Showing posts with label oligarchs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oligarchs. Show all posts

Thursday, October 26, 2017

How Rampant Corruption in Russia Forced Putin to Attack Western Democracies

by Nomad


A few days ago, Sergei Aleksashenko wrote an article in The Moscow Times that very likely went unnoticed in the West. Aleksashenko was Deputy Minister of Finance and Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank in the 1990s.
Since that time, Aleksashenko witnessed with his own eyes the 1992 promise of economic transformation turn sour. The creation of the Putin's autocracy, wiping away Russia's chance for substantive reform, has been one of the modern history's sadness stories.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Fall of the Emigre: A Second Look at the Mysterious Death of Mikhail Lesin

by Nomad

 Lesin

For those who appreciate a conspiracy theory, the baffling death of Mikhail Lesin is straight out of a John le Carré spy novel. Officially, it was ruled as an accident and yet, given current events, Lesin's demise becomes even more suspicious.


Blunt Force Trauma

When the doors of the luxurious suite at the Doyle Dupont Circle Hotel were opened on the Thursday morning of November 5, 2015, Russian emigre, Mikhail Yuriyevich Lesin was found dead and alone. He was found without any identification in a hotel room that was under his name. Police detected no obvious signs of forced entry.
After some delay, a member from the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed the identity as that of 57-year old Lesin.

Traveling from Los Angeles, Lesin had been invited to attend a fund-raising dinner for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the city’s West End two nights before.

However, he had not appeared at the event and had failed to respond to phone calls or text messages from the fellow Russian who had invited him, a banker and philanthropist who was honored at that dinner.
Lesin's failure to attend must have seemed peculiar. He had recently confirmed he would be there and was flying into Washington specifically for the ceremony.

In fact, Lesin had been listed among other numerous guests. It meant, as one investigator points out, that "his potential presence could have been known to a large number of people, not all of whom were necessarily his well-wishers."