical approaches toward the Caspian Basin. Whereas the Kremlin not too long ago was entertaining notions of prolonged regional dominance, now Russian officials are scrambling to avert a geopolitical implosion.

Only six months ago, when Russia was riding on top of skyrocketing energy prices, the Caspian Basin states seemed ready to dutifully follow Moscow's blueprint for regional development, in which the Kremlin worked through several regional groups - in particular the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Commonwealth of Independent States - to cement its dominance in place.

But the global crisis has caused Russia's domestic economy to crash. And as a result, its regional clout has waned dramatically. In a sign of the changing times, Russia, a country that normally set the terms for discussion within the EEC, recently had to appeal to other member states to coordinate actions in order to counter the global crisis.

In recent months, Russia had been pressing other EEC members to adopt the Russian ruble as the EEC common currency. But at their December 12 meeting, EEC members signaled no desire to peg their fate to the ruble, which has been battered amid the recent financial turmoil. EEC prime ministers signed agreements on currency policy coordination, on investment protection, on the prospects of the common energy market and some other deals too. However, there were no firm common currency commitments, let alone a formal agreement on a future role of the Russian ruble, leading observers to believe that the common currency plan has fallen by the wayside.

Russia's hope to forge a broad customs union also seems stalled by the reluctance of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to join. Uzbekistan further deflated Russia's plans by announcing its withdrawal from the EEC. Officially, Tashkent explained its move by saying that the EEC was inefficient. However, some experts say the Uzbek decision was a reflection of Russia's diminishing economic and political influence.

Tashkent's move to suspend its EEC membership may end up having a considerable impact on Caspian Basin energy developments. Specifically, doubts are growing about a Russian-led initiative, first unveiled in May 2007, to expand the Prikaspiisky pipeline network. Construction was slated to begin in late 2008, but that is obviously not going to happen. Experts now wonder if there will be any movement on the project in 2009.

In recent months, Moscow had been also courting Caspian gas suppliers by offering them lucrative purchase terms. In March 2008, Russia agreed to raise gas price for Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan up to European levels starting in 2009. The Russian offer was certainly enticing earlier this year. But now, with gas prices set to fall significantly in the coming year, the Russian conglomerate Gazprom is coming under considerable pressure, and no longer has much negotiating flexibility.

Central Asian gas producers currently seem more amenable than earlier this year to an export diversification strategy. It was hardly a coincidence that recent talks between Turkmenistani leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and his Azerbaijani and Turkish counterparts featured possible gas transit routes via Turkey to Europe.

Moscow rushed to uphold its earlier deals with Turkmenistan. Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov traveled to Turkmenistan to discuss gas prices. However, following talks in Ashgabat, he announced on December 9 only that both sides had tentatively agreed on the volume of Turkmen gas to be delivered to Russia, while the price remained under discussion.

Russia's major energy companies have repeatedly announced plans of major investment projects in Central Eurasia, but implementation has tended to be slow. Now with a background of the global economic crisis and falling energy prices these plans have been effectively scrapped, thereby diminishing the Kremlin's political influence.

In the geopolitical sphere, Moscow once believed it could turn the CSTO into a regional force that could keep NATO at bay. That vision, however, now seems endangered. The organization proved in September that it would not be a rubber-stamp outfit for the Kremlin after it refused to endorse Moscow's recognition of South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's independence. Russia's subsequent loss of economic clout will only make it more difficult for the Kremlin to get its way within the CSTO.

In 2009, the economic problems confronting Russia may well get far worse before they get better. Accordingly, other states in Central Asia may follow Uzbekistan's lead and seek to distance themselves from Russia-dominated multilateral organizations.