Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1492

August 25:

According to the Washington Post, Switzerland’s supreme court has ruled that Russia’s continuing investigation of the Yukos oil company is “political and discriminatory” and ordered Swiss authorities not to turn over bank documents Russia is seeking in connection with the case. The court said the campaign against Yukos was aimed at “putting to heel the class of rich people known as ‘oligarchs’ and sidelining potential or declared political adversaries,” and had impinged on human rights and the right of defense. Following the ruling, Swiss authorities said they had unfrozen about $250 million in bank accounts linked to Yukos. Lawyers for Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence in Siberia, hailed the ruling.


August 26:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said that he plans to buy sniper rifles from Russia, Reuters reports. “I’m going to buy 5,000 Dragunov rifles from Russia... with telescopic sight, the best in the world, with infrared night-view,” Chavez said. “We will knock out any imperialist that approaches.” Venezuela last year purchased 24 Sukhoi fighters jets and 100,000 Kalashnikov AK-103 assault rifles from Russia and is currently negotiating the purchase of submarines. On August 24th, Russia’s state arms exporter Rosoboronexport denied a Vremya Novostei report that it had signed a deal to sell Venezuela 98 Ilyushin-114s, which can be used as both passenger and cargo planes.


August 27:

Prosecutor General Yury Chaika has announced that ten suspects have been arrested in connection with last October’s murder of Novaya Gazeta correspondent Anna Politkovskaya. According to RIA Novosti, Chaika said that among the suspects are five former law-enforcement and security agency employees and a leader of a Moscow-based Chechen organized crime group, and that “current and former employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and an employee of the FSB [Federal Security Service] took part in shadowing and providing information about Politikovskaya.” He also said the suspects might have been involved in the July 2004 murder of Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov.

Chaika said the person who ordered the Politkovskaya’s murder is hiding abroad, but he would not give the person’s name or location. Those behind the murder, he said, wanted to destabilize Russia, discredit its leadership and bring back “the previous system of governance, when money and oligarchs decided everything,” Ekho Moskvy reports. However, Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov told the radio station he thought Chaika’s comments were “political.” Gzt.ru quotes Anna Stavitskaya, a lawyer for Politkovskaya’s family, as calling it premature to declare the murder solved.


August 28:

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s characterization of Russia’s tactics on the world scene as “brutality” was “a bit emotional,” Agence France-Presse reports. On August 27th, Sarkozy said during his first foreign policy speech since taking office: “Russia is muscling its way back onto the international scene by playing its cards with a certain brutality in relation to its advantages, notably oil and gas.” Peskov said he thought the word “brutality” was a reflection of the “very beautiful and emotional French language,” adding: “In reality, we hope to see understanding from our European partners.” Russia’s forceful assertiveness in international affairs, Peskov said, “is not brutality; it is pragmatism.”

Allofmp3.com, the Russian music download site hit with countless lawsuits by UK and U.S. record labels claiming it had violated copyrights, appears ready to relaunch, the BBC reports. A statement on the website, shut down in July, said the service would resume “in the foreseeable future.” Earlier this month, a Moscow court acquitted the website’s former owner, Denis Kvasov, of violating intellectual property laws, citing insufficient evidence.