A little story about how Alisher Usmanov threatened to sue me - and what it tells about Western complicity in the functioning of the Russian regime (a 🧵).
For context: Usmanov is a typical Russian oligarch. Obscenely rich, corrupt to the bone, investigated by Navalny (his response: "I spit on you, Alexei!") & fully integrated in the Russian regime's infrastructure (through control of key media and internet assets).
A year ago, Ilya Budraitskis and me published a story on the New Left Review blog about Navalny's plight. Among other things, we said the following:
newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/…
newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/…
"Throughout the 2010s, this populist attitude informed Navalny’s anti-corruption investigations, whose targets were not only state officials, but oligarchs such as Oleg Deripaska and Alisher Usmanov...
...Navalny railed against their acquisition of enormous wealth through the criminal privatization of former Soviet enterprises."
The story was reprinted by the socialist publication International Viewpoint (IV).
The story was reprinted by the socialist publication International Viewpoint (IV).
In a few days, IV's editor received an email from an "associate" (probably some poor intern) at the fancy London-based PR firm Finsbury Glover Hering. According to the email, what we said in the article was "factually inaccurate and defamatory in relation to Mr Usmanov".
The "associate" proceeded to explain that Usmanov was a saint and our article should be removed from every publication that printed it. Also, we should send a formal apology to Usmanov (what? yes!) Otherwise, the honest businessman would sue the hell out of everyone involved.
Of course, that email went straight to the trash can. Btw, cursory Googling revealed that Finsbury also tried to covertly edit Usmanov's Wikipedia page, removing any mention of unsaintly behaviour (e.g. six years in a Soviet prison for corruption and theft of state property).
The moral of the story: how many "associates" at various PR, legal, finance and consulting companies directly contributed to the prosperity of Russian oligarchs and corrupt public officials abroad? Not just in their business dealings, but in corruption-related activities?
I think, conservatively, this industry employed (still employs?) tens of thousands of people. The Russian regime has immensely benefited from the global (but Western-centric) infrastructure of corruption. Two questions related to this:
1) Is this infrastructure fully dismantled? Is dismantling it a priority in the same way as destroying ordinary Russians' livelihoods is?
2) Isn't it too late for moral posturing by the Western establishment when they had fingers in the pie for so long?
2) Isn't it too late for moral posturing by the Western establishment when they had fingers in the pie for so long?
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